Tools for Accountability

“If you are White and want to be part of the solution, take initiative, and get informed. Read books. Watch documentaries. Listen to podcasts. Gather your friends and family and go on learning journeys. Also, support Black- and Brown-owned businesses, Black- and Brown-led not-for-profits and Black and Brown colleagues. Make a courageous effort to begin trustworthy relationships with Black and Brown neighbors, even if you don’t have any in your immediate neighborhood. Hoosier Hospitality means all Hoosiers are our neighbors. I know you are afraid you are going to say something stupid, and you are right. You will. I have and, sometimes, still do. That’s where the little bit of courage comes in. It’s also where radical grace is usually offered by our Black and Brown neighbors who really still believe we White people will someday do the right thing.“

-Brian Payne, former president and CEO, CICF and Indianapolis Foundation, 2000-2023

Below are recommended books, documentaries, podcasts, and learning journeys that have influenced the staff and our knowledge about race and racism in America :
BOOKS
  • The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty is Wrong – Mauricio Miller
  • Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Chokehold: Policing Black Men – Paul Butler
  • Citizen: An American Lyric – Claudia Rankine
  • The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America – Richard Rothstein
  • Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance – Edgar Villanueva
  • Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City – Matthew Desmond
  • The Family – John Sharlet
  • How to Be an Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi
  • Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – Bryan Stevenson
  • Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong – James Loewen
  • The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man – John Perkins
  • The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander
  • Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools – Monique Morris
  • The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States – Charles Colcock Jones
  • Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America – Ibram Kendi
  • White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism – Robin DiAngelo
  • White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America – Nancy Isenberg
  • Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race – Beverly Daniel Tatum
PODCAST
  • Scene on Radio, Season 2: Seeing White – Hosted by John Biewen at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University with collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University
  • 1619 – an audio series from The New York Times on how slavery has transformed America, connecting past and present through the oldest form of storytelling.
Documentaries & films
  • White Like Me – Tim Wise (available on YouTube)
  • 13th – documentary directed by Ava DuVernay (available on Netflix)
  • When They See Us – limited series created by Ava DuVernay (available on Netflix)
  • Oprah Winfrey Presents: When They See Us Now – discussion series (available on Netflix)
  •  American Son – movie directed by Kenny Leon (available on Netflix)
  • True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality (available on HBO and online at The Equal Justice Initiative)
  • Night School – Indianapolis documentary directed by Andrew Cohn (available on AmazonPrime)
  • I Am Not Your Negro – documentary based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript
  • Attucks:  The School that Opened a City – documentary (available through WFYI)
ONLINE ARTICLES, EDITORIALS & RESOURCES
  • The Curb Cut Effect: How Making Public Spaces Accessible to People With Disabilities Helps Everyone — Disability Science Review, Medium
  • Mapping Our Social Change Roles in Times of Crisis — Deepa Iyer, Medium
  • Healing in Action 2020—webinar from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
LEARNING JOURNEYS