Here’s a handful of recommendations for those looking to unpack our societal conditioning and understand ourselves and the systems we live within:
- Especially if you’re white: Read books, watch movies, listen to music created by those of other races and identities to hear the voices and understand the realities and experience the cultures of people who are different from you
- Explore our history through documentaries and non-fiction:
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson – explains the hierarchies of power in U.S. society
- The film 13th by Ana DuVernay – watch for free on YouTube or available on Netflix – shows the racial history of the U.S. and the current school-to-prison pipeline
- Learn about how race-based trauma is intergenerational, and how it gets stored in our physical bodies and minds: From Resmaa Menakem (many resources available on his site here): the book My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies
- Not just for white women: The book White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better by two women of color, Regina Jackson and Saira Rao