Anti-Racism

Born from the vision of Chief Dr. Robert Joseph, Gwawaenuk Elder, Reconciliation Canada is leading the way in engaging Canadians in dialogue and transformative experiences that revitalize the relationships among Indigenous peoples and all Canadians.

“Based on a viral article, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act is the essential guide to understanding the legal document and its repercussions on generations of Indigenous Peoples, written by a leading cultural sensitivity trainer, Bob Joseph.

ICNC - International Centre on Non-Violent Conflict - focuses on how ordinary people wage nonviolent conflict to win rights, freedom and justice. Here they offer an understanding of civil resistance, something currently being used in the anti-racism movement.

ICNC - International Centre on Non-Violent Conflict - focuses on how ordinary people wage nonviolent conflict to win rights, freedom and justice. Here they explain the importance of understanding the pillars of support within a society. Jesus understood them well. So should we.

ICNC provides information and educational opportunities about nonviolent civil resistance to activists and organizers around the world. Their view is that nonviolent struggle is a social science that can be studied and understood, and that practitioners increase their chances of success by learning from each other as well as from cutting edge academic scholarship on this topic.

Amid Chauvin trial and more police killings, calls for ‘peaceful’ protests sound obnoxious. But as Martin Luther King Jr. preached, we must reject peace that prioritizes calm over justice — and work toward building a positive peace instead. Maria J. Stephan explores the options.

Bayo Akomolafe, is the chief curator of The Emergence Network, a research inquirey in the otherwise. It asks the questions: What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis. Here is his poetic offering: In the morning, you won’t find me here, A Meditation on Blackness.

In the age of the Anthropocene - the time humans have adversely affected the earth - and entrenched politics of whiteness, Bayo Akomolafe brings us face-to-face with our own unresolved ancestry, as it becomes more and more apparent that we are completely entwined with each other and the natural world.

Slavery existed across British colonies, but often white Canadians, both in and outside the church, talk about enslavement by fixating on the Underground Railroad. Alydia Smith through her own experience in church culture, addresses this misconcpetion.

Rev. Teresa 'Terri' Hord Owens, general minister and president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), offers a sermon on becoming the church that Jesus has called us to be - fully committed to anti-racism. The Diciples of Christ are in full communion with The United Church of Canada.

This visual essay features tintype photographs of the remaining speakers of endangered languages in North America, highlighting the critical state of Indigenous language loss and celebrating the Native speakers whose voices embody resilience and revitalization.

Known as the “Moses of her people,” Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a “conductor" of the Underground Railroad. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves.

Anish Bensdira writes about her experience growing up as a person of colour in a predominately white culture. “Years of living in a small town nearly ‘white-washed’ me,” she writes. “Then BLM came along. Getting involved with activism made me realize who I am.”

Corinne Shutack is Working towards a world where pain and suffering isn’t caused by a fellow human. Here she offers 103 very specific things that white people can do for racial justice. Form a group and start working through the list. As Corinne says, “Our work to fix what we broke and left broken. The work isn’t done until Black folks tell us it’s done.”

Layla F. Saad wrote Me and White Supremacy to encourage people who hold white privilege to examine their (often unconscious) racist thoughts and behaviours through a unique, twenty-eight-day reflection process complete with journaling prompts. This guided journal, which is to be used in tandem with the book, is the perfect place to continue your antiracism journey.

On The Bible for Normal People, Austin Channing Brown shares about her experience growing up in various churches and what we can learn from black churches - especially when it comes to preaching the Bible. Austin Channing Brown is a media producer, author, and speaker providing inspired leadership on racial justice in America.

Are you interested in the intersection of race and work? Listen to this interview between Jeff Shinabarger and Austin Channing Brown for new insights on what it looks like to pursue racial justice in our work for social good. It comes to us from ‘Plywood Presents’.

Austin Channing Brown writes that she is “not interested in love that is aloof, in a love that qualifies the statement, “Black lives mat­ter,” because it is unconvinced this is true. I am not interested in a love that refuses to see systems and structures of injustice, preferring to ask itself only about personal intentions. I need a love that is troubled by injustice.”

In this never-before-released interview, the late civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis talks systemic racism, permanent warfare, extreme poverty and nonviolence as a way of life with Rev. John Dear, a life long, committed pacifist. Both men are devoted Christians.

I’m Still Here, is an illuminating look at how white, middle-class, Evangelicalism has participated in an era of rising racial hostility, inviting the reader to confront apathy, recognize God's ongoing work in the world, and discover how blackness--if we let it--can save us all. It is a powerful account of how and why our actions so often fall short of our words.

Here is a work book to accompany the reading of White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo, developed by DeAngelo and Ozlem Sensoy. It was created so that groups can read and reflect on the book together, working through each chapter with questions for consideration.

In this video, University of Washington professor Dr. Robin DiAngelo reads from her book "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism," explains the phenomenon, and discusses how white people can develop their capacity to engage more constructively across race.

Trauma therapist and author of My Grandmother's Hands, Resmaa Menakem talks honestly and directly about the historical and current traumatic impacts of racism in the U.S., and the necessity for us all to recognize this trauma, metabolize it, work through it, and grow up out of it. Only in this way will we at last heal our bodies, our families, and the social body of our nation. Though he speaks from an American viewpoint, his observations and solutions are not confined to any country but have world wide applications.

Somatic Abolitionism is not a human invention. It is the resourcing of energies that are always present in your body, in the collective body, and in the world. Somatic Abolitionism is an emergent process.

It has become clear that in regards to anti-racism, the best laws and diversity training have not gotten us anywhere near where we want to go. Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem is working with old wisdom and very new science about our bodies and nervous systems, and all we condense into the word “race.” Resmaa Menakem’s practices offer us the beginning to change at a cellular level. He offers free of charge a course you can take to learn these practices.

The Canadian Ecumenical Anti-Racism Network has taken up the challenge of resourcing and accompanying communities of faith in their journey toward truth and reconciliation. This resource zeros in on White privilege as an essential aspect of anti-racism work. Racism is one expression of the White privilege and supremacy that is present in day-to-day interactions and built into systems and church structures. It is impossible to do anti-racism work without examining White identity and the unearned power and privilege that flows from that identity.

Author Robyn Maynard delves behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of over four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada.

Adele Halliday, writing in Broadview Magazine, expresses her dismay at the events taking place in the summer of 2020. “I write as a Black Canadian. The events of the past few weeks have been deeply traumatizing. I have been cycling through three main emotions – intense anger, immense exhaustion and deep pain. These emotions are not new to me – they are part of what it means to live in a Black body with the reality of racial injustice.

Layla Saad’s book challenges you to do the essential work of unpacking your biases, and helps white people take action and dismantle the privilege within themselves so that you can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too. It takes readers on a 28-day journey, complete with journal prompts, to do the necessary and vital work that can ultimately lead to improving race relations.

Trailblazers is a disruptive children’s book that introduces readers to Canada’s Black history through the under-told stories of over forty incredible Black change makers. With each short story carefully written in poetic form and accompanied by beautiful illustrations, this tribute brings complex topics and historical facts to life. Engaged readers will finish Trailblazers feeling enlightened, inspired, and ready to blaze their own trails.

If you are new to anti-racism, you may feel either overwhelmed with the amount of material there is to assimilate, and/or unsure where to begin. Just begin somewhere, anywhere. Look over the lists and click at something that catches your eye - read, listen, watch. And then do something, however small, even if that something is just more reading, listening, watching and reflecting. Being anti-racist involves action.