Anti-Racism Statement Department of History
The murder of George Floyd by officers of the Minneapolis Police Department during the global coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis that have profoundly affected African-American communities, has served as a catalyst for change. Racist structures and systems of oppression, with deep historical roots spanning four centuries, have long abetted the abuse and killing of Black men and women in police custody, racist vigilantism, and impunity for perpetrators of this violence. These same structures and systems of oppression have allowed the violence to continue. Escalating police militarism is part of, and further exacerbates, systemic racism and oppression. In recent days, police have responded to peaceful protests with tear gas, pepper spray, excessive force, and riot gear in cities across the United States and within our own community.
As a public university, we are dedicated to free speech and open inquiry, even if it leads to difficult conversations. We stand in solidarity with our professional associations, our colleagues, and our students who are calling for a more just and equitable society. We pledge to work with our students, colleagues, and university to advance racial justice through our teaching, research, and advocacy. Together, we can work toward meaningful change to build a more just university, city, and society.
Resources for Students, Faculty, Staff, and the Jacksonville Community
Reading list for understanding racial injustice and systemic oppression in the United States:
- Ibram X. Kendi: Stamped from the Beginning
- Michael Eric Dyson: Tears We Cannot Stop
- Dorothy Roberts: Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century
- Loïc Wacquant: Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality
- Langston Hughes: "Kids Who Die"
- James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time
- Edward Baptiste: The Half Has Never Been Told
- Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow
- Renni Eddo-Lodge: Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race
- Zora Neale Hurston: Barracoon
- bell hooks: Ain't I a Woman?
- Ibram X. Kendi: How to Be an Anti-Racist
- Sam Greenlee: The Spook Who Sat by the Door
- Susan Reverby: Examining Tuskegee
- Amy Louise Wood: Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940
- W.E.B. Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk
- Eduardo Bonilla-Silva: Racism without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States
- Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the World and Me
Reading List on Policing and Rebellion, and Criminalization of Blackness: https://www.radicalhistoryreview.org/abusablepast/reading-towards-abolition-a-reading-list-on-policing-rebellion-and-the-criminalization-of-blackness/
Syllabus on Institutionalized Racism: https://daily.jstor.org/institutionalized-racism-a-syllabus/
Women Authors to Understand the Current Protests: https://msmagazine.com/2020/06/02/black-lives-matter-eight-recommended-books-by-women-to-understand-the-uprisings/
Schomburg Center Black Liberation Reading List: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2020/06/09/schomburg-center-black-liberation-reading-list?fbclid=IwAR3ZOiYQ44V3GuA76oT4E5fMqS0asRmjR4BeaTPQUGUJ6dt8wxkhoJiYZXY
Link to AHA Statement: https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/aha-advocacy/aha-statement-on-the-history-of-racist-violence-in-the-united-states-(june-2020)
#SAYHERNAME: The LA Uprising, 25 years later: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/april-2017/sayhername-the-la-uprising-25-years-later
Link to African American Intellectual History Society Blog Post of Teaching in an Uprising: https://www.aaihs.org/teaching-in-an-uprising-readings-on-race-and-democracy/
Link to OAH Statement: https://www.oah.org/insights/posts/2020/statement-on-recent-events-of-racial-injustice/
Facing History and Ourselves: https://www.facinghistory.org