RESOURCES

START HERE
Black Lives Matter’s Guide to Allyship
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s Anti-Racist Reading List
Consult this list of books, articles, podcasts, etc.
Visit My Little Queer Library
which includes many resources on anti-carcercal feminism, experiences of the Black LGBTQ community, Black history, and more.

...THEN MOVE HERE: API/A-specific
Asian Americans need to talk about anti-blackness in our communities (Vox)
Broad overview of anti-blackness and historical examples of solidarity between API/A and Black communitiesBlack Lives Matter translated
A good repository of materials for people to address hard questions about BLM with their parents (and/or themselves)Tou Thao and the Myths of Asian American Solidarity
Discusses the race/class dynamics of condemning anti-blackness within the API/A community from more privileged lenses

B R Ambedkar, W E B DuBois and the Process of Liberation by S D Kapoor
This paper is about two activists from vastly different countries briefly united by a common struggle. Ambedkar, a pioneer social reformer of the Indian caste system, wrote a letter to W.E.B. DuBois asking him for his thoughts on how to reform the ‘Untouchable’ class, whose experience he paralleled to how black people were treated in America. The piece is simple, short, and the interaction did not lead to any major developments or shifts in politics, but I find this piece a valuable reminder of the shared struggle of minorities. Solidarity triumphs over division.

–Shariful Khan, APALSA SocMem Co-Chair

I really enjoyed How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and the intersectional focus of the book. So often we just toss around the word “racism” without truly delving into and understanding the different ways that racism runs across intersectional lines. The book is organized into chapters that each focus on one dimension of this intersectionality, so it is a book that is extremely conducive to themed discussions. I also appreciate that Kendi acknowledges his own previous racist ideas, so we feel that we are learning with him rather than being taught by him. I think this is an extremely accessible book and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a simple explanation of the racism that shadows us.

–Sonia Qin, APALSA Co-Chair

I chose We Are Extraordinarily Lucky to be Living in These Times: A Conversation with Grace Lee Boggs, by Karín Aguilar-San Juan (excerpted). Grace Lee Boggs, who passed away in 2015, was a seminal Chinese American labor and civil rights activist in Michigan. Her writings and the example she set with her work were a huge part of my early education on solidarity between movements and communities. My favorite parts of this interview are where Grace talks about the need to imagine new realities and utopias as the only way we can truly transcend MLK Jr.'s "giant triplets of racism, materialism, [and] militarism." I hope you will take a look and that it might be interesting to you!

–Angie, APALSA PAC Co-Chair

My friend sent me this Mother Jones article/interview: What a World Without Cops Would Look Like and I think it does a great job of breaking down the proposal of police abolition and suggesting what it would look like in practice. For those who are unfamiliar with this concept or who have some skepticisms about it, I highly recommend this piece! It’s a quick and easy read.

–Sonia Qin, APALSA Co-Chair

On the more academic side, I recently read The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots by Brenda Stevenson, which focuses on the true-story shooting of a young Black girl named Latasha Harlins by Korean shopowner Soon Ja Du and how the killing became a flashpoint between Asian and Black relations in the leadup to the 1992 LA riots. It’s a deep dive into a time in history that couldn’t be more relevant today, and I appreciated how it used Harlins’s killing to explore the wider, complicated context of gender, class, and ethnicity in the US. Another resource that has been so helpful for me is 18 Million Rising, which provides tons of resources for Asian American communities on addressing anti-blackness, dismantling white supremacy, and organizing together. Their Instagram is dope.

–Nina Oishi, APALSA SocMem Co-Chair

My select reading is America’s Racial Contract is Showing by Adam Serwer, who received the 2019 Hillman Prize for his work on the rise of Trump, Trumpism and America's history of racism. This article is an eloquent, thoughtful exploration of what philosopher Charles Mills calls the “racial contract.” Serwer unpacks the racial contract into concrete terms: “A 12-year-old with a toy gun is a dangerous threat who must be met with lethal force; armed militias drawing beads on federal agents are heroes of liberty. Struggling white farmers in Iowa taking billions in federal assistance are hardworking Americans down on their luck; struggling single parents in cities using food stamps are welfare queens. Black Americans struggling in the cocaine epidemic are a “bio-underclass” created by a pathological culture; white Americans struggling with opioid addiction are a national tragedy. Poor European immigrants who flocked to an America with virtually no immigration restrictions came “the right way”; poor Central American immigrants evading a baroque and unforgiving system are gang members and terrorists.” The article explores how the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 has rendered the racial contract more visible, as well as how black lives are depreciated by it.

–Angela Chan, APALSA ProfDev Co-Chair

I found the article In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil to be very grounding. It was written in 2014, in response to the property destruction that occurred during the Ferguson protests. Rather than distinguish between the good protesters and the selfish looters, Vicky focuses on the violent and deeply racist undertones behind ideas of property ownership in the United States. To me, it was a helpful exercise to interrogate what actions/realities I was willing and accustomed to calling violent.

–Patrick Liu, APALSA PAC Co-Chair

I ran across this article At the Margins of a Movement, Forging a Common Language by Chris Jingchao Ma and felt like it was super helpful for me in looking forward to the APALSA community conversation. The article is about Ma's experience learning about the Black Lives Matter movement after arriving in the U.S. as a Chinese international student, and Ma's work translating seminal writings on Black liberation in the U.S. into Chinese. One of my favorite quotes: "In addition to translating, I’ve invited some friends who study in the U.S. and the U.K. to join an online book club about the problems faced by African Americans. They are all Chinese-speaking women, many of whom, like me, study gender issues.... True, there’s a risk that this kind of get-together will become an echo chamber. But for me, an echo chamber is not necessarily a bad thing when members are otherwise isolated politically. It’s a place where we can take a breather, refine and advance our arguments, and prepare to convince others."
-Angie, APALSA PAC Co-Chair

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