Antiracism Resources

As we continue to grapple with the painful events surrounding race, violence and police brutality in America, we encourage our students, faculty and staff to engage in learning and reflection on the experiences of people of color in our country. If you would like to share your thoughts and feelings around the recent incidents, please contact us at gmssa@bu.edu.

Please note: This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. We welcome members of our community to suggest additional resources that would benefit our students, faculty and staff.

Anti-Racism at BU/BUSM

• BU Center for Antiracist Research
• BUSM Anti-Racism Resources
• Anti-Racism Books, Journals & Videos (available through the BUSM Alumni Library)
• BU D&I Events Archive (Kerberos Credentials required)

Books:

• How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum
• The Color of Law: Insight into how modern day segregation in America is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state, and federal levels.
• Between the World & Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement by Matthew Horace and Ron Harris
• Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea J. Ritchie
• The Condemnation of Blackness by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Suggestions to “do the work to become anti-racist“, tailored to scientists and physicians:

• • Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington.
  • Breathing Race Into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics by Lundy Braun.
  • Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century by Dorothy Roberts (see Ted Talk)
  • Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care by Dayna Bowen Matthew
  • The Desire to Heal: A Doctor’s Education in Empathy, Identity, and Poetry by Rafael Campo
  • The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
  • Finding Diverse Talent: Myths
  • The Science of Diversity and the Impact of Implicit Bias
  • NIH Workforce Toolkit
  • Working in Science Was a Brutal Education. That’s Why I left by Brandon Taylor
  • The Physician’s Role in Racial Equity by Jonas Attilus, MD, MPH
  • Brief online modules on racial justice in academic medicine by Equal Treatment: https://equalrx.org/
  • Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in Medicine and Science

 Additional Articles & Websites

• 8 Ways to Be More Inclusive in Your Zoom Teaching by Kelly A. Hogan and Viji Sathy
• Learning the ways of the force: Advice to minority students in STEM fields
• 7 Examples of What Being an Ally at Work Really Looks Like adapted from “Better Allies”
• Why You Need to Stop Saying “All Lives Matter” by Rachel Elizabeth Cargle
• Anti-racism resources for white people: 2020 resource list by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein
• Nonviolence as Compliance in Baltimore: 2015 Atlantic article by Ta-nehisi Coates
• Why Amy Cooper Knew Exactly What She Was Doing by Zeba Blay
• The 1619 Project in The New York Times
• 3 White Privilege Blind Spots in Boston That Are Keeping Us Racist by siblings Julie Devaney Hogan and Erik Devaney
• The Shooting of Daunte Wright and the Meaning of George Floyd’s Death The New Yorker
• Teaching Racial Justice isn’t Racial Justice The New York Times
• New Era of Public Safety: A Guide to Fair, Safe, and Effective Community Policing CivilRights.org

Additional Videos & Podcasts:

• • Faculty, students and staff are also encouraged to review GMS’s brief video on Microaggressions and their impacts
  • Visit Terrier e-Development to take the Managing Bias training online
  • Black Lives Matter activist shorts
  • Don’t Be a Bystander: 6 Tips for Responding to Racist Attacks
  • Understanding the Fundamentals of Allyship with Luca Maurer (Cornell University)
  • Allyship in the Scientific Enterprise: Performance or Progress?
  • NPR Throughline: History of Policing in America
  • The Ugly Earthling: Black Liberation is Feminism: Police Brutality and the Erasure of Black and Trans Women

Video and Documentary Suggestions:

• 13th (available on Netflix)
• Just Mercy (available on Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube)
• When They See Us (available on Netflix)
• The Hate U Give (available on YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu)
• Do The Right Thing (available on YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes)
• I Am Not Your Negro (available on YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes)
• Something the Lord Made (available on Hulu)
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (available on HBO, Amazon Prime Video)

Acknowledgements:

Farrah Belizaire | Former DEI Associate Director
Misty Farrell-Pennington & Marly Thomas | Founders & Co-Chairs of the Women of Color Circle for Boston University Women’s Guild
Lindsey Stein | Boston University Pulmonary Center