An anti-racist resource list II: things to watch, listen to, or follow

Visual resources to help you understand and fight racism

This guide is taken from the Know How Library, a tool on the Unifrog platform. Not sure whether to take the ACT or the SAT? Or how to give the perfect Oxbridge practice interview? The Know How Library is an easily searchable library of 100s of expert guides for both students and teachers, covering every aspect of the progression process. It is included as standard for Unifrog partner schools.

Black author and activist James Baldwin wrote, ‘not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced’. Start your anti-racist journey, or gain some new insights with this list of visual resources that centre on issues of racial justice.

Films / TV shows

Title	About
13th	Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation's prisons are disproportionately filled with African Americans. Available on Netflix.
I Am Not Your Negro	A BAFTA-winning documentary film directed by Raoul Peck. It explores the history of racism in the United States through Baldwin's reminiscences of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. Available to rent.
When They See Us	A dramatised account of the Central Park Five – how five young black boys came to be wrongfully arrested, convicted, and sentenced for the brutal attack on Trisha Meili in Central Park in 1989. Available on Netflix.
Generation Revolution	First-time directors Usayd Younis and Cassie Quarless’s documentary follows young activists of colour in Britain and goes behind the scenes of their protests in Brixton and the Westfield Shopping Centre in London. Available to rent.
Loving	‘Loving’ recounts the true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, who changed the world when they got married. As an interracial couple, they had to take their union all the way to the Supreme Court and change the law before they could legally love each other.
Selma	This historical drama focuses on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches. Despite violent opposition, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers pressed forward on an epic march, and their efforts culminated in President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
12 Years a Slave	Based on the 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup, the film follows Solomon, a man who is born free but is kidnapped and sold into slavery. It is a heartbreaking look at a true account of slavery in the 1800s.
Hidden Figures	This biopic follows the lives of three black mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Space Race in the 1960s, and their struggles to receive the same treatment as their white male colleagues, despite being invaluable to the project.

Documentaries

Title	About
LA 92	LA 92 is about the Los Angeles riots that occurred in response to the police beating of Rodney King. The film is entirely comprised of archival footage. It's chilling to watch the unrest of over 30 years ago, as people still take to the streets and shout, ‘No justice, no peace.’
Whose Streets?	The 2014 killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by US police was one of the deaths that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. Frustrated by media coverage of unrest in Ferguson, co-directors Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis documented how locals felt about police in riot gear filling their neighbourhoods with tear gas.
Time: The Kalief Browder Story	‘Time: The Kalief Browder Story’ revisits the case of Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old falsely arrested in 2010 for allegedly stealing a backpack. Browder spent the next three years on Rikers Island, 700 days of which were spent in solitary confinement. The documentary questions how the system could fail him, and so many like him, so badly.
Crime + Punishment	Stephen Maing’s documentary focuses on a landmark 2016 lawsuit, in which 12 whistleblowing officers of colour exposed the New York Police Department’s highly illegal system of pressurising officers into making arrests to meet a monthly quota. This often targeted black and immigrant communities deemed to be ‘high-crime’ areas.

TEDTalks

Title	About
The Urgency of Intersectionality	Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the term ‘intersectionality’ to describe the fact that if you're standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you're likely to get hit by them all. In this moving talk, she calls on us to bear witness to this reality and speak up for victims of prejudice.
How we can make racism a solvable problem – and improve policing	Dr Phillip Atiba Goff argues that when we define racism as behaviours instead of feelings, we can measure it and transform it from an impossible problem into a solvable one. In his talk, he shares his work at the Centre for Policing Equity, an organisation that helps police departments diagnose and track racial gaps in policing in order to eliminate them.
Racism has a cost for everyone	Racism makes our economy worse – and not just in ways that harm people of colour, says public policy expert Heather C. McGhee. McGhee shares insights into how racism fuels bad policymaking and drains our economic potential. ‘Our fates are linked,’ she says. ‘It costs us so much to remain divided.’
How racism makes us sick	David R. Williams developed a scale to measure the impact of discrimination on well-being, going beyond traditional measures like income and education to reveal how factors like implicit bias, residential segregation and negative stereotypes create and sustain inequality.
How to deconstruct racism, one headline at a time	Baratunde Thurston explores the phenomenon of white Americans calling the police on black Americans who have committed the crimes of…eating, walking, or generally ‘living while black’.

Podcasts

Title	About
1619 (New York Times)	A podcast series on how slavery has transformed America, connecting past and present through different people’s stories.
About Race	A multiracial, interracial conversation about why we find it so difficult to talk about culture, identity, politics, power, and privilege in ‘pre-post-yet-still-very-racial America’.
Code Switch (NPR)	A podcast from a multi-racial, multi-generational team of journalists fascinated by the overlapping themes of race, ethnicity, and culture and how they play out in our lives and communities.
Justice in America	Each episode covers a different issue with the criminal justice system. It explains how it works, and looks at its impact on people, particularly poor people and people of colour. By the end of each episode, you’ll have a better understanding of what causes mass incarceration and what can fix it.
Pod Save the People	In this podcast, American civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson gives people the information they need to be the most thoughtful activists and organisers, breaking down the steps that each of us can take to make a difference.
Seeing White	In this fourteen-part documentary series, the hosts take a deep dive into questions like where did the notion of ‘whiteness’ come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Episodes include ‘How Race was Made’ and ‘A Racial Cleansing in America’.
Throughline	Every week on ‘Throughline’, Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei ‘go back in time to understand the present’. To understand the history of systemic racism in America, listen to ‘American Police’, ‘Mass Incarceration’, and ‘Milliken v. Bradley’.

Instagram accounts to follow

Name	About
Janaya Khan	Janaya Khan is the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Canada and has become a leading voice in the global fight for social transformation, justice, and equality.
Nupol Kiazolu	Nupol plans to be US president in 2036 and change how we think about racism along the way.
Ziad Ahmed	Ziad is a student at Yale University and an American-Muslim student entrepreneur, activist, and speaker.
Well-Read Black Girl	An Instagram account that supports black girls, women, and non-binary writers.
History Cool Kids	An account that aims to teach students all the important history that you don’t get taught in schools.
Overheard While Black	Overheard While Black gives us a look into the daily microaggressions black people are subjected to by the ignorance of white people. With posts like ‘You probably only got here because of affirmative action’ and ‘You are pretty for a black girl’, it shows how racist comments have become normalised within society.
Check Your Privilege	This Instagram account is full of questions to ask yourself if you’re in a privileged position, resources to educate yourself further, and ways to be more actively anti-racist.
Everyday Racism	Founders Naomi and Natalie are authors of ‘The Mixed Race Experience’. On their Instagram page you can find posts explaining big concepts and highlighting current affairs concerning racial equality.
From Privilege to Progress	From Privilege to Progress was founded after the founders witnessed the arrest of two innocent black men. It has a mission to ‘desegregate the conversation about race’ and to further anti-racism education.