LibGuides: Becoming Anti-Racist: The Roots of Structural Racism

Confronting the Roots of Structural Racism and Bias

The following resources provide an introduction to the vast literature on the historical contexts that have shaped the structural racism of today.

What is racism?

Dismantlingracism.org: The definition of racism offered here is grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) a movement started in the 1970s by activists and scholars committed to the study and transformation of traditional relationships of race to racism and power. CRT was initially grounded in the law and has since expanded to other fields. CRT also has an activist dimension because it not only tries to understand our situation but to change it. The basic beliefs of CRT are:
- Racism is ordinary, the "normal" way that society does business, the "common, everyday" experience of most People of Color in this country.
- Racism serves the interests of both white people in power (the elites) materially and working class white people psychically, and therefore neither group has much incentive to fight it.
- Race and races are social and political constructs, categories that society invents and manipulates when convenient. In reality our differences as human beings are dwarfed by what we have in common and have little or nothing to do with personality, intelligence, and morality.
- Society chooses to ignore this and assigns characteristics to whole groups of people in order to advance the idea of race and the superiority of whiteness.
- The power elite racializes different groups at different times to achieve their economic agenda, continually and repeatedly prioritizing profit over people.

What is structural racism?

Dismantlingracism.org: Systemic or structural racism is how the racist and discriminatory practices of institutions intersect to create a network of opportunity for people in the white group while blocking opportunity and access for People and Communities of Color.

Selected Books

After Appomattox by Gregory P. Downs
Call Number: Ebook. Click title to read
ISBN: 9780674426146
Publication Date: 2015
The Civil War did not end with Confederate capitulation in 1865. A second phase commenced which lasted until 1871--not Reconstruction but genuine belligerency whose mission was to crush slavery and create civil and political rights for freed people. But as Gregory Downs shows, military occupation posed its own dilemmas, including near-anarchy.
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
Call Number: E185.61 .R8185 2017
ISBN: 9781631492853
Publication Date: 2017
In this history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation--the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments--that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E. Baptist
Call Number: Ebook. Click title to read
ISBN: 9780465044702
Publication Date: 2014
Historian Baptist provides a powerfully written survey of the economic powerhouse combination of slavery and cotton and their centrality to the rapid growth of the US economy from the Revolution to the Civil War. Slavery had a pervasive influence in shaping society, culture, politics, finance, and international trade as the number of enslaved people and their productivity continued to increase. Drawing upon archival research, slave narratives, and newspaper accounts, Baptist's vignettes vividly portray enslaved peoples' lives, work, and culture.
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
Call Number: E185.61 .K358 2016
ISBN: 9781568584638
Publication Date: 2016
The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis.

Primary Sources

Archival Collections

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African American Communities
Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this resource presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.
August Wilson Archive
The University Library System (ULS) at the University of Pittsburgh has acquired the archive of the late playwright and Pittsburgh native son August Wilson, best known for his unprecedented American Century Cycle —ten plays that convey the Black experience in each decade of the 20th century. All ten of the plays have had Broadway productions and two earned Wilson the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress
The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress presents the papers of the nineteenth-century African American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher. The online collection, containing approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), spans the years 1841-1964, with the bulk of the material dating from 1862 to 1865. Many of Douglass’s earlier writings were destroyed when his house in Rochester, New York, burned in 1872.
The King Papers Project (Stanford University)
Initiated by The King Center in Atlanta, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project is one of only a few large-scale research ventures focusing on an African American. In 1985, King Center's founder and president Coretta Scott King invited Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson to become the Project's director.
Race Relations in America
Based at Fisk University from 1943-1970, the Race Relations Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict.
Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Harriet Ross to slave parents in 1820. She married around 1844 and changed her name to Harriet Tubman. In 1849, she escaped from her owners, was captured but quickly escaped again, making it to Philadelphia where she found work. She went on to become a leading abolitionist.
Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice
Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice.
Teenie Harris Archive at the Carnegie Museum of Art
Charles "Teenie" Harris (1908–98) was a photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier. His photographs—60,000 of which are available on the Carnegie Museum of Art's website—chronicle African American life in Pittsburgh in the mid-twentieth century.
Twelve Years a Slave
Fugitive slave laws allowed African Americans who could not prove their free status to be taken into slavery. Solomon Northup’s story brought this issue to a wider audience when it was released as a book in 1853, and is the basis for the Oscar Award nominated film. The book contains the original illustrations and the appendix of sworn statements that helped free Mr. Northup.