January 15, 2021
Dear students, faculty, and staff,
Monday, January 18, marks the annual national commemoration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the struggle for racial justice to which he devoted his life. Since we last celebrated his life and legacy one year ago, we have been reminded painfully and regularly that the struggle for racial justice in the United States began long before his birth and will continue long into our future.
This year Dr. King’s birthday falls between last week’s failed insurrection at the Capitol—at which white supremacists proudly paraded the Confederate battle flag through the Capitol Rotunda—and the imminent threat in the coming week of racially motivated lawlessness and violence across the nation.
Perhaps to counter the hate and vitriol now at a fever pitch in the United States, we can use this weekend to reflect on and recommit to the short and long-term pursuit of the racially just nation that Dr. King envisioned. I am not asking anyone to be less distressed, demoralized, angry, or frightened by recent events. I simply invite us to consider that we might simultaneously react to hatred and act to counter it.
I invite you to consider and commit to specific actions, even modest ones, that you can take this weekend and in the coming month to strengthen our community’s work toward racial justice. Possible actions include the following:
- Commit to attending one or more of the public events sponsored by Reed in the coming month to deepen your knowledge of the myriad perspectives on race as a driving force in American life, past, present, and future.
- Continue to educate yourself on the nature of individual and systemic racism and the forces that perpetuate them; below are text and video references you may find useful.
- Recommit to resolutions you made in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death as an individual, as a member of the Reed community, or both. What is the very next step you must take to reinvigorate and realize that resolve?
To our BIPoC community members, I hope that you can pause this weekend to give and receive comfort from family, friends, and the communities, both physical and spiritual, that renew and sustain you, even as the whole world bears witness to the latest conflagration of the long-simmering embers of racial oppression in the United States.
Finally, to our entire community, I invite you to extend kindness and grace to others throughout our community as best as you are able in this difficult and fraught moment.
Sincerely,
Mary James
Dean for Institutional Diversity
A.A. Knowlton Professor of Physics
Events
Monday, January 18, 7 p.m.
MLK Day Keynote Address: "Trajectories for Liberation of Black People,” by Tongo Eisen-Martin
Sponsored by the Multicultural Resource Center
Saturday, January 23, 10 a.m.–3:30 p.m.
Racial Justice Teach-In: “From Resilience to Black Liberation: Uprooting Systems of Inequity”
Sponsored by Campus Compact (Lewis & Clark, MHCC, PCC, Portland State, Reed College, University of Portland)
Thursday, February 18, 5:15 p.m.
Lecture: “Architectures of the Flesh,” by Zakiyyah Jackson, author of Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World
Sponsored by the Division of Literature and Languages
Friday, February 19, 4 p.m.
Lecture: “On Beethoven, Blackness, and Belonging: Listening to German Music in the Black Atlantic,” by Kira Thurman
Sponsored by the German and Music departments and the American Studies and Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies programs
Resources
Books
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
- White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
- Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life by David Billings
- Racism Without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
- Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum
- White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
- Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt
- American Lynching by Ashraf H.A. Rushdy
- Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression by Joe Feagin
- Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins
- How to Be an Anti-racist by Ibram X. Kendi
- Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
- They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery
- When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele
- Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, From Ferguson to Flint and Beyond by Marc Lamont Hill
- The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics by George Lipsitz
- Habits of Whiteness: A Pragmatist Reconstruction by Terrance MacMullan
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo
- Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts
- Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
Videos
- We need to talk about injustice by Bryan Stevenson
- The urgency of intersectionality by Kimberlé Crenshaw
- Ibram X. Kendi on how to be an anti-racist at UC Berkeley
- White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
- Peanut Butter and Jelly Racism by the New York Times
- TEDxRainer: let's get to the root of racial injustice by Megan Ming Francis