Racial Justice in Education Resources

Resources and Tools

• Racial Justice - NEA EdJustice: Our education system while intended to uphold equal opportunity, often also entrenches disparities by its sheer design. In July 2015, the NEA passed a resolution to challenge ourselves — 3 million of our nation’s educators — to discuss and fight institutional racism in our schools. We are engaging our members to dialogue and look through a clearer lens when examining policy and practice in our school systems and our communities.
• Racial Justice Resources: Justice for Black Lives - NEA EdJustice: Recent events in our nation have once again put a spotlight on a long legacy of racism, violence and white supremacy in our communities. As COVID-19 continues to ravage communities of color, the recent murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Aubrey, and Breonna Taylor have highlighted an inherently broken system and illustrated how deep injustice runs through our health, income, housing, education and policing systems.
• Moving the Race Conversation Forward - Race Forward: "Moving the Race Conversation Forward" is a report by Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation that aims to reshape and reform the way we talk about race and racism in our country.
• Learning for Justice - Southern Poverty Law Center: Lesson plans on a wide variety of social justice issues specifically focused on tolerance.
• Resources for Talking About Race, Racism and Racialized Violence with Kids - Center for Racial Justice in Education
• Structural Racialization - Kirwin Institute: Racial inequity can persist without racist intent The word “racism” is commonly understood to refer to instances in which one individual intentionally or unintentionally targets others for negative treatment because of their skin color or other group-based physical characteristics. Research conducted by the Kirwan Institute.
• Facing History and Ourselves - FHAO works with teachers, students, and communities everywhere, through online professional development, international events, and our free library of classroom resources. The history of race in America encompasses questions of freedom, justice, equality, and citizenship.
• A History of Racial Injustice - Equal Justice Initiative: This interactive timeline from 1610 to 2010 includes photos, videos and descriptions of various historical events related to racism and the struggle for racial justice.
• Racial Equity Tools - This website has hundreds of resources on race, including fundamentals, planning, action, evaluation, and curricula. 
• Dismantling Racism Works - dRworks offers support for organizations doing movement building work in order to sharpen their anti-racist approach.

Books and Articles

• Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coats
• The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander
• Brown is the New White - Steve Phillips
• Just Mercy - Bryan Stevenson
• Waking Up White - Debby Irving
• The Color of Law - Richard Rothstein

• "The Case for Repartions" - Ta-Nehisi Coates: Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
• "From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government -Sponsored Segregation": In Baltimore in 1910, a black Yale law school graduate purchased a home in a previously all-white neighborhood. The Baltimore city government reacted by adopting a residential segregation ordinance, restricting African Americans to designated blocks. Explaining the policy, Baltimore’s mayor proclaimed, “Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidence of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the White majority.”
• "Race May Be a Social Construct, But Racism is Very Real" - Zora Ray, For Harriet: Blog.

Videos

• Systemic Racism Explained:

• Marley Dias Talks Institutional Racism:

• Visually Speaking Series - NEA: Visually Speaking is a photo/video social justice project that invites educators and students to talk about the issues that affect them most.

Partner Organizations

• Color of Change - Color of Change designs campaigns powerful enough to end practices that unfairly hold Black people back, and champion solutions that move us all forward.
• Ella Baker Center for Human Rights - Ella Baker Center for Human Rights builds the power of black, brown, and poor people to break the cycles of incarceration and poverty and make our communities safe, healthy, and strong.
• Equal Justice Initiative - EJI is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society
• Kirwin Institute - Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity works to deepen understanding of the causes of and solutions to racial and ethnic disparities worldwide and to bring about a society that is fair and just for all people.
• Race Forward - Founded in 1981, Race Forward brings systemic analysis and an innovative approach to complex race issues to help people take effective action toward racial equity. Race Forward is home to the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE), a national network of local government working to achieve racial equity and advance opportunities for all. Race Forward publishes the daily news site Colorlines and presents Facing Race, the country’s largest multiracial conference on racial justice.
• Re-Center - Founded in 1992, RE·Center Race & Equity in Education uses its core strengths to eliminate the root causes of racism and oppression in K-12 education.
• Southern Poverty Law Center - The SPLC monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies, the media and the public.
• Western States Center - Western States Center works nationwide to strengthen inclusive democracy so all people can live, love, worship and work free from fear.