anti-racism resources

 

Living Hyphen strives to work in solidarity across racial lines to dismantle white supremacy and towards our shared liberation.

Please see our complete solidarity statement and other resources here.

In the words of the Anti-Oppression Network, being an ally is “not an identity—it is a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency, and accountability with marginalized individuals and/or groups of people. Allyship is not self-defined—our work and our efforts must be recognized by the people we seek to ally ourselves with.”

We hope to make this page a living resource, an ongoing work-in-progress that we create together and in community.

If you have any resources or tips to add, please drop us a line at hello@livinghyphen.ca. We appreciate your labour in doing so and your commitment to this struggle for liberation.

 

understand what allyship, solidarity, AND ANTI-OPPRESSION means

First and foremost, what is power and oppression? What does it even mean to be an ally? Having this base knowledge is crucial in understanding how we can best support Indigenous peoples, as well as other marginalized and oppressed communities. These may be terms that you are not yet familiar yet, but we’re here to learn together!

  1. Learn more from the Anti-Oppression Network - a coalition of individuals, grassroots groups, and community organizations dedicated to grounding our work towards liberation in the principles of decolonization, anti-oppression and intersectionality. This resource is a great jumping point to understanding basic terminology in social justice movements.

  2. Read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

  3. Read Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider.

  4. Follow these Instagram accounts to start: @theconsciouskid, @rachel.cargle, @ohhappydani.

 

Learn ABOUT ANTI-RACISM, white supremacy, and racial justice

“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward.” –Ijeoma Oluo

  1. Listen to podcasts that address racial inequality including Code Switch, Pod Save the People, Intersectionality Matters, The Diversity Gap, and 1619.

  2. ​Read This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work by Tiffany Jewell.

  3. Read ​How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.

  4. Learn about the model minority myth and how it is a tool to divide minority groups by reading this and this.

  5. Read White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.

  6. Read Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge.

  7. Read The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race by Jesmyn Ward.

  8. Read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

  9. Read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.

  10. Read The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin.

  11. Read Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong.

  12. Looking for titles that tackle Black experiences in Canada specifically? Start with these: The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole, Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present by Robyn Maynard, BlackLife Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom by Rinaldo Walcott & Idil Abdillahi, and Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada by Rodney Diverlus, Sandy Hudson, Syrus Marcus Ware.

  13. Listen to Colour Code: A podcast about race in Canada by the Globe & Mail.

  14. Learn from Future Ancestors – a Black and Indigenous-owned, youth-led professional services social enterprise that advances climate justice and equity with a lens of ancestral accountability.

 

Read, Watch, and Listen to DIVERSE Voices

Diversify your reading list, Instagram feed, music playlists, and TV picks to include the voices of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour. Sometimes it isn’t so much about turning up the volume on marginalized voices, but simply switching the channel to the ones that actually put them centre stage.

  1. Take the FOLD’s Reading Challenge that encourages booklovers to thoughtfully consider their reading lists and ask one important question: Who’s missing?

  2. Listen to Rachel Cargyle’s Revolution Playlist.

  3. Check out these films, TV shows, books, and articles around racial justice compiled by South Asians 4 Black Lives.

  4. Listen to the Secret Life of Canada podcast!

  5. Diversify your social media feeds by following activists across different intersections of identity and different people outside of your usual bubble, in general. Just as we talk about the need for representation from Black, Indigenous, People of Colour in movies, television, books, etc. so too should we reflect that in who we follow in the digital spaces we spend so much of our time.

 

advocate for CHANGES IN POLICING AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

The criminal justice system and the police disproportionately target, arrest, convict, imprison, kill, and execute Black, Indigenous, and brown people. It will take deliberate action by policymakers at every level of government to end these injustices. We must learn about the problem and demand action from our local representatives to make the necessary changes to reflect exactly what the system claims to achieve – justice.

  1. Watch Ava Duvernay’s 13th, a documentary that 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.

  2. Read Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, a call to fix the broken system of justice in the US.

  3. Understand the merits of building a police-free future to create safer communities.

  4. Read The Pandemic is the Right Time to Defund the Police by Melissa Gira Grant about how activists have successfully defunded police campaigns in various cities and the positive outcomes of doing so.

  5. Read The answer to police violence is not ‘reform’. It’s defunding. Here’s why by Alex S Vitale.

  6. Write to or call your local representative and advocate for a reallocation of funding and demand change.

 

continue HAVING HONEST AND HARD CONVERSATIONS WITH YOUR LOVED ONES

At Living Hyphen, we believe that real change starts at home and that means having hard, but necessary conversations with those around us, especially our loved ones. As a community of diasporas from around the world, we know that these conversations require unique prompts and nuance depending on each of our peoples’ historical contexts and language.

  1. Find these very helpful tips for talking to the people in your life about anti-blackness from South Asians for Black Lives.

  2. Check out Letters for Black Lives, an open letter project against anti-Blackness that has translations to help us have these conversations across many different languages.

 

PRACTICE ALLYSHIP ON AN ONGOING BASIS

Allyship is a verb, a practice, a never-ending action. We must continue the work of anti-racism on an ongoing basis and especially when it is inconvenient and most difficult to do so.

  1. Watch Rachel Cargyle’s Public Address on Revolution using her three-pronged approach of Knowledge, Empathy, and Action.

  2. Watch this video on 5 Tips for Being An Ally by @chescaleigh.

  3. Follow these 5 ways we can be better allies in social justice movements from @the.drtherapinay.

  4. Learn how to be an ally to the Black community through these helpful suggestions from Gelaine Santiago.

  5. Take these 5 ways to take action from @theconsciouskid on an ongoing basis.

HAVE MORE TO CONTRIBUTE?

We hope to make this page a living resource, an ongoing work-in-progress that we create together and in community. If you have any resources or tips to add, please drop us a line at hello@livinghyphen.ca. We appreciate your labour in doing so and your commitment to this struggle for liberation of all peoples.