Videos: Anti-Racist Words of the Week
Building an Anti-Racist Vocabulary is a weekly lecture series presenting preeminent scholars, thought leaders, and public intellectuals to guide our community through topics necessary to an understanding of systemic racism and racial justice. Below is a selection of recordings from the series. Our speakers share an unambiguous commitment and offer a variety of areas of expertise. They do not all share a uniform view of history, of the present moment, or of the way forward.
The goal for these talks is to provide an entry point into the complex set of challenges we face, and help provide intellectual and moral building blocks to begin the transformative work of anti-racism in our communities.
September 15, 2023
"Criminal Justice Disparities"
Felix Owusu
University of California Berkeley
Anti-Racist Musts: Felix Owusu
Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court, Michael Clair
No More Police: A Case for Abolition, Mariame Caba and Andrea Ritchie
September 8, 2023
"Slavery and the American Catholic Church"
Rachel Swarns
New York Times
Watch the video here with Notre Dame ID
Watch the video here with a Notre Dame alumni login
Anti-Racist Musts: Rachel Swarns
Many Thousands Gone, Ira Berlin
The Good Lord Bird, James McBride
Devil in the Grove, Gilbert King
September 1, 2023
"Catholic Institutions and Race"
Vincent Rougeau
College of Holy Cross
Anti-Racist Musts: Vincent Rougeau
Rachel Swarns, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church
Paul Harding, This Other Eden
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
December 2, 2022
"Haiti's Double Debt"
Catherine Porter
The New York Times
Anti-Racist Musts: Catherine Porter
Laurent DuBois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
Trevor Burnard, The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint-Domingue and British Jamaica
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
November 18, 2022
"Canadian Truth and Reconciliation"
Kaila Johnston
National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation
Anti-Racist Musts: Kaila Johnston
Podcast: Kuper Island
Podcast: The Story of a National Crime
Film: We Were Children (2012), directed by Tim Wolochatiuk
Film: After the Apology (2017), directed by Larissa Behrendt
November 4, 2022
"Birth Equity"
Inas Mahdi
National Birth Equity Collaborative
Anti-Racist Musts: Inas Mahdi
Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger, Reproductive Justice: An Introduction
Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty
Dána-Ain Davis, Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth
October 28, 2022
"Voting Rights"
Rick Hasen
University of California Irvine
Anti-Racist Musts: Rick Hasen
Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America
Dahlia Lithwick, Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America
Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
October 14, 2022
"The CROWN Act"
Wendy Greene
Drexel University
Anti-Racist Musts: Wendy Greene
Paulette M. Caldwell, “A Hair Piece: Perspectives on the Intersection of Race and Gender,” Duke Law Review
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, “Another Hair Piece: Exploring New Strands of Analysis Under Title VII,” Georgetown Law Journal
D. Wendy Greene, “What’s Hair and Other Race-Cased Characteristics Got to Do With It?,” University of Colorado Law Review
October 7, 2022
"Greening the Church"
Rev. Ambrose Carroll
Greening the Church
Anti-Racist Musts: Rev. Ambrose Carroll
Raphael G. Warnock, The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law
Robert Bullard (ed.), The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution
September 30, 2022
"Leading Change Around DEI"
Alvin Tillery
Northwestern University
Anti-Racist Musts: Alvin Tillery
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
September 16, 2022
"University Research on Racism"
Kirt von Daacke
University of Virginia
Anti-Racist Musts: Kirt von Daacke
Craig Wilder, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities
Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
Kirt von Daacke, ed., After Emancipation: A History of Race, Community, and the University of Virginia (expected 2023)
September 9, 2022
"Systemic Racism and Christian Theology"
Esau McCaulley
Wheaton College
Anti-Racist Musts: Esau McCaulley
David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
J. Deotis Roberts, Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology
Lisa M. Bowens, African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance, and Transformation
C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Church in the African American Experience
Listen to a Black pastor’s sermons for one year (for example, Dr. Charlie Dates, Progressive Baptist Church, Chicago)
September 2, 2022
"The White Power Movement"
Kathleen Belew
Northwestern University
Watch the video here with Notre Dame ID
Watch the video here with a Notre Dame alumni login
Anti-Racist Musts: Kathleen Belew
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
Elizabeth Hinton, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s
Podcast: Armchair Expert (search for episodes on race)
January 21, 2022
"Catholic Allyship"
Fr. Daniel P. Horan
Saint Mary's College
Anti-Racist Musts: Daniel Horan
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
George Yancy, Look, a White! Philosophical Essays on Whiteness
Regina Shands Stoltzfus and Tobin Miller Shearer, Been in the Struggle
December 3, 2021
"Educational Inequality"
Anna Haskins
University of Notre Dame
Anti-Racist Musts: Anna Haskins
Reuben Jonathan Miller, Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
Website: PrisonPolicy.org
November 19, 2021
"The Military and Civil Rights"
Rawn James, Jr.
Anti-Racist Musts: Rawn James, Jr.
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
Film: Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee
November 12, 2021
"Mothers of the Civil Rights Movement"
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Anti-Racist Musts: Anna Malaika Tubbs
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, Mai’a Williams, Loretta J. Ross, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines
Dani McClain, We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood
October 29, 2021
"Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World"
Claire Jean Kim
University of California Irvine
Anti-Racist Musts: Claire Jean Kim
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America
Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents
October 15, 2021
"Workplace Diversity"
Frank Dobbin
Harvard University
Anti-Racist Musts: Frank Dobbin
Adia Harvey Wingfield, Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy
Ellen Berrey, Robert L. Nelson, and Laura Beth Nielsen, Rights on Trial: How Workplace Discrimination Law Perpetuates Inequality
Lauren B. Edelman, Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights
October 8, 2021
"Athletic Protests"
Howard Bryant
ESPN
Anti-Racist Musts: Howard Bryant
Howard Bryant, The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law
Documentary (HBO): Exterminate All the Brutes
October 1, 2021
"Courageous Christianity"
Jemar Tisby
The Witness: A Black Christian Collective and author of Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice.
Anti-Racist Musts: Jemar Tisby
Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer
Podcast: Pass the Mic (Leave Loud series)
Visit the Delta region
September 24, 2021
"School Choice"
Courtney Martin
Author of "Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter’s School"
Anti-Racist Musts: Courtney Martin
Rucker C. Johnson, Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works
Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy
Podcast (National Public Radio): The Promise
September 17, 2021
"Anti-Immigrant Lawmaking"
Robin Jacobson
University of Puget Sound
Anti-Racist Musts: Robin Jacobson
Natalia Molina, How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts
Jessica Autumn Brown, "Running on Fear: Immigration, Race and Crime Framings in Contemporary GOP Presidential Debate Discourse" (Critical Criminology)
PBS Series: College Behind Bars
September 10, 2021
"Identity Capitalists"
Nancy Leong
University of Denver
Anti-Racist Musts: Nancy Leong
Justin Driver: "Recognizing Race" (Columbia Law Review)
Osamudia James, "White Like Me: The Negative Impact of the Diversity Rationale on White Identity Formation" (New York University Law Review)
Podcast: Serial (New York Times)
May 7, 2021
"Student Activism and Racial Justice"
Matthew Aubourg, Miranda Cuozzo, Frankie Tran, Mikki Vaughn, Malik Zaire
Anti-Racist Musts from our panel:
Americanah, Chimanda Ngozi Adichie
Beloved, Toni Morrison
When They See Us, Netflix Series
Power vs. Force, David R. Hawkins
The Refugees, Viet Than Nguyen
April 30, 2021
"Beyond Policing"
DeRay Mckesson
Civil rights activist
Watch the video here with a Notre Dame login
Watch the video here with a Notre Dame alumni login
Anti-Racist Musts: DeRay Mckesson
Podcast (Lemonada Media): The Untold Story: Police (with Jay Ellis)
Podcast (Topic Podcasts): Running from Cops
So you want to talk about race, Ijeoma Oluo
April 23, 2021
"Citizenship and Suffrage"
Christina Wolbrecht
University of Notre Dame
Anti-Racist Musts: Christina Wolbrecht
The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Alexander Keyssar
Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement, Cathleen D. Cahill
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, bell hooks
April 16, 2021
"Politics of Racial Resentment"
Jonathan Metzl
Vanderbilt University
(This video is unavailable)
Anti-Racist Musts: Jonathan Metzl
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, Heather McGhee
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson
Black Reconstruction in America, W.E.B. Du Bois
April 9, 2021
"Charlottesville"
Amy Spitalnick, Integrity First for America
Jessica Phillips, Paul, Weiss
Michael Bloch, Kaplan Heckler & Fink LLP
Anti-Racist Musts
The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi
"Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism," Eric. K. Ward
March 26, 2021
"Misuse of Civil Rights History"
Jeanne Theoharis
Brooklyn College
Anti-Racist Musts: Jeanne Theoharis
Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation, Matthew F. Delmont
Documentary: The First Rainbow Coalition (PBS)
The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee, Patrick D. Jones
Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn, Brian Purnell
Investigate your local civil rights history.
March 19, 2021
"Identity"
Sunny Hostin
ABC News
Watch the video here with a Notre Dame login
Watch the video here with a Notre Dame alumni login
Anti-Racist Musts: Sunny Hostin
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson
Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do, Claude M. Steele
White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, Beverly Daniel Tatum
March 12, 2021
"Implicit Bias"
Dolly Chugh
New York University
Watch the video here with a Notre Dame login
Watch the video here with a Notre Dame alumni login
Anti-Racist Musts: Dolly Chugh
The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
The 1619 Project, New York Times
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, Jennifer Eberhardt
March 5, 2021
"Christianity and White Supremacy"
Damon Berry
St. Lawrence University
Anti-Racist Musts: Damon Berry
Reforging the White Republic, Edward J. Blum
Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930, Kelly J. Baker
White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, Robert P. Jones
February 26, 2021
"The Black Lives Matter Syllabus"
Frank Leon Roberts
New York University
Anti-Racist Musts: Frank Leon Roberts
Are Prisons Obsolete?, Angela Davis
"Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics", Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
"White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack", Peggy McIntosh
February 19, 2021
"Ferguson"
Wesley Lowery
CBS News
Anti-Racist Musts: Wesley Lowery
The Children, David Halberstam
400 Souls: A Community History of African America 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
February 12, 2021
"Racism and the Catholic Church"
Fr. Bryan Massingale
Fordham University
Anti-Racist Musts: Fr. Bryan Massingale
Bryan N. Massingale, "The assumptions of white privilege and what we can do about it", National Catholic Reporter, June 1, 2020
The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck
Desegregating Dixie: The Catholic Church in the South and Desegregation, 1945-1992, Mark Newman
November 6, 2020
"COVID Racial Data Tracking"
Rachel Lee
Boston University Center for Antiracist Research
Watch the video here (requires Notre Dame login)
Watch the video here (requires Notre Dame Alumni login)
Anti-Racist Musts: Rachel Lee
Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi
Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylo
White Evolution: The Constant Struggle for Racial Consciousness, Christopher S. Collins
The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, Ellen D. Wu
Asian Americans, PBS documentary series
13th, Netflix documentary
The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church's Complicity in Racism, Jemar Tisby
Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times, Soong-Chan Rah
October 30, 2020
"Voting Rights"
The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
82nd Attorney General of the United States (2009-2015) and Partner, Covington & Burling LLP
Anti-Racist Musts: The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Slavery by Another Name, Douglas A. Blackmon
The Second Founding, Eric Foner
October 23, 2020
"Health Inequity"
Dr. Rhea Boyd
Director of Strategy and Equity, California Children's Trust
Anti-Racist Musts: Dr. Rhea Boyd
"Schools: To Open or Not to Open? That Is Not the Question.", article in The Nation by Dr. Rhea Boyd
Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, Monique W. Morris
Killing the Black Body, Dorothy E. Roberts
October 9, 2020
"Housing Segregation"
Richard Rothstein
Economic Policy Institute
Sign up to receive information on the housing segregation project
Anti-Racist Musts: Richard Rothstein
Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America, Conor Dougherty
Sundown Towns, James Loewen
Caste, Isabel Wilkerson
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
October 2, 2020
"Monuments"
Erika Doss
University of Notre Dame
Anti-Racist Musts: Erika Doss
In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History, Mitch Landrieu
“Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy”, Southern Poverty Law Center
Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America, Erika Doss
Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory, Owen J. Dwyer & Derek K. Alderman
What Can and Can’t Be Said: Race, Uplift, and Monument Building in the Contemporary South, Dell Upton
Confederate Exceptionalism: Civil War Myth and Memory in the 21st Century, Nicole Maurantonio
September 18, 2020
"Racial Wealth Gap"
Mehrsa Baradaran
University of California Irvine and Author, The Color of Money
Anti-Racist Musts: Mehrsa Baradaran
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
The Soul of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois
Beloved, Toni Morrison
September 11, 2020
"Islamophobia"
Dalia Mogahed
Director of Research, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding
Anti-Racist Musts: Dalia Mogahed
"Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think", John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed
"Islamophobia is Made Up" , Dalia Mogahed
"Countering the Islamophobia Industry", The Carter Center
TED Interview with Dalia Mogahed on Islam in the World Today
TED Talk: What It's Like to Be Muslim in America
September 4, 2020
"Tulsa"
James Goodwin
The Oklahoma Eagle
Anti-Racist Musts: James Goodwin
Death in a Promised Land, Scott Ellsworth
Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage, Darnella Davis
Black Wall Street, Hannibal Johnson
The Burning, Tim Madigan
Tulsa 1921: Reporting a Massacre, Randy Krehbiel
August 21, 2020
"Anti-Racism as a Moral Imperative"
Archbishop Wilton Gregory
Archdiocese of Washington
Anti-Racist Musts: Archbishop Wilton Gregory
The History of Black Catholics in the United States, Cyprian Davis
The US Catholic Historian, Vol. 5, 1986 “The Black Catholic Experience” and Vol. 7, 1988 “The Black Catholic Community”
Film: Amistad, directed by Steven Spielberg
Sr. Thea Bowman, Speech to US Catholic Bishops, 1989