Teacha! Magazine - Term 3 2020 - Safe Schools Edition

Page 21

An Anti-Racism Reading List When we see injustice, it's up to us to step in and make a difference. As Angela Davis said: it's not enough to not be racist, we need to be actively anti-racist. How to Argue With a Racist Rutherford, Adam Race is real because we perceive it. Racism is real because we enact it. But the appeal to science to strengthen racist ideologies is on the rise - and increasingly part of the public discourse on politics, migration, education, sport and intelligence. Stereotypes and myths about race are expressed not just by overt racists, but also by well-intentioned people whose experience and cultural baggage steer them towards views that are not supported by the modern study of human genetics. Even some scientists are uncomfortable expressing opinions deriving from their research where it relates to race. Yet, if understood correctly, science and history can be powerful allies against racism, granting the clearest view of how people actually are, rather than how we judge them to be.

The Bluest Eye Morrison, Toni Unlovely and unloved, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling, The Bluest Eye shows how the past savagely defines the present. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterised her writing.

This is an extract from the Anti-Racist Reading List originally published on Snapplify.

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