Documenting racism in the United States

PSA:
In the wake of the extrajudicial execution of Michael Brown, Jr at the hands of former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, blogger and biology professor PZ Myers set up the thread Good morning, America to discuss matters of race across the United States. The thread runs two pages and is a great resource for anyone wanting to read about racism in the US. Among the many functions of the thread:

• documenting cases of police brutality
• documenting examples of racism in the civilian population
• documenting examples of racism in popular culture
• amplifying the voices of People of Color, whether writers, bloggers, activists, politicians
• linking to scholarly articles on the subject of race

Those are just off the top of my head. The thread is chock full of links, so it may take time to load for some people. It is very, very information dense. As a result of a function of WordPress, threads automatically close down after 3 months. When that thread closed, PZ set up the Later this morning in America thread. When that was closed, he set up the Reagans morning in America has acquired a different resonance thread, and when that one shut down recently, he started up the Look at all the white people thread.

I recommend all of these threads for anyone looking to expand their knowledge of racism and the myriad ways it manifests and influences people in the United States. There is no particular reading order for the comments in the various threads, so anyone can dive in, click a link and learn (although many times all the information at the link has been copied to the thread).

In addition, while the threads focus to a large degree on the racism faced by African-Americans, they are not limited to such. There are links to various articles, blog posts, news sites, books, and social media posts regarding racism affecting other People of Color (such as people of Hispanic, Indian, and Asian descent).

While the threads are focused on collecting information, there are occasional discussions between posters, so please don’t think you can’t chime in with your thoughts or opinions.

Lastly, while there have been a handful of commenters who have regularly contributed to those threads, anyone can swing by and drop off links to whatever material they feel is suitable. And don’t worry about overlapping with someone else’s posts. It happens (though not as often as one might think).

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Documenting racism in the United States
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