Anti-Black Racism Resources
Video Resources
Recommended Reading

The Hanging of Angélique
Writer, historian and poet Afua Cooper tells the astonishing story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a slave woman convicted of starting a fire that destroyed a large part of Montréal in April 1734 and condemned to die a brutal death. In a powerful retelling of Angélique's story — now supported by...

Sister Outsider
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of...

THICK: and Other Essays
In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom—award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed—is unapologetically “thick”: deemed “thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less,” McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away...

The Body is Not an Apology
Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies. The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to...
Articles and Action
Dismantling White Supremacy in Nonprofits: a starting point
By Jarell Skinner-Roy
The nonprofit sector is a special place, where passionate professionals are all-too-often overworked and underpaid at an organization that is likely under-resourced. While I’m hopeful that progress will continue towards improving this, these tough current realities cannot be an excuse for us to both ignore the prevalence of white supremacy in the nonprofit sector and refuse to put in the personal and organizational work necessary for its dismantling.
Even when the majority of us nonprofit professionals have big hearts, white supremacy is a well-oiled machine with a pernicious nature, fuelled by ignorance and undisturbed by good intentions.
The Bias of ‘Professionalism’ Standards
By Aysa Gray
Professionalism has become coded language for white favouritism in workplace practices that more often than not privilege the values of white and Western employees and leave behind racialized people.
In the workplace, white supremacy culture explicitly and implicitly privileges whiteness and discriminates against non-Western and non-white professionalism standards related to dress code, speech, work style, and timeliness.
We are taught to identify white supremacy with violent segregationist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and their modern-day equivalents. Okun and Jones, however, introduce a different approach to thinking about white supremacy. In their definition, the term describes a series of characteristics that institutionalize whiteness and Westernness as both normal and superior to other ethnic, racial, and regional identities and customs. While people often don’t view this theorization of white supremacy as violent, it can lead to systemic discrimination and physical violence.
Black Canadians and HIV: How will it end?
“Racism is not a mere inconvenience, so we must insist that the plans and strategies to end HIV transmission address (rather than reproduce) the systemic conditions that fundamentally disadvantage us as Black Canadians. Otherwise, the “end” of HIV transmission may be a disaster for Black people – resources that are currently available to address HIV will have been shifted elsewhere while Black people continue to shoulder the epidemic.”
11 Anti-Racist Actions You Can Take at Work—Today and Every Day
“You might be wondering how you can be a better ally to Black and brown people in an environment where you spend a whole lot of time: work. Here are 11 practical actions you can take.”
What is Racism?
“Racism is different from racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination. Racism involves one group having the power to carry out systematic discrimination through the institutional policies and practices of the society and by shaping the cultural beliefs and values that support those racist policies and practices.”
Dear Karen. How I stumbled into anti-Black institutional racism at Futurpreneur and why I can’t be silent
“An open letter to those Canadians in the entrepreneurial community who seek to be the change we want to see…and those who believe they are accountable but not racist. We are all racist. We need to start recognizing what progressive, polite racism looks like and be truly accountable.”
Three Signs your HIV/AIDS organization has a Racism Problem
Tokenism is simply a form of covert racism. Racism requires white people to maintain their power by exercising social, economic, and/or political muscle against people of color (POC). Tokenism achieves the same while giving those in power the appearance of being anti-racist and even champions of diversity because they recruit and use POC as racialized props.
Practical Ideas for Improving Equity and Inclusion at Nonprofits
“The journey toward greater diversity, equity, and inclusion has no fixed endpoint, but here are a few places to start. Acknowledging intersectionality—the reality that we live within a system of overlapping and interdependent privileges and disadvantages—is a first step toward truly addressing DEI. But how can we make acknowledging intersectionality a practice, and not just a conversation? We can start by making relatively simple changes that center our work at the intersection of race, gender, sexual orientation, ableism, and implicit bias.”
Tools and Policy
White Supremacy Culture & Remote Work
White supremacy culture, as defined by Tema Okun (Dismantling Racism Works), can be mirrored and perpetuated in remote environments. In order to mitigate white supremacy culture in virtual work, we (Remote DEI Toolkit) created a crosswalk and resources to explore the intersections of both sets of practices.
Worksheet: White Dominant Culture and Something Different
Learn to identify the characteristics of white dominant culture using a ‘norms of white dominant culture’ matrix/table. See how they play out in within an organization and learn about antidotes and alternatives to white supremacist culture using the ‘Something Different’ matrix/table. Source: Racial Equity Tools
Defining White Culture
This one-page PDF resource provides a basic understanding of the term ‘white culture’. It includes succinct, easy-to-understand definitions and examples of how white-dominant culture manifests and marginalizes racialized people inside organizations. Source: Racial Equity Tools
Tools for Addressing White Dominant Culture
The Partners for Collaborative Change’s document lines up the main characteristics of white supremacy culture, imagines antidotes, and reviews some of the ways to think about transformation in your organization.
Capacity Assessment Intervention Provision of HIV/AIDS Services and Support for African, Caribbean and Black Populations
The Capacity Assessment Intervention is a tool to assess the current capacity of your organization to respond to the HIV/AIDS service and support needs of African, Caribbean and Black (ACB) communities.
ACCHO Capacity Assessment Tool Questions
This is an assessment tool provided by the African and Caribbean Council on HIV/AIDS in Ontario to have a deeper understanding of capacity within organizations.
Anti-Black Racism Analysis Tool for Radically Equitable COVID-19 Response
The COVID-19 pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on many Black communities and pervasive anti-Black racism not only exacerbates long-standing issues people of African descent face in society, it also makes responding to the needs of the Black community during the pandemic more difcult. To support community stakeholders in this regard, the City of Toronto’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism Unit has prepared this resource.
Five Ways to Improve Diversity and Inclusion in Your HIV Service Organization
“We can start by making relatively simple changes that center our work at the intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, ableism, and implicit bias. Here are some practical ideas to begin.”
Dismantling Anti-Black Bias In Democratic Workplaces: A Toolkit
Our goal in creating this packet is to equip democratic workplaces with tools to see and address anti-Black racism when it happens, as well as creating systems and practices that undermine anti-Black racism. When we participate in a democratic workplace or collective, we take on the incredible responsibility of shaping an institution—and we therefore have incredible power to resist the harmful cultures, practices, and policies that reinforce anti-Black racism in mainstream institutions. But the persistent messages that we receive that reinforce anti-Blackness can just as easily infiltrate our workplaces if we’re not dedicated to building a shared vision for collective liberation that centers Black liberation and self-determination.
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