For many people — especially white folk — in the US, there is a persistent amnesia, or even ignorance, of the history of racial injustice and the resistance movements seeking to overcome it. It can really help our work to dismantle racism by learning this history. Two very useful timelines are available, as a beginning “hook” to ignite interest. This one is being developed by the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, and this one was originally created to accompany the PBS documentary “Race, the power of an illusion.”

The last post I wrote here pointed to an article on the challenges facing the black community around debt — but here is a piece by Eula Bliss that seems even more pertinent and pointed to me, noting what white debt is in this country we live in:

What is the condition of white life? We are moral debtors who act as material creditors. Our banks make bad loans. Our police, like Nietzsche’s creditors, act out their power on black bodies. And, as I see in my own language, we confuse whiteness with ownership. For most of us, the police aren’t ‘‘ours’’ any more than the banks are. When we buy into whiteness, we entertain the delusion that we’re business partners with power, not its minions. And we forget our debt to ourselves.

Here’s a devastating new investigation of the disparities in debt collection in the US.

By any measure, black households are worse off financially than white ones. They make, on average, far less money. But more pernicious is the vastly larger gap in wealth between whites and blacks — a divide that is wider than it was 30 years ago.

The source of this disparity is as deep as the nation’s history, said William A. Darity Jr., a professor of economics and public policy at Duke University. And addressing it is not as straightforward as improving employment or education among blacks.

It stems largely from “differences in the capacity of one generation of parents to transfer their resources to the next,” Darity said. “And those differences are strongly associated with race.”

To no one’s surprise (?), the Wikipedia is collecting a timeline and thoughtful entries on various elements of the BlackLivesMatter movement.

So much has been happening in Minneapolis in the last two weeks, since the shooting of Jamar Clark. Most of us have been too busy to even think about what should be at this website. But today we want to share at least a brief glimpse of the activism locally, via the gifts of filmmaker D. A. Bullock:

Tiffany Chaney has written a powerful letter to the Lutheran church:

“The church I hope we are becoming is a church that is willing to work inside out to dismantle racism in the systems closest to us – in our congregations, synods, Churchwide organization, and on to our neighborhood, cities, country, and world. One that eliminates systems in our church that crush people of color. A church where when we see that we are not living into our call to be more diverse, our call to deal with the systemic racism infecting the church, that we call each other out, even if it hurts.”

This is a very helpful and concise explanation of how “gas lighting” works.

The AME church nationally is calling on faith communities to join in solidarity on September 6th, in a confession, repentance and commitment to end racism. The ELCA and the Episcopal Church USA have put together additional resources.

Here’s a useful essay up at Huffington Post which goes through the basic reasoning behind the assertion that “reverse racism” is not a useful or authentic claim.

Here’s a great piece that offers some useful advice to white teachers who want to resist racism in their classrooms.