Step 5 Resources

Take Apart the Racism Machine

This chapter in Dismantling the Racism Machine, 2nd ed. explores the following question . . .

What specific actions can we take to dismantle the Racism Machine?

with the following Recommended Resources . . .

1. Develop an Anti-Racist Mindset

Before you begin to take action, it’s important to work on a mindset that will guide you to take action that is meaningful and genuinely aligned with racial justice. This first section focuses on ways of developing this critical consciousness (see the book for further explanation and resources below).

1A) Begin by taking advantage of this book

Dismantling the Racism Machine, 2nd ed.

1B) Start reading/following/listening to racial justice activists, scholars, and media:

A few examples of people to read/follow/listen to include:

A few examples of media to follow include:

1C) Read memoirs by a diverse range of people

For example:

1D) Once you have the beginning of a foundation for your anti-racist mindset, I urge you to engage other people in your learning journey, and that can happen in a wide variety of ways depending on your situation:

See the book for further explanation about the following examples:

Family and/or friends
Book club
- example: McGhee, Heather. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. One World, 2021.
Community organiziations
Religious organizations
Job
Attend a racial justice workshop (see Race Forward, The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, and SpeakOut).

1D) As part of your journey to develop an anti-racist mindset, include ways that you can unlearn the false belief that race is biological, which Step 1 focused on debunking. As that chapter discusses, this powerful myth is believed to be true by so many, at an increasing rate, and not only is it false, but it is also very dangerous. Consider the following ways of engaging:

Individuals: Begin by watching the first episode (“The Difference Between Us”) of the documentary Race: The Power of an Illusion, which does an excellent job of, in less than an hour, providing a solid introduction to understanding why race is not biological. You can organize an informal screening of the film in your home with people you know. You can ask your local library, community center, place of worship, and/or school to host a screening.If you’re having trouble accessing Race: The Power of an Illusion, consider Dorothy Roberts’ TED Talk “The problem with race-based medicine,” also included in the Recommend Resources for Step 1.
Educators and parents: There are many age-appropriate and discipline-appropriate ways of teaching students that race is not biological. By the time I teach this at the college level, most of my students say that they did not learn this in K–12 and wish they had. The film Race: The Power of an Illusion is appropriate for high school audiences and a good starting point. In fact, it features a group of high school students. Furthermore, the film’s website includes resources for teachers.
Science educators (high school to grad school): It is especially important for you to debunk the myth that race is biological as part of your instruction and pedagogy in relation to genetics and biology. There are more resources than ever to support this work, including the following:
- Ball, Erin M., et al. “Challenging Misconceptions about Race in Undergraduate Genetics.” CBE-Life Sciences Education, vol. 23, no. 3, 9 July 2024.
- Donovan, Brian M., et al. “Humane genomics education can reduce racism.” Science, vol. 383, no. 6685, 23 February 2024, pp. 818-822.
- Duncan, R. G., et al. “The sociopolitical in human genetics education.” Science, vol. 383, no. 6685, 23 February 2024, pp. 826-828.“Educational Resources.” National Human Genome Research Institute, 2023.
- King, Gretchen P., et al. “Evading Race: STEM Faculty Struggle to Acknowledge Racialized Classroom Events.” CBE-Life Sciences Education, vol. 22, no. 1, 3 Feb. 2023.
- O’Connell, Marcia L., et al. “Why Biologists & Biology Teachers Are Uniquely Qualified to Discuss the Issue of Biological Race.” The American Biology Teacher, vol. 84, no. 9, pp. 525-528.
- Race, Racism, and Genetics curriculum, the Fred Hutch Cancer Center.
- Deyrup and Graves’s presentation described in Step 1 called “(Nearly) Everything You Learned About Race in Medical School is Wrong.”
- I wanted to share with you a project I helped organize at my college to work on debunking the myth that race is biological. I partnered with a friend who teaches Genetics at my college, Dr. Melanie Lenahan, and we applied for and received a small Working Group grant from the RIOS Institute (Racially Just, Inclusive, and Open STEM Education). We compensated a small group of students who had just taken either of our courses where we each addressed this topic, and they created material in an open pedagogy process aimed at debunking the myth that race is biological that would be shared with future students. The students chose to create either an infographic or a website. QUBES (Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis) hosts our students’ materials, which can be freely accessed.

2. Apply an Anti-Racist Mindset

There are an infinite number of ways you can apply an anti-racist mindset, and I hope you will use your imagination to do so. I am going to share a few suggestions to help get you started.

2A) Start by not reinventing the wheel

There are major national racial justice organizations that share online resources and action guides responding to current events. For example, a few of the biggest include the African American Policy Forum, Color of Change, and Race Forward. Also, there are many inspiring and practical racial justice action guidebooks that map out action steps for people new to thinking about this work.

Here are a few examples:

2B) Resist the divide-and-conquer mentality explained in this book

For centuries, we have been manipulated to support divide-and-conquer strategies that protect the interests of a small, White, wealthy elite, as this book has explained. We need to recognize and resist the many ways that the Racism Machine teaches us to compete with each other for resources that are supposedly scarce, all the while the White elite protects their wealth and status quo. Here are just a few examples that the book discusses in more depth:

Attend and support diverse cultural events in your area
Support #BlackLivesMatter
Support reparations that make amends and repair harm for slavery and racial injustice

Support Indigenous activism
Support campaigns to acknowledge and make amends for the devastation caused when Indigenous children were forcibly removed to boarding schools (described briefly in Step 3). See, for example: The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
Support the #LandBack movement, a campaign to return public lands to their original inhabitants and caretakers
Support campaigns to change offensive mascot names that dehumanize Indigenous peoples (i.e., Coalition of Natives and Allies).
Support campaigns to resist the building of pipelines that enter or impact Indigenous lands (like the Dakota Access Pipeline and PennEast).

2C) Work to build a strong multiracial democracy

The Racism Machine purposefully blocks a genuine multiracial democracy from forming. Below are a few examples of relevant actions, which the book discusses in more depth:

Run for Something
Support candidates with a racial justice platform, from local candidates on up
Stay informed on a daily basis about the impact of legislation, court decisions, and other current events with helpful historical context by sources like Democracy Now!, historian Heather Cox Richardson, and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich
Work to get money out of politics
Work against the movement to consolidate power in the executive branch of the federal government, including the vision mapped out in Project 2025. When the Supreme Court ruled in July 2024 that former presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions, Justice Sotomayor sharply dissented by saying this decision “wrongly insulated the U.S. president as “a king above the law.”
Work to change structures that make our government less democratic, like ending the filibuster in the Senate, shifting to a popular vote for president rather than the Electoral College, adding term limits for Supreme Court Justices, and shifting how the Senate is structured so that people in less populated states don’t have proportionately a bigger say than people in more populated states. See Ari Berman’s Minority Rule, Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, and Ellie Mystal’s Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution
Follow organizations working on grassroots political activism, like Citizen University, Demos, Moveon.org, and Red Wine & Blue’s Trouble Nation
Meet with your elected officials to discuss your concerns about racially unjust laws and policies
Protect voting rights (i.e., Brennan Center for Justice)
Resist extremism. There are valuable and free toolkits at the websites for Western States Center and the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University

2D) Support racial justice organizations and coalitions that follow the often-quoted words of Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, “The people closest to the pain, should be the closest to the power.”

3. Focus on Systems

3A) End mass incarceration (see context in Step 4)

Learn about and support the work and actions of organizations like Equal Justice Initiative, the ACLU, the Sentencing Project, the Innocence Project, Amnesty International, Justice Policy Institute, and the Vera Institute of Justice
Organize screenings to watch and discuss:
- Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th brilliantly explains how the Thirteenth Amendment did not abolish slavery for those labeled “criminal,” as Steps 3 and 4 describe.
- Slavery by Another Name, based on the book of the same title by Douglas Blackmon, focuses on how post–Civil War Black people were criminalized and forced to labor through convict leasing.
- TED Talks by Bryan Stevenson (“We need to talk about an injustice”) and Michelle Alexander (“The future of race in America”)
Support the latest criminal justice campaigns by Color of Change
End the privatization of prisons and the death penalty.
End police brutality. Support protests to raise awareness. Speak out about these issues at your local town council meetings, and hold your local elected officials accountable for decisions they make regarding police departments.
Support restorative justice, which involves repairing harm, rather than focusing on punishment. Support bail reform, decriminalization of drug use, reentry programs, and ban the box.
Support abolition, which considers, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore explains, “presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.” Follow the work of Gilmore, as well as Angela Davis, Dorothy Roberts, and Ruha Benjamin.

3B) End mass deportations and immigrant detention.

Follow and support organizations like: Detention Watch Network, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, United We Dream, National Immigration Law Center, and Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

3C) Support a diverse range of representation in media and popular culture (see the book for more explanation):

3D) Resist the attacks on education, and support liberation-based education. (Note that these suggestions are for parents, community members, educators, and students alike. See the book for more details, and for more specific suggestions for educators, see section #5.)

Support school curricula that teach about race, racism, and racial justice. Resist movements against critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and DEI. See the African American Policy Forum’s resources, activities, and events for further support
Read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and engage with others about the need for liberation-based teaching that decolonizes education.
Support the creation of Black Studies and Ethnic Studies courses and programs in K–12 schools. See, for example, Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies.
Resist the movement to ban books about race, gender, and LGBTQ+ identities. Consider these resources: Unite Against Book Bans, American Library Association, American Civil Liberties Union, and Books Unbanned at the Brooklyn Public Library.
To avoid instructors or students saying the n-word when reading historical or literary material out loud in class, which can cause harm, consider an approach like the one outlined by Dr. Koritha Mitchell
Resist any dismantling of the Department of Education by plans like Project 2025.
Support the inclusion of media literacy at all education levels (kindergarten through college) so students can work on resisting disinformation.
Support restorative justice and abolition, referenced earlier in #3A, within schools. (See sources by Fania Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Bettina Love.) End the school-to-prison pipeline.

3E) End the racial wealth gap and persistent racial segregation (see the book for more explanation and examples)

Recognize the significance of the racial wealth gap as discussed in Step 4. See for example:
Learn about patterns of racial school segregation in your region. Work with communities of color to determine effective strategies to address racial segregation and gentrification. Consider the following resources:
- Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright, 2017.
- Rothstein, Richard, and Leah Rothstein. Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law. Liveright, 2023.
Consider sociologist Matthew Desmond’s reporting that if everyone in the US in the top 1% paid what they are currently legally required to pay in taxes, that would raise about $175 billion, “almost enough to lift everyone out of poverty altogether.”

3F) Address climate change, and support healthcare and a healthy environment for everyone.

Address environmental racism. See, for example:
Confront the history of racism in medicine
Support organizations that address food deserts
Support projects to plant more trees, especially in urban neighborhoods

3G) Learn about and support local racial justice activism in your area.

4. Actions for Specific Audiences: White People

I want to take time here to speak directly to White people about action. Many White people tell me they don’t know where to begin, and I think the first step is to recognize the history that got us to where we are. We live in an intensely racially segregated nation, and even states that pride themselves on being very diverse are very racially segregated, like my own state of New Jersey. You’ll find in what follows a series of general principles that I think are important for White people to keep in mind, followed by specific recommendations.

See the book for detailed Principles and Actions.

5. Actions for Specific Audiences: Educators

There are many opportunities to engage students at various levels in action assignments associated with the ideas presented in this manual. Many of the suggestions already identified in Step 5 could be adapted for a classroom setting, but the suggestions that follow are aimed specifically at educators (K–12 and college). Note that there was a previous section (#3D) to support liberation-based education, and that was aimed more broadly to include parents, community members, and students, but it certainly applies to educators.

See the book for further explanation and examples on:

Professional Development
Educators Working with Other Educators
Educators of Future Educators
Supporting Students Outside of the Classroom
Classroom Activities and Assignments (All Levels), Classroom Activities and Assignments (College and High School)
Classroom Activities and Assignments (K–8)