A key pillar of our mission is to build relationships and mutual understanding among and between various ethnic, racial, and religious groups. We cannot do that until we create a community that is as welcoming and inclusive for all Jews. Our 18 Day Exploration of Racial Justice was one way to begin important conversations about race in Baltimore’s Jewish community. We have compiled a collection of resources for those who joined us on that journey and would like to continue their learning, and for those who did not join us but would like to begin their own exploration. If you are interested in learning more about the BJC’s racial justice work, please contact Sarah Mersky Miicke.

Resources From The 18 Days

• Jewish Privilege self-assessment
• How studying Talmud taught me about Racism in America
• Black Jews are being Chased out of the Jewish Community by Racism. Here are their stories
• Skin in the Game: How antisemitism animates white nationalism
• What Makes This Jew Different Than All Other Jews? Race, Difference, and Safety in Jewish Spaces
• We Are Family: Rethinking Race in the Jewish Community

More About Our Facilitators and Creators of the 18 Days

Tracie Guy-Decker

Yosef Webb Cohen

Resources to Expand Your Learning and Analysis

Podcasts:

• Code Switch
• Pod Save the People
• Jews Talk Racial Justice with April & Tracie

Articles, Videos, and Websites

• Decoded with Franchesca Ramsey
• Jewish Council For Public Affairs: Toolkit for Addressing Criminal Justice at the Local Level
• Jews and White Privilege
• The injustice of this moment is not an aberration
• Bmore INCREMENTAL

Books

Note: If you decide to buy a title, please try to buy from your favorite independent bookseller, or find one on bookshop.org

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010)

Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time (1963)

Brodkin, Karen. How Jews Became White Folks, and What that Says about Race in America (1998)

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me (2015)

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood (2008).

DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism (2018)

Goldstein, Eric L. The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (2006)

Goldstein, Eric L. and Deborah R. Weiner On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore (2018)

Irving, Debby. Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race (2014)

Kendi, Ibram X. How to be an Antiracist (2019)

Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016)

Lanahan, Lawrence. The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore’s Racial Divide (2019)

McKesson, Deray. On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope (2018)

Metzl, Jonathan. Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland (2019)

Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk About Race (2019)

Pietila, Antero. Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City (2010)

Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric (2014)

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (2017)

Saad, Layla. Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World and Become a Good Ancestor (2020)

Thurston, Baratunde. How to be Black (2012)

Watkins, D. We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America (2019)

Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origin of Our Discontent (2020)