Anti-racist reading list
Sludge magazine was founded with the two main intentions. To create a platform to showcase young creative talent, giving young creatives the confidence that industry professionals thought their work was worth showcasing. The second was to make politics, sociology and economics accessible and palatable to people outside of higher education. We know that the increased access to information due to globalisation and social media is overwhelming. We are constantly inundated with so many catastrophic events, that even if you take the time to start researching the cause of one issue, something else will arise before you get anywhere. The language of politicians and mainstream news corporations is also intentionally elitist (and downright misleading) at times. So we wanted to amplify different voices from every ethnic, religious, gender and sexuality background in hopes that the more different voices were speaking, the more people would find a voice that resonates with them. In regards to the public lynchings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, the home invasion and murder of Breonna Taylor, and the countless worldwide murders and injustices across the globe at the hands of white supremacy we decided to take some time to work out how best to address the matter at hand.
We have decided to compile a reading list of all of our past articles that showcase white supremacy's global impact.
The “post-colonial” era doesn’t exist
Congo and Nigeria are a few of the many examples proving that the West’s colonial extraction methods on the continent never ended
Censoring Palestine: The Weaponisation of Anti-Semitism
In 2020 activist Dan Glass embarked on a journey exploring the conflation of anti-Jewish racism and anti-Zionism. In 2024 its more poignant than ever
Words Matter
How a small migrants’ rights charity is using their lived experience to tackle division
Eco-anxiety, and the privilege of potential climate threats
We shouldn’t be anxious, we should be angry.
The rise in living costs will impact vulnerable communities the hardest
Whilst many households will surely be impacted by the rise in living costs, already vulnerable minoritised communities will bear the brunt of such increases.
High & Mighty: Is the Weed Industry Neocolonial?
Vice's Strain Hunters features a Dutch based weed company travelling the global south in search of lucrative exotic material. Sound familiar?
Skengman Churchill
Following today's gammon convention in Westminster that has seen far-right protests defending British values by urinating on memorials and fighting the police, Halima Nashir explains Churchill's true legacy
The French Knee on the Neck
As protests for racial justice permeate throughout the United States and the rest of the world, it's time to remove France's colonial knee from the neck of African development
Valorising the veil
As is often the case with customs that originate outside of Western society and religion, the veil has been demonised and in equal measures co-opted to further right wing agendas. Oliver Stevens-Neck explores the West's orientalist fixation with the veil
Anything But Change
The replacement of Edward Colston's statue with Jen Reid is a nice moment. But is symptomatic of a culture of symbolism in lieu of action.
Misadventures with misogynoir
How Netflix turned a necessary exploration of the hyper-sexualisation of pre-teen girls into yet another avenue to silence, intimidate and bully Black women.
Prosper - Sorzano
Manchester's underground pioneer Sorzano delivers Propser. A short film about finding mental peace with all of the protest and anarchy currently going on around the world.
Q&A with Nubia Assata
We sit down with teenage author Nubia Assata to discuss Silent Screams. The poetry anthology comprised of poems about the Black experience through the fresh eyes of a 16 year old.
The government’s commitment to surpressing the past
Robert Jenrick and Boris Johnson want status of slavers to be protected to "protect British history". But British history has been sanitised by governments for decades.
Why is Britain in denial of institutional racism?
When issues such as institutional racism are brought to light, even with supporting cases, many Britons choose to deny and resist its existence. Connie Yates explores why
We'd like to thank Halima Nashir for compiling a list of anti-racist literature classified by difficulty and topics. As explained in our piece Billionaire brunches and black liberation capitalism is bolstered by anti-blackness so please avoid buying any of the books listed from Amazon. Underneath our reading list is a list of black owned book shops to use alternatively, with thanks to Instagram user blazerfaizer. We would also like to thank Twitter user @esmeatgrlpwr for her list of important petitions to sign.
Beginners List:
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America - Dr Ibram X. Kendi
How to Be an Anti-Racist - Dr Ibram X. Kendi
So You Want to Talk About Race - Ijeoma Olua
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge
Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire - Akala
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism - Robin DiAngelo
The Burning House: Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America - Anders Walker
Topic specifics in brackets:
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond (housing discrimination)
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America - Richard Rothstein (housing discrimination)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - Michelle Alexander (mass incarceration)
Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond - Marc Lamont Hill (mass incarceration, police violence)
Are Prisons Obsolete? - Angela Davis (prison abolition)
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? - Beverly Daniel Tatum (education discrimination)
Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy - Darryl Pinckney (disenfranchisement)
Black Feminism:
Sister Outsider - Audre Lorde
Killing Rage: Ending Racism - bell hooks
Women, Race & Class - Angela Davis
Black Feminist Thought - Patricia Hill Collins
Assata: an Autobiography - Assata Shakur
Bad Feminist - Roxan Gay
Black LGBTQ+:
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements - Charlene Carruthers
No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America - Darnell L. Moore
No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies - E. Patrick Johnson (editor)
Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance - bell hooks
Black-owned bookstores (U.K.)
Films and TV shows
Africa Turns The Page - The Novels That Shaped A Continent BBC Four (2020)
Black Hollywood: 'They've Gotta Have Us' BBC iPlayer (2018)
Small Axe by Steve McQueen (2020)
The 13th by Ava DuVernay (2016)
When They See Us by Ava DuVernay (2019)
Exterminate All The Brutes by Raoul Peck (2021)
Happy unlearning - The Sludge Team