Protests advocating for the equal treatment of Black Lives have rocked the entire world for over a month. From the US to the UK to Japan to the Philippines, people have been calling for an end to racial injustice.
In all likelihood, you know someone who is affected by this movement and who might be going through a difficult time right now. It might be your coworker or your friend, your neighbor or your relative, or even yourself.
One of our major goals here at The Tokyo Life is to become a community of support for non-Japanese residents. To do our part, we’ve compiled a list of the online resources that we’ve come across that can help you to educate yourself, whoever you may be, on the Black Lives Matter movement.
The purpose of this article is to connect you to works and resources made by Black creators and educators that touch on different aspects of racism. However, I still highly encourage you to do more research on your own. Racism and racial injustice are not exclusively American issues and there is still a lot to uncover and unlearn where racism is concerned.
Disclaimer: Neither I nor The Tokyo Life are in any way affiliated with Black Lives Matter or any of the resources linked to this article.
Timeline
To provide you with historical context for why the movement is what it is, Marquis D.B. made a 60-point list detailing the timeline of racial injustice in America; from the arrival of African slaves in the Northern US to the death of George Floyd in police custody.
Marquis was kind enough to make The List available as a podcast episode on his website and as a purchasable pdf on Amazon and PayPal. It’s also available as a free resource for educators on Teachers Pay Teachers. The List, which you can also read on his Instagram account (it has since been updated with corrections), highlights keywords tied to each event in US history that are worth looking into further.
Terminology
Another good resource for quick facts is this Instagram account called “So You Want to Talk About” which nicely summarizes a topic into 10-slide posts.
If you don’t have an Instagram account, here is a shortlist of relevant topics they have covered.
- White Privilege
- Police Brutality
- Implicit Bias
- Police/Prison Abolition
- Microaggressions
- Performative Activism
- White Supremacy
- Systemic Racism
- Antifa
- Reparations
- Whataboutism
- Juneteenth
- Tulsa Race Massacre
- Qualified Immunity
- Whitewashing
- Redlining
- School-to-Prison Pipeline
- Voter Suppression
- Tone Policing
- Gentrification
- The Confederacy
- No-knock Raids
- The Black Panther Party
- Gerrymandering
- Affirmative Action
Other Resources
13th (available for free on Netflix’s YouTube channel) is a powerful documentary by Ava DuVernay on the evolution of policing, the driving forces behind it, how the 13th amendment changed the face of slavery, and how all these factors continue to negatively affect the lives of Black people.
https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ is an amazing portal for BLM-related resources like terminologies and action items, anti-racism resources, and recommended books and media. It also has links to other movements happening around the world.
To help you stay engaged with the movement, consider following these organizations:
- https://www.aclu.org/
- https://blacklivesmatter.com/
- https://www.reclaimtheblock.org/
- https://colorofchange.org/
- https://www.zinnedproject.org/
This resurgence of the movement comes at a pivotal time in history when all over the world people are questioning how much their lives are valued by their governments and the people around them. If you take only one thing from here, we hope that it is the importance of keeping yourself educated.
Featured image by Duncan Shaffer on Unsplash
