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The Center's affiliate organization, Western State Strategies, is continuing our traditional work on campaign finance reform, supporting voter-owned elections and promoting a more transparent election system that expands democracy.
   
   
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  DISMANTLING RACISM - TOOLS AND RESOURCES  
     
  From 1998 to 2004, Western States Center engaged in extensive dismantling racism work as part of our Research and Action for Change and Equity (RACE) Program. Through training, strategizing and technical assistance, the Dismantling Racism Project increased the breadth and depth of racial justice work in the West by developing anti-racist leaders; providing training and support to organizations, and creating resources for use throughout the region.  
     
 

Documents for Download:

  • Sharing the Lessons Learned: Six years of Anti-Racism Work - This 12-page document provides the context for the dismantling racism work that Western States Center undertook from 1998-2004 and, given the Center's political framework and long-term goals, how those lessons may shape future work of the Center. The report also contains a concise index of tools and resources that the Center found useful over this period of time.
  • Dismantling Racism Curriculum Resource Book - This 119-page resource book is a compilation of materials designed to supplement a Dismantling Racism workshop. These resources originate from a variety of sources and build on the work of many people and organizations, including (but not limited to) Kenneth Jones, Tema Okun, Andrea Ayvazian, Beverly Daniel-Tatum, Joan Olsson, James Williams, Peace Development Fund, The Exchange Project, Grassroots Leadership, Equity Institute, the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, the Lillie Allen Institute, and David Rogers and Moira Bowman of Western States Center.
  • Diversity Training vs. Dismantling Racism - Article explaining why diversity training may be good for business, but it is insufficient for social change.
  • Assessing Organizational Racism - A tool for predominately white organizations and multi-racial organizations of white people and people of color.
  • Moving Racial Justice: Are you Ready? - Not every organization is ready to take on racial justice work even if they are eager to do so. This assessment is designed to raise critical issues as organizations and organizers think about their capacity to move a racial justice agenda. The tool is designed to identify potential barriers to taking on a racial justice focus and outline the preparatory work that may be needed to effectively engage in and sustain racial justice work.
  • Naming and Framing Race and Racism - Western States Center believes that in order to truly advance racial justice in a long-term and sustainable way, organizations must name and frame racism explicitly in their organizing. This document explains why and how.
  • Picking an Issue - A criteria worksheet for picking a racial justice organizing campaign issue.
  • Holding Leaders of Color Accountable - When organizations target leaders of color through organizing campaigns it is important to take the time to think and talk through strategies and tactics from an anti-racist perspective. This handout is a set of questions that can be helpful in making such a conversation happen.
  • History and Construction of Race and Racism - Curriculum for teaching about the history and construction of race and racism.
  • Challenging Oppressive Moments - An article by Western States Center Board Member Nicole LaFavour on challenging homophobia, racism and other oppressive moments.

Dismantling Racism Videos Available on Loan:
Download Our Video Loan Policy and Contract

Color Adjustment
Ethnic Notions
Tongues Untied
Black Is...Black Ain't
True Colors
Local Color
White Shamans and Plastic Medicine Men
Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary School
Conscience and Constitution
In the Light of Reverence
Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place
Race: the Power of An Illusion

 



COLOR ADJUSTMENT
Produced and Directed by Marlon Riggs
(1991) 87 minutes

Review by California Newsreel

In Color Adjustment, Marlon Riggs carries his landmark studies of prejudice into the Television Age.

Color Adjustment traces 40 years of race relations through the lens of prime time entertainment, scrutinizing television's racial myths and stereotypes. Narrated by Ruby Dee, the 88 minute documentary allows viewers to revisit some of television's most popular stars and shows, among them Amos and Andy, The Nat King Cole Show, I Spy, Julia, Good Times, Roots, Frank's Place and The Cosby Show.

But this time around, Riggs asks us to look at these familiar favorites in a new way. The result is a stunning examination of the interplay between America's racial consciousness and network primetime programming.

The story, told with wit, passion, and verve, shows how African Americans were allowed into America's primetime family only insofar as their presence didn't challenge the mythology of the American Dream central to television's merchandising function. It demonstrates how the networks managed to absorb divisive racial conflict into the familiar non-threatening formats of prime-time television.

Clips from the shows that captivated, amused, and sometimes angered audiences are interwoven with the parallel story of the Civil Rights movement as brought into our living rooms on the evening news. Writers and producers—such as Hal Kanter (Julia), Norman Lear (All in the Family, Good Times, The Jeffersons), Steve Bochco (Hill Street Blues, LA Law), David Wolper (Roots), and others—take us behind the scenes of their creations. Esther Rolle, Diahann Carroll, Tim Reid and other black performers ruminate upon the meaning and impact of the roles they themselves played in shaping prime time race relations. Cultural critics Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Herman Gray, Alvin Poussaint, and Pat Turner point out that while these television programs entertain, they also reinforce and legitimate a particular notion of the "American Family."

As engaging as it is perceptive, Color Adjustment sheds light on the racial implications of America's favorite addiction—television watching. It will help viewers reexamine America's and their own attitudes towards race.

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White
  • Available for purchase: California Newsreel, 149 Ninth St./420, San Francisco, CA 94103.

ETHNIC NOTIONS
Produced & Directed by Marlon Riggs
(1987) 56 minutes

Review by California Newsreel

Ethnic Notions is Marlon Riggs' Emmy-winning documentary that takes viewers on a disturbing voyage through American history, tracing for the first time the deep-rooted stereotypes which have fueled anti-black prejudice. Through these images we can begin to understand the evolution of racial consciousness in America.

Loyal Toms, carefree Sambos, faithful Mammies, grinning Coons, savage Brutes, and wide-eyed Pickaninnies roll across the screen in cartoons, feature films, popular songs, minstrel shows, advertisements, folklore, household artifacts, even children's rhymes. These dehumanizing caricatures permeated popular culture from the 1820s to the Civil Rights period and implanted themselves deep in the American psyche.

Narration by Esther Rolle and commentary by respected scholars shed light on the origins and devastating consequences of this 150 yearlong parade of bigotry. Ethnic Notions situates each stereotype historically in white society's shifting needs to justify racist oppression from slavery to the present day. The insidious images exacted a devastating toll on black Americans and continue to undermine race relations.

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White
  • Available for purchase: California Newsreel, 149 Ninth St./420, San Francisco, CA 94103.

TONGUES UNTIED
Directed by Marlon Riggs
(1989) 55 minutes

Tongues Untied is Marlon Riggs' acclaimed exploration of giving voice to the experiences of being black and gay. Using poetry, personal testimony, music and performance, Tongues Untied describes the homophobia and racism that confront black gay men. Riggs illuminates the hateful and violent oppression that tries to silence black gay experience. But he also illuminates the rich and diverse cultures that are created when black gay men break the silence and recognize each other as brothers.

Marlon Riggs on Tongues Untied

The vice squad of American culture was once again on the attack. . .

Tongues Untied was motivated by a singular imperative: to shatter America's brutalizing silence around matters of sexual and racial difference. Yet despite a concerted smear and censorship campaign, perhaps even because of it, this work achieved its aim. The 55-minute video documents a nationwide community of voices—some quietly poetic, some undeniably raw and angry—which together challenge society's most deeply entrenched myths about what it means to be black, gay, a man, and above all, human.

Tongues Untied has achieved international acclaim: from the Berlin, London and New York Documentary Film Festivals, the National Black Programming Consortium and the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, as well as the Whitney Museum. This, of course, did not mean a hill of beans to white arch-conservatives and religious fundamentalists, who pointedly minimized or ignored altogether the abundant evidence affirming Tongues Untied's artistic and social merit.

Among these would-be guardians of American culture, sexuality as such remains taboo. Black heterosexuality is shrouded by even deeper layers of silence and aversion. And black homosexuality, the triple taboo, equates in their minds with an unspeakable obscenity.

Predictably, the morals censors pounced on both PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts in an ongoing effort to force American culture into line with their rigid, narrow notions of morally correct art. In their rhetorical equivalent to hate-filled fag-bashing, the morality watchdogs smeared and disfigured Tongues Untied beyond recognition. An editorial in the arch-conservative Washington Times suggested in all seriousness that the PBS broadcast of my work was tantamount to disseminating raw homosexual "pornography," transforming the households of America into a "gay striptease joint"!

Equally predictable in this so-called "obscenity" controversy was the collusion—by silence—of mainstream black America in this nakedly homophobic and covertly racial assault. Black heterosexuals (many of whom consider themselves "progressive" or even "Afrocentric revolutionaries") passively, silently acquiesced as political bedmates with the likes of Rev. Wildmon, James Kilpatrick and the rabidly anti-gay, race-baiting Sen. Jesse Helms.

Suddenly, traditional conceptions of America's Left, Right and Center prove bankrupt. The general desire to suppress any realistic acknowledgment or exploration of homosexuality in America has spawned the ultimate postmodern coalition!

. . . James Baldwin, renowned black American homosexual novelist and essayist, once wrote that the general aim of white Americans was to refashion the Negro face after their own, and failing that, to make the black face "blank." Straight America, black as well as white, has demanded much the same of homosexual men and women: to win majority acceptance, we are asked to represent ourselves in ways which, in effect, reaffirm the majority's self-image of privilege. The alternative is our wholesale erasure.

But there is another alternative, and for many this was the real outrage of Tongues Untied, and for many, many more, its principal virtue: the refusal to present an historically disparaged community on bended knee, begging courteously for tidbits of mainstream tolerance. What Tongues instead unapologetically affirms and delivers is a frank, uncensored, uncompromising articulation of an autonomously defined self and social identity. SNAP!

Copyright 1991 by Marlon T. Riggs.


BLACK IS...BLACK AIN'T
Produced & Directed by Marlon Riggs
(1995) 87 minutes

Content Description by: California Newsreel

Black Is...Black Ain't, jumps into the middle of explosive debates over black identity. Black Is...Black Ain't is a film every African American should see, ponder and discuss.

White Americans have always stereotyped African Americans. But the rigid definitions of "blackness" which African Americans impose on each other, Riggs claims, have also been devastating. Is there an essential black identity? Is there a litmus test defining the real black man and true black women?

Riggs' uses his grandmother's gumbo as a metaphor for the rich diversity of black identities. His camera criss-crosses the country bringing us face-to-face with black folks young and old, rich and poor, rural and urban, gay and straight, grappling with the paradox of numerous, often contested definitions of blackness. Riggs mixes performances by choreographer Bill T. Jones and poet Essex Hemphill and commentary by noted cultural critics Angela Davis, Bell Hooks, Cornel West, Michele Wallace, Barbara Smith, and Maulana Karenga into this flavorful stew of personal testimony, music, and

history.

While Black Is...Black Ain't rejoices in black diversity, many speakers bare the pain of having been silenced or excluded because they were perceived as "not black enough," or conversely, "too black." Black Is...Black Ain't marshals a powerful critique of sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, colorism and cultural nationalism in the black family, church and other black institutions. Cornel West concludes, "We've got to conceive of new forms of community. We each have multiple identities and we're moving in and out of various communities at the same time. There is no one grand black community."

Produced and directed by Riggs, BLACK IS...BLACK AIN'T was completed posthumously by his co-producer Nicole Atkinson and co-director/editor Christiane Badgley.

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White
  • Available for purchase: California Newsreel, 149 Ninth St./420, San Francisco, CA 94103.

TRUE COLORS
Primetime Live — ABC News with Diane Sawyer
(9/26/91)

This Primetime Investigation report shows video footage of how two men, differing only in their skin color, were treated differently over two and a half weeks in St. Louis, MO. The investigation team utilized two people trained in fair housing testing by the Leadership Council for Open Metropolitan Communities in Chicago. These men (who were actually friends) had the exact same educational and socio-economic backgrounds—the only apparent difference was one was black and one white. This video documents the racism picked up by hidden cameras as these men approached the same exact businesses while looking for jobs, apartments, cars, etc.

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White

LOCAL COLOR
Reported by Jon Tuttle

One Hour

This documentary explores Oregon's and especially Portland's history as its racist laws and attitudes have fluctuated over the past eighty years.  It documents the black businesses that thrived in Portland, before WWI, and how it gradually became one of the worst places, outside of the South, to be black in the United States.  It traces the increased need for labor during the WWII and the accompanying black work force, the integration of the Vanport housing development, setting aside the Albina District for blacks, the Boilermakers' Union exclusion of blacks, the fixed housing laws of 1957 & 1959, the establishment of the local Urban League chapter.

Activists and organizers throughout Oregon should watch this video to see the history lesson that you didn't get taught in school.

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White


WHITE SHAMANS AND PLASTIC MEDICINE MEN
Produced by Native Voices Public Television
28 minutes

White Shamans and Plastic Medicine Men is a thoughtful critique of the appropriation of Native American culture and spirituality by white new age people who make a living and lifestyle from using and selling indigenous spiritual ritual and symbols. Throughout the video, Native Americans speak about their feelings and thoughts about the role of spiritual practice and the historical appropriation of indigenous land, resources, and now spirituality, by white people. White practitioners of Native American spirituality also share their feelings, thoughts and intentions. The contrast provided by these conflicting interviews raises many questions for viewers about the impacts of cultural appropriation and what it means to respect and appreciate cultures different from our own.

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White
  • Available for purchase: Native Voices


FEAR AND LEARNING AT HOOVER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Directed by Laura Angelica Simón

(1997) 1 hour

 

Fear and Learning is a rich video that explores the ramification of the passage of Proposition 187, a ballot measure passed in California in 1996 which denies public education and health care to undocumented immigrants.  Based on her experience as a teacher at Hoover Elementary School in Los Angeles, Simón interviews teachers, students and parents to examine both the individual and community impacts of social policy that perpetrates racism through stereotypes, exclusion and denial of resources. Simón's treatment of her subject is as intellectually and emotionally challenging as the nature of cultural and institutional racism. Fear and Learning denies viewers the opportunity to say racism is a thing of the past because it so clearly reveals the destructiveness of current anti-Latino sentiment.  It also clearly reveals the resilience and organizing power of Latino people and community under attack.

 

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White


CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION
Produced by Frank Abe in association with the Independent Television Service (2001), 1 Hour

During World War II, Japanese Americans were put in concentration camps due to U.S. governments unfounded suspicion of people of Japanese ancestry. Two-thirds of the people detained were born in the U.S. Draft age men from the camps were subsequently drafted to serve in the U.S. military. Many young men resisted the draft on the basis that they and their families were unconstitutionally incarcerated. Conscience and the Constitution tells the story of the draft resisters from the concentration camps, to the largest draft resistance trial in U.S. history, to incarceration in a federal penitentiary, to the present day struggles to uncover this history. It also tells about the conflict within Japanese American communities when organizations like the Japanese American Citizens League sought to improve the status of Japanese Americans in the U.S. by proving their loyalty by advocating compliance with forced expulsion and the draft.

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White
  • Available for purchase from:  Transit Media at 1-800-343-5540 or www.resisters.com.


IN THE LIGHT OF REVERENCE

 

Directed by Christopher McLeod

(2001) 73 minutes

Across the U.S., Native Americans are struggling to protect their sacred places.  Religious freedom, so valued in American, is not guaranteed to those who practice land-based religion.  In the Light of Reverence tells the story of three indigenous communities and the lands they are struggle to protect:  the Lakota of the Great Plains, the Hopi of the Four Corners area, and the Wintu of northern California.

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White
  • Available for purchase from:  Bullfrog Films, PO Box 149, Oley, PA  19547, 800-543-3764, www.bullfrogfilms.com

 



KE KULANA HE MAHU: REMEMBERING A SENSE OF PLACE

A Film by Kathryn Xian and Brent Anbe

(2001) 67 minutes

The award-winning documentary film, "Ke Kulana He Mahu," takes us on a historical journey as scholars and oral traditionalists illustrate what life and culture was like in the Hawaiian Islands for the Mahu (transgendered individuals). The journey also leads the audience through present day culture and society to see first hand how colonization and modernization have affected the spirits of Hawaii's people.

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White
  • Available for purchase from:  Zang Pictures, Inc. 1690 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu, Hawaii, 96815, www.zangpictures.net.


RACE: THE POWER OF AN ILLUSION

Produced by California Newsreel (2003)

56 minutes per episode

The division of the world's peoples into distinct groups—"red," "black," "white" or "yellow" peoples—has became so deeply imbedded in our psyches, so widely accepted, many would promptly dismiss as crazy any suggestion of its falsity. Yet, that's exactly what this provocative, new three-hour series by California Newsreel claims. Race: The Power of an Illusion questions the very idea of race as biology, suggesting that a belief in race is no more sound than believing that the sun revolves around the earth.

Yet race still matters. Just because race doesn't exist in biology doesn't mean it isn't very real, helping shape life chances and opportunities.

  • EPISODE 1- The Difference Between Us (56 min.) examines the contemporary science—including genetics—that challenges our common sense assumptions that human beings can be bundled into three or four fundamentally different groups according to their physical traits.
  • EPISODE 2- The Story We Tell (56 min.) uncovers the roots of the race concept in North America, the 19th century science that legitimated it, and how it came to be held so fiercely in the western imagination. The episode is an eye-opening tale of how race served to rationalize, even justify, American social inequalities as "natural."
  • EPISODE 3- The House We Live In (56 min.) asks, If race is not biology, what is it? This episode uncovers how race resides not in nature but in politics, economics and culture. It reveals how our social institutions "make" race by disproportionately channeling resources, power, status and wealth to white people.

By asking, What is this thing called 'race'?, a question so basic it is rarely asked, Race: The Power of an Illusion helps set the terms that any further discussion of race must first take into account. Ideal for human biology, anthropology, sociology, American history, American studies, and cultural studies.

 

  • Available for loan from: Western States Center, PO Box 40305, Portland, OR 97240, 503-228-8866, E-mail Taneisha White
  • Available for purchase: California Newsreel, 149 Ninth St./420, San Francisco, CA 94103.