Town Hall on Anti-Racism and Anti-Black Violence

On June 9th, 2020 Dr. Celina de Sá and Dr. Gabby Yearwood held a town hall meeting for the department of Anthropology to discuss Anthropology and its legacy with anti-racism and anti-Black violence. Each made separate comments on the role anthropology has played and should play in dealing with violence against Black lives and the scholarship required to prepare students of anthropology to understand and put into action anti-racist scholarship. We have also included a list of readings/resources primarily Anthropological but also from other disciplines that we find as important for anyone wishing to educate themselves on these topics. We both believe that while anthropology has a long history of complacency and collusion it has also been a discipline that has fought against injustice. We believe that to use Anthropology as a tool for justice is our moral and ethical imperative as scholars and as people. Video of Dr. de Sá and Dr. Yearwood’s statements can be accessed by Pitt undergraduate and graduate Anthropology students on their respective courseweb pages for the department.

Anti-Racist Resources/Readings:

  1. http://aba.americananthro.org/pioneers/
  2. http://aba.americananthro.org/recent-books/
  3. https://www.understandingrace.org
  4. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PrAq4iBNb4nVIcTsLcNlW8zjaQXBLkWayL8E...
  5. https://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2020/06/03/a-game-changer-fo...
  6. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O7Yt-DalDXM2s9mema29qItAcNuRzx0biHsO...
  7. https://nam05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fanthro...
  8. Allen, Jafari Sinclaire, and Ryan Cecil Jobson. "The decolonizing generation:(Race and) theory in anthropology since the eighties." Current Anthropology 57, no. 2 (2016): 129-148.
  9. Board, AAA Executive. "AAA statement on race." American Anthropologist 100, no. 3 (1998): 712-713.
  10. Caldwell, Kia. Negras in Brazil: Re-envisioning black women, citizenship, and the politics of identity. Rutgers University Press, 2007.
  11. Carby, Hazel. "White woman listen! Black feminism and the boundaries of sisterhood." Black British cultural studies: A reader (1996): 61-86.
  12. Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on colonialism. NYU Press, 2001.
  13. Collective, Combahee River. "The Combahee river collective statement." Home girls: A Black feminist anthology (1983): 264-74.
  14. Drake, Clair. "Reflections on Anthropology and the Black Experience 1." Anthropology & Education Quarterly 9, no. 2 (1978): 85-109.
  15. Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. The Philadelphia negro: A social study. No. 14. Published for the University, 1899.
  16. Franklin, Maria. "A Black feminist-inspired archaeology?." Journal of social archaeology 1, no. 1 (2001): 108-125.
  17. Franklin, Maria. "“Power to the people”: Sociopolitics and the archaeology of black Americans." Historical archaeology 31, no. 3 (1997): 36-50.
  18. Franklin, Maria. "Why are there so few black American archaeologists?." Antiquity 71, no. 274 (1997): 799-801.
  19. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2018.
  20. Goldsby, Jacqueline. A spectacular secret: Lynching in American life and literature. University of Chicago Press, 2006.
  21. Hale, Charles R. Engaging contradictions: Theory, politics, and methods of activist scholarship. Univ of California Press, 2008.
  22. Harrison, Faye V. "The persistent power of" race" in the cultural and political economy of racism." Annual Review of Anthropology 24, no. 1 (1995): 47-74.
  23. Harrison, Ira E., and Faye V. Harrison, eds. African-American pioneers in anthropology. University of Illinois Press, 1999.
  24. Harrison, Ira E., Deborah Johnson-Simon, and Erica Lorraine Williams, eds. The second generation of African American pioneers in anthropology. University of Illinois Press, 2018.
  25. Hurston, Zora Neale, Ruby Dee, and Ann C. Villet. Mules and men. Perennial Library, 1935.
  26. Jablonski, Nina G. "The evolution of human skin and skin color." Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 33 (2004): 585-623.
  27. Lipsitz, George. The possessive investment in whiteness: How white people profit from identity politics. Temple University Press, 2006.
  28. Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. The Negro family: The case for national action. No. 31-33. US Government Printing Office, 1965.
  29. Mullings, Leith. "Neoliberal Racism and the Movement for Black Lives in the United States." Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas: From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash (2020): 249.
  30. Mullings, Leith. "Interrogating racism: Toward an antiracist anthropology." Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (2005).
  31. Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. "Racial formations." Race, class, and gender in the United States 6 (2004): 13-22.
  32. Rodriguez, Cheryl. "Mothering while black: Feminist thought on maternal loss, mourning and agency in the African diaspora." Transforming Anthropology 24, no. 1 (2016): 61-69.
  33. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "The primacy of the ethical: propositions for a militant anthropology." Current anthropology36, no. 3 (1995): 409-440.
  34. Smith, Christen A. "Facing the dragon: Black mothering, sequelae, and gendered necropolitics in the Americas." Transforming Anthropology 24, no. 1 (2016): 31-48.
  35. Smith, Christen A. "Blackness, citizenship, and the transnational vertigo of violence in the Americas." American Anthropologist 117, no. 2 (2015): 384-387.
  36. Smith, Christen A. "Sorrow as Artifact: Radical Black Mothering in Times of Terror—A Prologue." Transforming Anthropology 24, no. 1 (2016): 5-7.
  37. Speed, S. (2006). At the crossroads of human rights and anthropology: Toward a critically engaged activist research. American Anthropologist, 108(1), 66-76.
  38. Spillers, Hortense J. "Mama's baby, papa's maybe: An American grammar book." diacritics 17, no. 2 (1987): 65-81.
  39. Vargas, João Helion Costa. Catching hell in the city of angels: Life and meanings of blackness in south central Los Angeles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
  40. Visweswaran, Kamala. "Race and the Culture of Anthropology." American Anthropologist 100, no. 1 (1998): 70-83.
  41. Wright, Michelle M. Becoming black: Creating identity in the African diaspora. Duke University Press, 2004.
  42. Yearwood, G.M., 2018. Heritage as hate: racism and sporting traditions. Leisure Studies, 37(6), pp.677-691.