I couldn’t help but wonder: how can we go beyond performative social media alliances, and bring about a deeper educational and structural change in society, sexual health and beyond in regards to anti-racist work?
In order, to be anti-racist, silence cannot be assumed. This is a passive way to respond to the urgencies of the current world situation, and as a white woman working in sexual health, I acknowledge it is necessary to do the work, reading, knowledge unpicking, protesting, donating, uncomfortable discussions etc., in order to contribute to these conversations and challenge/change systems of oppression.
Sexual health, sexual violence and sex education are not free from racism. I have been spending time curating these so that they are organised to be integral in my sex education and health praxis. If you have already experienced too much collective trauma over the past week, do not feel obliged to read ahead; see free mental health resources for black people in the UK here.
I will first include critical readings of anthropology itself’s relationship with colonialism; a compilation of wider reading, with some honing in on sexual health. These resources also span time and space, and so do not explicitly focus on Black Lives Matter-related content.
Here is a great master google doc of all the current Black Lives Matter petitions, updates on protests, further injustices, and resources/reading/websites. Highly recommend spending time working through it, donating etc. Prioritise this first.
This list (teeny literature review) will roughly focus on the anthropological/sociological course reading I did at university, and is inspired by a friend from my university cohort who has been integral in speaking and protesting at this week’s Black Lives Matter protests in London. I can see these conversations need to be made much more public in order to take academia from the ‘ivory towers’ to public knowledge. Share this with anyone you know who didn’t do social sciences; I promise there is a lot to understand here: many connections to be made between various systems of oppression such as colonialism/imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy etc.
Anti-racist resources need to be taken into consideration concerning public health, and access to healthcare, amongst all other forms of public care/goods, such as social care, education, governance, policing (if it is even recommended as the most useful form of community care/protection), the justice system etc.
I have a lot of these saved as PDFs/physical copies. Please DM or email sexualhealthandthecity@gmail.com about them, although I highly suggest buying texts from independent bookshops, directly supporting the author’s work if you can’t access PDFS in the links below. A great collection of black revolutionary pdf texts can be found here (via @newreadernet Instagram), New Beacon Books specialises in African and Caribbean literature, Pluto Books are currently having a BAME author’s sale until the 21st June, Verso have a free eBook on the end of policing, and JSTOR have lots of articles for free.
This is an edit-able post PLEASE send me anything to add – it is intended to be an open resource.
Racism in the UK
- Natives by Akala (2018) on race, class, education, justice system
- Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race (2017), by Reni Eddo-Lodge also a podcast
- The Black Women’s Movement – Black Cultural Archives — Google Arts & Culture – anti-racist movement led by British women
History and colonialism/imperialism; American racism
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (2010)
- Asad, Talal (1973). Introduction in Anthropology and the colonial encounter
- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (1963)
- An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis by James Baldwin (1970)
- Hall, Stuart (1992). The West and the Rest: discourse and power.
- Mintz, Sidney (1985). Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history [A Marxist-oriented study of the history of sugar.]
- George Monbiot: Bushmen and the House of Lords (2006)
- Europe and the People without History by Eric Wolf (first published in 1982)
- Anthropology’s Dirty Little Colonial Streak (2007)
Anthropological work on racism
- Bonilla, Y. & Rosa, J. (2015). #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States
- Paul Farmer on Structural Violence (2004) (in Haiti, but the theory is useful)
- Goldstein, D. (1999) ‘“Interracial” Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil: Twin Concepts?’,
- McCallum, C. (2005) ‘Racialized Bodies, Naturalized Classes: Moving through the City of Salvador da Bahia’,
- Race, Nature and Culture: an anthropological perspective by Peter Wade (2002)
Re-theorising feminism
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: We should all be feminists | TED Talk (2012)
- Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.
- Angela Davis Women, Race and Class (1983)
- Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay (2014)
- hooks, b. (1981) Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism- Hooks focuses on the intersections of class, gender and race.
- Sister Outsider by Audrey Lorde – particularly ‘The Master’s Tool’s Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House’
- Mahmood, S. (2012). Politics of piety: the Islamic revival and the feminist subject.
- Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak?
Post-colonial theory
- A Taste for “the Other”: Intellectual Complicity in Racializing Practices by Virginia R. Dominguez (1994)
- Fanon, Frantz (1967) Black Skin/White Masks
- Loomba, A. (2005). Colonialism/Postcolonialism
- Said, E. (1978) Orientalism
Sexual health specific resources
Podcasts
- Food 4 Thot – “A multiracial mix of queer writers talk about sex, relationships, race, identity”
- Laid Bare – sex and relationships podcast run by Oloni
- No Country for Young Women – “Life, love and work in a white man’s world. Let’s help each other figure it out!”
- The High Low: Anti-Racism Resources & An Author Special with Candice Brathwaite on Apple Podcasts
- The Receipts Podcast – England’s favourite 3 women podcasters who often speak about relationships/situationships/personal experiences “unadulterated girl talk with no filter”
- WHOREible decisions – podcast run by American women
- This weeks book recommendation, all about love by bell hooks (2001)
Black Sex Educators on Instagram
- Ericka Hart – has seminars, does weekly sex talks, and amazing talks on American racism with their partner Eb
- Intimology Institute – school for sexual wellness
- Jetsettingjasmine – fetish trainer
- Oloni – sexual wellness and relationships content creator
- Rukiat – activist ending STI-gma and sex-educator
- Sex Positive Families – sex education for within families
- Shan Boodram – intimacy educator
- Teamprepster – educating around PrEP (pre risk of HIV exposure medication) in england
Sexual violence
- Chubin, F. (2014). You may smother my voice, but you will hear my silence: An autoethnography on street sexual harassment, the discourse of shame and women’s resistance in Iran.
- Colonizing Black Female Bodies Within Patriarchal Capitalism Benard, A. (2016)
- The Woman Who Created #MeToo Long Before Hashtags (2017) – an article on Tarana Burke
- #MeToo was started for black and brown women and girls. They’re still being ignored (2017)
Sexuality
- Black Queer Studies (2005)
- After Love: Queer Intimacy and Erotic Economies in Post-Soviet Cuba by Noelle Stout (2014)
- HOME AND COMMUNITIES Stonewall (2017) report that includes LGBT experiences of racism
- Opinion: Black trans people are disrespected in life and ignored in death – our lives matter too by Melz Owusu (2020)
- How to Demand Justice for Black Trans People Right Now (2020)
Discussing medical racism
- Decolonising Contraception Collective
- Medical Apartheid (2008)
- Radical Reproductive Justice (2017)
- #DecolonisingContraception – The Importance of Preventing Unethical Practice in SRH and Learning from History | BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health blog (2018)
- How training doctors in implicit bias could save black mothers’ lives (2018)
- How Puerto Rican Women Made Birth Control Possible—at the Expense of Their Health (2018)
- Decolonise Contraception Black Bodies & Sexual Health Youtube talk (2019)
- Eugenicist Marie Stopes could have name removed from London university (2019)- Marie Stopes founded one of the first UK contraception clinics
- A Comprehensive History of Sexual Health – Sexual Health and the City – an earlier blog post
- Disrupted – The Reproductive Justice Issue 4.2 (2020) Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP) in this journal has writers covering SO much content: the Mexican City Policy, menstruation inequality, failing reproductive justice in Israel and Brazil
- Tuskegee Study – Timeline – “The study initially involved 600 black men – 399 with syphilis, 201 who did not have the disease. The study was conducted without the benefit of patients’ informed consent” (2020)
Reports
- Understanding poor sexual health in young Black British Caribbean Men Makeda Gerressu PhD dissertation (2016)
- Ethnicity and sexual risk in heterosexual people attending sexual health clinics in England: a cross-sectional, self-administered questionnaire study (2018)
- Racism, marginalisation and PrEP stereotypes affect PrEP uptake for black MSM in London (2019)
- The State of the Nation (2020)- THTs report on shortfalls in British sexual health policy, being Black and living in a more deprived area worsens sexual health outcomes
- Policy & Advocacy | NAZ – a British sexual health charity doing advocacy, policy and service provision
Get learning. Remember to support, donate, reach out, and listen to those telling their traumas at this time. If you are white, it is time to play an active role.
Main image retrieved from https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Dismantling-Racism-Might/248899.
Sexual Health and the City 