Being a Madisonian

How to start being a more inclusive progressive white citizen

  • Educate yourself about your own race and your own racial story. This is a continuous process
  • Educate yourself about the histories of other races, especially in relation to white supremacy
  • Change your regular routines to include businesses, churches, community centers, shopping areas that are not filled with people who look like you; Take the bus; sit next to someone who doesn’t look like you
  • Join a movement such as Justified Anger and be a regular member
  • Volunteer
  • Change your information-gathering routines; choose ethnic media, follow sources such as Madison365; listen to podcasts such as NPR’s CodeSwtich
  • Be constantly vigilant and brutally honest when your biases rear
  • Read widely, especially books and essays by authors of color
  • Expand your social circles, and make race a frequent conversation; listen to as many voices as possible (lean in)
  • In your personal and professional life, act with a racial consciousness and a keen sense of equity. Step aside so others who have been marginalized can gain power. Give others a boost when you can. Speak out when you see inequities at work. Vote for people of color, even if their principles do not always align with yours.

Workshops/Conferences

  • YWCA Racial Justice Workshops (Madison)
  • YWCA Racial Justice Summit (Madison in Fall)
  • Madison, WI Institute for the Healing of Racism (Madison, Fall/Spring)
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison’ annual Diversity Forums (Fall)
  • White Privilege Conference (National in Spring)
  • YWCA Racial Justice Workshops (Madison)
  • YWCA Racial Justice Summit (Madison in Fall)
  • Madison, WI Institute for the Healing of Racism (Madison, Fall/Spring)
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison’ annual Diversity Forums (Fall)
  • White Privilege Conference (National in Spring)

Books, Essays, Reports

  • “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh
  • Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
  • Racing to Justice: Transforming our Conceptions of Self and other to Build and Inclusive Society by John Powell
  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Deep Diversity: Overcoming Us versus Them by Shakil Choudhury
  • Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools by Glenn Singleton
  • Evicted: Poverty and Profit by Matthew Desmond
  • To Kill the Mockingbird and the sequel Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
  • “Race to Equity” Reports by the Wisconsin Council on Families and Children
  • The Birth of a Nation
  • Boyz N the Hood
  • A Raisin in the Sun
  • The Butler
  • The Help
  • Anything by Spike Lee

  Movies, Documentaries

  • 13th
  • 12 Years a Slave
  • Dear White People
  • Selma
  • Get Out