John D. Spilker, Ph.D.

Black lives matter! Black, brown, and indigenous lives are a human rights issue, not a partisan political debate. What can we do together to take the next step to learn about the legacy of racisms and white supremacy and transform our communities? History is not a thing of the past…it built the present...it thrives today. I pledge to take action to achieve equity through policy change. I pledge to learn from and follow the antiracist leadership of people of color. I’m learning how to see and disrupt: 1. my racisms, 2. my active participation in and complicity with “white supremacy culture” (a culture that privileges white people), 3. my socialization and choices to remain in segregated white spaces established by U.S. law, and 4. the debilitating and deadly impact of the “imperialist capitalist white-supremacist patriarchy” (interlocking systems of oppression). Lifelong learning, uncomfortable inner work, and accountability can help me recover from my incentivized historical, social, and political illiteracy and deeply embedded dominance. Together, we can decenter whiteness and focus on black voices, experiences, perspectives, and achievements.

• #SayTheirNames: Jamil Smith, “A Decade of Watching Black People Die” (podcast) & “The Spectacle of Black Death”; Sherrilyn Ifill’s interview; #BlackLivesMatter
• Organizations: NAACP; NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund; Southern Poverty Law Center; Black Futures Lab; YWCA; Equal Justice Initiative
• History Built the Present: brief videos about the legacies of slavery, reconstruction, lynching, segregation, mass incarceration, and ending the silence about history (including Omaha’s 2019 ceremony & community coalition with EJI); Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns; Isabel Wilkerson, Caste; Segregated by Design (website and video)
• Truth-Telling & Reconciliation: Bryan Stevenson’s podcast interview (01/20/20), podcast interview (07/20/20); Nikole Hannah-Jones, “What Is Owed”; Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations”
• U.S. Policing: Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s podcast interview & Condemnation of Blackness; DeRay McKesson, On the Other Side of Freedom & podcast series; Angela Y. Davis, Policing the Black Man; Kerner Commission podcast
• Protest: Peniel Joseph’s podcast interview & The Sword and The Shield; Ta-Nehisi Coates’s podcast interview; Don Lemon, “Monumental Discussions” (podcast); Shima Oliaee, “The Flag and the Fury” (podcast)
• Legal & Prison Systems: Sherrilyn A. Ifill, On the Courthouse Lawn, Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, Angela Y. Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete?; Ava DuVernay, 13th documentary, Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy; True Justice (documentary)
• Antiracism: Ibram X. Kendi’s podcast interview, “The American Nightmare”, “How To Be an Antiracist”
• White Supremacy: Tema Okun, White Supremacy Culture; Adam Serwer’s podcast interview & “White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots”; Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race; Layla F. Saad, White Supremacy & Me; Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark; Lawrence Glickman, “White Backlash Is Nothing New”; Kathy Obear’s ...But I’m Not Racist; Robin DiAngelo’s podcast interview & White Fragility; Joe Feagin, White Racial Frame
• Voter Suppression: Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote; Gilda R. Daniels, Uncounted; After Selma (documentary)
• Literature: W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time; Audre Lourde, Sister Outsider; Toni Morrison, Beloved & The Bluest Eye; Claudia Rankine, Citizen, Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
• History: Eyes on the Prize (14-part PBS doc); EJI reports on the legacy of Slavery, Reconstruction, Lynching, Segregation; Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 podcast & 1619 project; Carol Anderson, White Rage; Henry Louis Gates, Stony the Road; Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning; Douglas Blackmon Slavery by Another Name; Steven Hahn A Nation Under Our Feet 
• Religion: James H. Cone God of the Oppressed; Austin Channing Brown’s podcast interview, video podcast, & I’m Still Here
• Science: Angela Saini: podcast & Return of Race Science; Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid
• Education: Carter G. Woodson, Mis-Education of the Negro; School Colors podcast; Bettina Love’s interview & Abolitionist Teaching; Nikole Hannah-Jones’s interview; Beverley Daniel Tatum, Can We Talk About Race?; bell hooks, Teaching Community; Frank Tuitt, Race, Equity & the Learning Environment; Tia Brown McNair, From Equity Talk to Equity Walk; Cyndi Kernahan, Teaching about Race & Racism; Badia Ahad-Legardy and OiYan Poon, Difficult Subjects; Rick Ayers and William Ayers, Teaching the Taboo; EJI, Teaching Legacy of Lynching curriculum, Pulitzer Center, 1619 project curriculum, Rep. Tom Cotton, “Saving American History Act 2020” (example of white backlash & white silence).
• Music Departments: Jacqueline Warwick, “Music Education Has a Race Problem”; Brandon Keith Brown, “When Black Conductors Aren’t Comfortable”; Loren Kajikawa, “White Supremacy in Departments of Music”; Travis Stimeling & Kayla Tokar, “Whiteness in the Music History Classroom”