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On Friday, Alexis Ohanian, one of Reddits co-founders, said that hes stepping down from the sites board because it is the right thing. He wants the company to appoint a Black board member in his place.

It is long overdue Ohanian said. Im doing this for me, for my family, and for my country. Im writing this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks: What did you do?

He also committed to giving $1 million to Colin Kaepernicks Know Your Rights Camp as well as donating future gains in his Reddit stock to serve the black community, chiefly to curb racial hate.

Ohanians quest for absolution is vague. He doesnt specify the source of whatever guilt he is expiating here, nor any specific injustice that he contributed to that might explain what his departure is fixing. Were left to guess.

There at least a few things that have gone wrong in Ohanians time that he might be feeling bad about:

One of his biggest missteps was his failure to do anything as his platform became an incubator for some of the most toxic, extreme communities online. During Gamergate, Ohanian, et al.,more or less stood by as their platform became an organizing tool for vicious right-wing trolls who were aggressively harassing women in the gaming industry under the ridiculous guise of caring about ethics in gaming journalism.

Gamergate is often cited as a turning point in the internet culture wars, a moment when it became clear that the warped trolls werent just posting for the lulzthey were actually sexist and racist bigots who were eager to terrorize people. To this day, the almost-official GamerGate subreddit sits unbanned on Reddit, despite having been a hub for the movement.

Ohanian and Reddit were also slow to address other virulent communities of hate on the platform. The site and platform eventually did take action on some of the worst communities, banning subreddits like r/CringeAnarchy, which spread depressingly gross, incendiary content in the aftermath of the New Zealand Christchurch shooting.

He and the company also stood idly by as r/The_Donald, a subreddit featuring Trumps most toxic supporters online, grew into a massive community. Reddit eventually quarantined it, the platforms term for isolating problematic communities and making it harder to access them.

Ohanians move is especially bizarre in that he doesnt seem to have secured anything tangible from the Reddit board. There doesnt seem to be any guarantee that the company will do as he urges and hire a black candidate, nor is there any demand on his part that the Black hire be committed to any particular vision of racial justice. Black representation alone is not a guarantee of making meaningful strides to racial equity. At least he went out in the most Reddit way possiblewith a weird post that leaves you feeling faintly embarrassed for having read it.

Here is the original post:
Reddit Executive Chairman Resigns From the Site's Board, Posts Cringe - Mother Jones

New York Times writer and opinion editor Bari Weiss offered insight about the internal battle among her colleagues following the publishing of an op-ed written by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark that sparked a major backlash from its own staff.

Hours before the Times offered a mea culpa for running Cotton's piece that called for the troops to be sent in to quell the George Floyd riots, Weiss claimed that a "civil war" was brewing within the paper

"The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same," Weiss began a thread on Twitter. "The Old Guard lives by a set of principles we can broadly call civil libertarianism. They assumed they shared that worldview with the young people they hired who called themselves liberals and progressives. But it was an incorrect assumption."

NY TIMES ISSUES 'MEA CULPA,' SAYS TOM COTTON OP-ED ON GEORGE FLOYD RIOTS 'RUSHED,' FAILED TO MEET STANDARDS

She continued, "The New Guard has a different worldview, one articulated best by @JonHaidt and @glukianoff. They call it 'safetyism,'in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech."

Weiss pointed to the controversial 2018 decision made by The New Yorker to disinvite Steve Bannon from its Ideas Festivalas an "example" of the ideological battle among the left, stressing "there are dozens and dozens of examples."

NY TIMES REPORT ABOUT TESLA OWNERS DISTURBED BY ELON MUSK'S EMBRACE OF 'RED PILL' SPARKS MOCKERY ON TWITTER

"I've been mocked by many people over the past few years for writing about the campus culture wars. They told me it was a sideshow. But this was always why it mattered: The people who graduated from those campuses would rise to power inside key institutions and transform them," Weiss continued. "I'm in no way surprised by what has now exploded into public view. In a way, it's oddly comforting: I feel less alone and less crazy trying to explain the dynamic to people. What I am shocked by is the speed. I thought it would take a few years, not a few weeks."

The Times editor then pointed to the paper's motto "all the news that's fit to print," claiming that one group within outlet "emphasizes the word 'all,' while the other emphasizes "the word 'fit.'"

DEMS TRASH NY TIMES OVER FRONT-PAGE HEADLINE DEEMED TOO FAVORABLE TO TRUMP

"I agree with our critics that it's a dodge to say 'we want a totally open marketplace of ideas!'There are limits. Obviously. The question is: does his view fall outside those limits? Maybe the answer is yes," Weiss said. later alluding to a recent poll."If the answer is yes, it means that the view of more than half of Americans are unacceptable. And perhaps they are."

After Times editorial page editor James Bennet and Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger defended the op-ed, a spokeswoman released astunning statement Thursday evening claiming Cotton's piece never should have been published.

NY TIMES WRITERS IN 'OPEN REVOLT' AFTER PUBLICATION OF COTTON OP-ED, CLAIM BLACK STAFF 'IN DANGER'

"We've examined the piece and the process leading up to its publication. This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our standards," the statement read. "As a result, we're planning to examine both short term and long term changes, to include expanding our fact-checking operation and reduction the number of op-eds we publish."

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Critics blasted the mea culpa, many of them citing the op-eds written by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Erdogan, and even the leader of the Taliban that apparently met their standards in years past.

Cotton's communications director, Caroline Tabler, told Fox News, "We werent contacted by the New York Times in advance of this statement and our editorial process was similar to our past experiences at the New York Times and other publications. We're curious to know what part of that process and this piece didnt meet their standards."

Fox News' Sam Dorman contributed to this report.

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NY Times editor Bari Weiss says there's a 'civil war' within paper amid Tom Cotton uproar - Fox News

A Black Lives Matter t-shirt sparked a fist fight on the steps of a small town New Zealand church.

A strange fracas in the rolling green hills of Te Kuiti as the United States roils in race protests thousands of miles away shows how deep American-style culture wars have seeped into Kiwi lives.

A lone voice startles a congregation at prayer in a Te Kiti church.

It shatters the unconscious silence parishioners kneel within, heads bowed, hands clasped - and into which another man reads a bible passage aloud.

READ MORE:* MAGA hats: A relic of a 'dark and racist history'* Jacinda Ardern says George Floyd situation in US 'horrifying'* As US braces for more violence, George Floyd killing protests spread to London, Berlin and Toronto

"Why are you wearing such an offensive T-shirt to mass you fool!" comes the demand.

They shake their heads. How strange to interrupt a reading. Perhaps it's a one-off.

The reader pushes on through the fine print until he reaches the solace of a full-stop and can utter his closing refrain - Lord hear our prayer.

But as he makes towards the pew he's interrupted again.

"Buffoon!" an icy-moustached man from Benneydale called Leo Leitch, yells.

Fellow catholics John Whyte and his wife Jess wore Black Lives Matter T-shirts to church that Sunday in December 2019.

Abigail Dougherty/Stuff

Thousands of protesters marched in Auckland on June 1 in solidarity after the death of African American George Floyd while in police custody.

They believe in the cause, but never expected the trouble.

After the service, congregants mingle outside for chit-chat, but Leitch wants answers.

He claims the parish priest at the time, Father Matt McAuslin, congratulated him on his outburst and shares he views about Black Lives Matter.

"The parish priest said to me, us three are probably the only ones who know the truth about Black Lives Matter."

McAuslin encouraged Leitch to question Whyte about the T-shirt, but to leave him out of it, Leitch claims.

"So I went up to him and demanded to know why he was wearing such an offensive T-shirt to mass."

Whyte was shocked by Leitch's "screeds of vindictiveness".

"My response was I know why I'm wearing the T-shirt, I'm not sure why you're abusing a reader while doing a reading," Whyte says.

The argument escalates.

Christel Yardley/Stuff

St George's Catholic Church in Te Kiti in March, where a scuffle broke out over a Black Lives Matter t-shirt.

Whyte says Leitch pushed passed a person standing between them, prompting a warning from him to back off.

"He used one hand to push my chest which I found to be quite an aggressive response, and then he smacked my wife on the face with his hand," Whyte says.

This is what caused Whyte to push back, with what he says was a single "shove".

Leitch agrees that he walked towards Whyte and challenged him twice, but says he was the one met with a "flurry of punches" to the head by both Whyte and his wife.

Whatever the case, no-one is seriously injured as elderly bystanders throw themselves in to hold the scuffling parties apart.

Both Whyte and Leitch spoke to the police, but the incident was left where it was, on the church steps.

While Whyte strongly supports Black Lives Matter, he is not keen to speak to Stuff further and wants to forget the fracas.

"Although I expect that will not be an easy thing to do," he says.

"Never in my wildest dreams would I expect wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt to mass in Te Kiti would result in this."

But experts studying the impact of extremist views arent so surprised such things are beginning to make themselves felt even in the quietest of places.

As people entrench in increasingly disparate online realities, its only going to get worse, they say.

Christel Yardley/Stuff

Leitch at his Benneydale home. Leitch has no regrets about causing a scuffle over a Black Lives Matter T-shirt at mass.

Leitch sits at his kitchen table one brooding, late summer's morning, explaining why he believes Black Lives Matter is an "evil organisation".

Religious iconography is peppered throughout the house: a crucifix at the doorway, Mary in the kitchen, Pope John Paul II on the living-room side table.

Leitch's house looks like it used to be a corner-store, blue-rimmed, lacy drapes, upright against a sky that rolls about like corrugated iron.

He lives in Benneydale, a lonely King Country settlement hanging off State Highway 30.

Last year, residents defended the pride of its English name: a combination of two government mining officials in the 1940s - Charlie Benney and Tom Dale.

Later, road signs with the town's recently added Mori name - Maniaiti - were defaced by grey and black spray paint.

Inside Leitch's house, light draws inward into a laptop screen, blaring back the blue and red banner of Rupert Murdochs right-leaning Fox News.

Leitch believes Fox is the most balanced and reputable news outlet there is. He also reads a lot from Breitbart, a platform described by its former boss and once-Donald Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon, as a platform for the alt-right.

Christel Yardley/Stuff

Leo Leitch follows world events on the internet primarily through conservative media outlets.

Most people don't know the truth about Black Lives Matter, Leitch says, most people don't know the truth about anything.

"I've seen them, I've seen videos of their behaviour - their behaviour is violent, aggressive, nasty.

"There are some people who would have a superficial knowledge who probably think it's a good organisation.

"They probably think it's standing up against persecution of Negroes by police, and that's the superficial veneer that it stands on.

"On TV news you won't hear anything bad about Black Lives Matter nor in the Waikato Times."

Leitch follows current events and American politics keenly and the internet is his portal. But the keyhole through which he consumes his information has narrowed and now Donald Trump has come to power.

"He's the best president America's ever had."

He maintains he's not racist, Martin Luther King's one of his heroes in fact.

"I believe everyone is equal, one law for all," he says.

The "truth and justice" of his catholicism compelled him to take action against the "offensive" T-shirt all those months ago.

"[Black Lives Matter] is an American organisation that's got nothing to do with us here in New Zealand, let alone in Te Kiti," he says with the laptop on which he consumes right-wing American media sitting open at his kitchen table.

"God knows why the fellow was wearing the T-shirt, why he bought it and has it I don't know."

Win McNamee/Getty Images

The D.C. National Guard stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial monitoring a large crowd protesting against the death of George Floyd, on June 2.

The killing of George Floyd, under the knee of a Minnesotan police officer for nearly nine minutes, continues to horrify over ten days after it happened.

It sparked protests across the U.S, some developing into riots.

A viral video of Floyd pleading, "I can't breathe", echoes the death of Eric Garner, killed in a police chokehold six years before.

Police officer Derek Chauvin has been charged with second degree murder, and three others for aiding and abetting the murder.

Recently streets in Auckland and Wellington were filled with Black Lives Matter protests.

One of the organisers of the Auckland march, Mez Tekeste, said forces are trying to discredit the movement.

"At the end of the day, this is about equality.

"Black people are disadvantaged, systemically and institutionally, especially in America, and to a lesser degree, here."

The protest in Auckland had been nothing but peaceful, Tekeste said, and it was amazing to see thousands of people of different cultures take a stand against injustice.

New Zealand's race relations commissioner Meng Foon said the movement stands against racism and violence and has come about through the legacy of slavery.

"Seeing the livestream of the death really hurt a lot of people."

Abigail Dougherty/Stuff

Thousands people gathered at Aotea Square in Auckland CBD on June 1 in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

New Zealanders are embracing the movement, partly due to compassion, partly due to our own ingrained, institutional racism.

"Racism has happened here, going back to the 1840s - the New Zealand Wars, the legislation against Mori and Chinese, we've had the dawn raids, the Tuhoe incidents and the police armed response teams which are targeting Mori and Pacifika, yet this trial came out of the March 15 murders in Christchurch."

He makes a sharp delineation between the majority of peaceful protestors and looters, whose actions are unjustified.

There's no irony in a scuffle at a Te Kiti church involving two white people fighting over Black Lives Matter, he says.

"I think people generally have some human values. Even in the times of apartheid in South Africa, there were white people standing with black people and fighting apartheid."

But he urges those who hold generalisations about race to question themselves.

"For the person who found the T-shirt offensive, probably he did not know what the notion of the message is.

"It's very important to research and ask what the reason behind it is.

"A lot of hatred of differences occurs because people just don't know, and sometimes people just don't want to know."

Chris Skelton/Stuff

New Zealand's race relations commissioner, Meng Foon, said racial hatred arises through ignorance.

But Waikato University Politics Lecturer Justin Phillips said the internet's reach hasn't helped people to question themselves.

"You've got groups who might be reading material from completely different online sources and in doing so develop completely different online worlds and realities.

"It's really only slated to get worse."

If you follow conservative U.S commentators on social media, you'll see videos of Manhattan being destroyed by rioters right now, Phillips said.

He's not surprised U.S cultural movements have seeped into small town New Zealand.

CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Benneydale Catholic Leo Leitch believes Black Lives Matter is an "evil organisation"

American politics is becoming a game to follow along and participate in, he said.

The internet can make people really feel like they can participate in political change, Phillips said.

"You used to have a real opportunity to meet candidates and participate in a local political process, and this is a return to that.

"I don't know Leo, I don't know him personally, but he might consider himself to be a keyboard warrior, out there trying to fight the good fight - so to speak."

Christel Yardley/Stuff

St George's Church, Te Kiti. The parish priest at the time of the scuffle, Father Matt McAuslin, is no longer serving there.

But what about the shadowy figure of the parish priest, had he quietly shared these deeply divisive views with his parishioner?

Had he covertly agreed with Leitch that Black Lives Matter was "evil"?

Read this article:
Prayers and a punch-up as culture wars come to NZ - Stuff.co.nz

Neither the Mormons nor the Wobblies fit comfortably in narratives of Western development dominated by cowboys, railroad men, ranchers and other boomer archetypes. They are outliers in that heroic story, even as they seem to occupy opposite sides of the American political ledger. The I.W.W., to the extent that it is remembered at all, belongs to the annals of the homegrown left, while the Mormon Church, a far more enduring institution, has become nearly synonymous with American conservatism.

But to Stegner, in the years between the end of the Depression and the first peak of the Cold War, the gulf didnt seem so wide. A word that recurs in the pages of Mormon Country dealing with the social organization of Mormon towns and wards is solidarity, which is also the theme of the I.W.W. anthem and a keyword in the lexicon of labor radicalism. That shared value of communal participation and collective identity is what defines the Wobblies and the Latter-day Saints as dissident formations in the landscape of the West.

Its Stegners ability to perceive that common thread, and to hear the counter-individualist strains in other Western voices, that makes him hard to classify. His nonfiction writing on the West including the memoir Wolf Willow, the essay collection The Sound of Mountain Water and a biography of the Utah-bred historian and critic Bernard DeVoto bespeaks a passionate, lifelong environmentalism, a legacy that continues in the work of at least two of his erstwhile students, Wendell Berry and Edward Abbey. But Stegners contempt for the kind of boomer represented by Bo Mason reappeared as intolerance of another kind toward the baby boom hippies whose selfish hedonism soured his mood in the 1960s and after. All the Little Live Things features a counterculture villain who brings intellectual pretension, bad hygiene and free love into the peaceful California valley where Joe and Ruth Allston are trying to tend their garden. Later, in The Spectator Bird, Stegner will indulge Joe in a tirade about the age of infidelity, when casual coupling and wife-swapping and therapeutic prostitution are accepted forms of violence as normal as mugging and murder.

Joes distaste for this age, in which whinnyings and slobberings and outr sexual practices are celebrated in every novel you pick up, reflects Stegners disaffection with the literary culture of the time. As Mark McGurl explains it in The Program Era, his critical history of postwar fiction and the rise of creative writing, Stegner saw his ethic of integrity and group participation (modeled in the writing workshops he taught) displaced by an aesthetic of openness and liberation. Stegner himself became an avatar of the literary establishment. The daily New York Times reviewed Angle of Repose favorably, but the Sunday Book Review ran two columns attacking it, one by William DuBois condemning it as too well made and therefore irredeemably middlebrow, the other by John Leonard, after the novel won a Pulitzer Prize, decrying the jurys preference for a comfortable, tame, toothless and affectionate book over more challenging candidates.

The irony of The New York Times waving the anti-establishment flag is mirrored by Stegners sense of himself a prizewinning author with a Ph.D. in English, a professor at an elite university as an aggrieved outsider. This paradox is integral to his character, and his acute sense of it is one of the reasons hes worth reading now, when we spend so much time mapping the fault lines between privilege and resentment and fighting over who is part of the elite and who is entitled to victim status. He cant be enlisted as a partisan in the culture wars, but he isnt a pacifist either. Hes more like a one-man battlefield, whose dreams of peace the repose and safety promised in those titles express the longings of a tectonically divided civilization.

In an essay called Born a Square, Stegner imagines a young Western writer discovering himself to be at odds with both the dominant literary mores and the background that should provide material. The world he most feels and he feels it even while he repudiates it offers him only frontier heroics or the smugness of middle-class provincialism, while other regional, ethnic and social identities seem to provide richer subject matter to his peers. Why, Stegner wonders, havent Westerners been able to find in their own time, place and tradition the characters, situations, problems, quarrels, threats and injustices out of which literature is made?

This question has been answered, since Stegners death, both in tribute and in opposition to his example. His anti-mythological stance has been picked up, and sometimes turned against him, by writers attuned to histories and identities that his writing left out. In 1996 Elizabeth Cook-Lynn published a collection of essays bluntly titled Why I Cant Read Wallace Stegner, which pointed out the absence in his books of any serious engagement with the Indigenous history of the region. Any half-awake reader will notice that while Indians, Mexicans, African-Americans and Asian immigrants are not entirely missing from his fiction, they are at best marginal presences, sometimes servile, sometimes comical, but more features of the landscape than fully human actors within it.

See the rest here:
Wallace Stegner and the Conflicted Soul of the West - The New York Times

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The killing of George Floyd last month in Minneapolis has sparked protests across the US and around the world over racial injustice. Demonstrators have taken to the streets -- and to social media -- to voice their outrage at long-standing issues like police brutality and systemic racism and oppression.

People are also sharing resources to help others better understand the issues at hand and to learn how to be better allies to black Americans. Dozens of books, novels, films and TV series addressing the discrimination that people of color face have been circulating online. Some have been recommended by libraries like the Chicago Public Library and the Oakland Public Library. One Twitter thread of antiracist children's books, shared by teacher Brittany Smith, wentviral. And a Google doc compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein also shares several recommendations of what to watch and read.

Here are some recommendations pulled from those lists and crowdsourced from CNET staff.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander: This book challenges the idea that President Barack Obama's election welcomed a new age of colorblindness.

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminismby bell hooks: This work explores issues such as the impact of sexism on black women during slavery and racism among feminists.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates: Framed as a letter to his son, Coates pursues the question of how to live free within a black body in a country built on the idea of race, a falsehood most damaging to the bodies of black women and men.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X: In this classic text, Muslim leader Malcolm X shares his life story and talks about the growth of the Black Muslim movement.

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo: This book explores how white people uphold racial inequality when they react a certain way to their assumptions about race being challenged.

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde: Black lesbian poet and feminist writer Lorde shares a collection of essays and speeches exploring sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia and class.

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis: The activist and scholar shows the link between several movements fighting oppression and state violence.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: The author's debut memoir explores themes like loneliness, bigotry and love.

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon: This text explores the period following the Emancipation Proclamation in which convicts were brought back into involuntary servitude.

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi: The historian chronicles how racist ideas have shaped US history and provides tools to expose them.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson: This book tells the story of the migration of black Americans who left the South seeking better lives.

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, From Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation by Daina Ramey Berry: This text explores how in early America, slaves were commodities in every phase of life.

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson: The historian addresses the forces opposing black progress in America throughout history.

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi: The founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center uses history, science, class, gender and his own journey to examine racism and what to do to fight it in all forms.

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr.: The author explores the war on crime starting in the 1970s and why it had the support of several African American leaders in urban areas.

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper: In a world where black women's anger is portrayed as negative and threatening, Cooper shares that anger can be a source of strength to keep fighting.

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon: This memoir explores the impact that lies, secrets and deception have on a black body and family, as well as a nation.

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad: This book asks readers to address their own biases, and helps white people tackle their privilege so they can stop harming people of color, even unconsciously.

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics by George Lipsitz: This text looks at white supremacy and explores how the concept of "whiteness" has been used to define, bludgeon and control the racialized "other."

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts: This book illustrates how America systemically abuses Black women's bodies.

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing by Dr. Joy DeGruy: This book explores the impact that repeated traumas endured across generations have on African Americans today.

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois: In this influential collection of essays, Du Bois, who played a critical role in shaping early 20th-century black protest strategy, argues that begging for rights that belong to all people is beneath a human's dignity, and accommodating to white supremacy would only maintain black oppression.

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo: The author provides a blueprint for everyone on how to honestly and productively discuss race and shares ways to bring about change.

The Underground Railroadby Colson Whitehead: This novel follows a young slave's desperate journey toward freedom.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead: Two boys are sentenced to reform school in Florida during the Jim Crow era.

Passing by Nella Larsen: This novel explores the fluidity of racial identity through the story of a light-skinned woman who's married to a racist white man who doesn't know about her African American heritage.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi: The book tells the story of two half sisters born in different villages in 18th-century Ghana and their descendants, with one sister later living in comfort and the other sold into slavery.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: A young couple leaves Nigeria for the West, each following a different path: She confronts what it means to be black in the US, while he lives undocumented in Britain. They reunite 15 years later in Nigeria.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: The 1937 classic follows the journey of an independent black woman, Janie Mae Crawford, in her search for identity.

Roots: The Saga of an American Familyby Alex Haley: This novel is based on Haley's family history, and tells the story of Kunta Kinte, who is sold into slavery in the US.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith: This novel tells the story of an interracial family impacted by culture wars.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison: A nameless narrator describes growing up in the south, going to and being expelled from a Negro college, moving to New York and, amid violence and confusion, ultimately going to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he sees as himself.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty: This satire follows a man who tries to reinstate slavery and segregate the local high school, leading to a Supreme Court case.

13th (Netflix): Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores racial inequality in the US, with a focus on prisons.

When They See Us (Netflix): Ava DuVernay's gut-wrenching -- and essential -- miniseries is based on the true story of the falsely accused young teens known as the Central Park Five.

Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement (BET): This documentary explores the evolution of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Dear White People (Netflix): Based on a film of the same name, this series shows the biases and injustices that a group of students of color face at Winchester University, a predominantly white Ivy League college.

American Son (Netflix): An estranged couple meet at a police station in Florida to try to find their teenage son.

If Beale Street Could Talk (Hulu): Based on the James Baldwin novel, this Barry Jenkins film centers on the love between an African American couple whose lives are torn apart when the man is falsely accused of a crime.

Blindspotting (Hulu with Cinemax): Collin needs to make it through three more days of probation, and his relationship with his best friend is tested after he sees a cop shoot a suspect during a chase.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Available to rent): A young black man dreams of reclaiming his childhood home in a now-gentrified neighborhood in San Francisco.

Fruitvale Station (Available to rent): Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, the biographical film tells the story of Oscar Grant III, who was killed by a white police officer in 2009.

Selma (Available to rent): Directed by Ava Duvernay, the historical drama follows civil rights demonstrators in 1965 as they marched from Selma to Montgomery.

The Hate U Give (Hulu with Cinemax) -- Based on the young adult novel by Angie Thomas: The story follows Starr Carter's struggle to balance the poor, mostly black neighborhood she lives in and the wealthy, mostly white school she attends. Things become more complicated after she witnesses a police officer killing her childhood best friend.

16 Shots (Showtime): This documentary investigates the 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in Chicago.

Rest In Power: The Trayvon Martin Story (Paramount): This six-episode series follows the life and legacy of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was fatally shot in 2012 in Sanford, Florida.

America to Me (Starz): The documentary series provides a look into a year at Chicago's Oak Park and River Forest High School, one of the nation's top performing and diverse public schools.

Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas (HBO): Comic and writer Wyatt Cenac explores the police's excessive use of force in black communities and discusses solutions with experts in this late-night talk/comedy series. The show is currentlyfree to watch on YouTube.

Do the Right Thing (Available to rent): Salvatore "Sal" Fragione, an Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn, and neighborhood local Buggin' Out butt heads after Buggin' Out becomes upset that the restaurant's Wall of Fame only shows Italian actors. Tensions flare up as the wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to others in the neighborhood.

BlacKkKlansman (HBO Max): Ron Stallworth, the first African-American detective to work in the Colorado Springs Police Department, sets out to infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan.

The Wire (HBO): This show explores Baltimore's narcotics scene from the perspectives of both law enforcement and drug dealers and users.

(Disclosure: CNET is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of ViacomCBS, which also owns Paramount and Showtime.)

It's Okay to Be Different by Todd Parr: This book shares the importance of acceptance, understanding and confidence.

Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X by Ilyasah Shabazz: Written by Malcolm X's daughter, this book tells the story of the boy who became one of the most influential leaders.

Let's Talk About Race by Julius Lester: Lester tells his story and discusses what makes us all special.

The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander: The award-winning picture book, based on a poem by Alexander and with illustrations by Kadir Nelson, chronicles the struggles and triumphs of black Americans.

Let it Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters by Andrea Davis Pinkney: This book tells the stories of courageous black women who fought against oppression, including Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman.

The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles: This tells the story of the first African American child to integrate a school in New Orleans.

Something Happened in Our Town: A Child's Story About Racial Injustice by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins and Ann Hazzard: The story follows a white family and a black family discussing a police shooting of a black man in their town, and aims to answer children's questions about these kinds of events and to inspire them to challenge racial injustice.

My Hair is a Garden by Cozbi A. Cabrera: When a girl named Mackenzie is taunted by classmates about her hair, a neighbor shows her the true beauty of natural black hair.

Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh: Nearly 10 years before Brown vs. Board of Education, an American citizen of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage was denied entry into a "whites only" school, which led her parents to organize the Hispanic community and file a lawsuit. This ultimately ended segregated education in California.

Blended by Sharon Draper: This story about 11-year-old Isabella's blended family explores themes like divorce and racial identity.

Young Water Protectors: A Story About Standing Rock by Aslan Tudor, Kelly Tudor and Jason EagleSpeaker: A few months after 8-year-old Aslan came to North Dakota to try and stop a pipeline, he returned to find the world was now watching.

My Family Divided: One Girl's Journey of Home, Loss, and Hope by Diane Guerrero and Erica Moroz: Actress Diane Guerrero tells the story of her undocumented immigrant parents being taken from their home, detained and deported when she was a child in Boston.

The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson: Two girls form a friendship atop a fence that separates the segregated African American side of town from the white side. The book is illustrated by E.B. Lewis.

We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell: A citizen of the Cherokee Nation tells the story of modern Native American life.

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford: This book tells the story of Arturo Schomburg, who loved to collect books, letters, music and art from Africa and the African diaspora and to shed light on the achievements of people of African descent. His collection ultimately made it to the New York Public Library, and is now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Lailah's Lunchbox: A Ramadan Story by Reem Faruqi: When Lailah is enrolled in a new school in a new country, she's worried her classmates won't understand why she isn't joining them in the lunchroom during Ramadan.

The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson: The book, with art by Rafael Lpez, is about how to be brave and find connection with others, even when you feel alone and scared.

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis: This classic tells the story of a boy's journey to find his father.

IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All by Chelsea Johnson, LaToya Council and Carolyn Choi: Nine characters share their stories and backgrounds in this book celebrating allyship and community.

CNET's Anne Dujmovic contributed to this report.

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Books and films to help people of all ages learn about systemic racism and violence - CNET