Racism has a staggering impact on the health and wellness of our community. As a healthcare provider, OhioHealth has a unique window into racism’s effect on black communities and people of color in general, and as an organization, we have the responsibility to identify it and work against it.
After the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arberry and Breonna Taylor and the protests that now follow, we want the OhioHealth Wellness Blog to serve as a resource for our community to learn more about racism, dig deeper into it’s impact and provide tools to encourage meaningful conversations and action.
We asked Qiana Williams, OhioHealth’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, to share some of the resources she’s found helpful in this time of awareness and action.
What to read
Articles:
- “The Death of George Floyd, In Context,” by Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker
- “This Is How Loved Ones Want Us To Remember George Floyd,” by Alisha Ebrahimji for CNN.
- The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning The 1619 Project is as important as ever. Take some time to read (or re-read) the entire thing, particularly this essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones
- “You shouldn’t need a Harvard degree to survive birdwatching while black,” by Samuel Getachew, a 17-year-old and the 2019 Oakland youth poet laureate, for the Washington Post
- “It’s exhausting. How many hashtags will it take for all of America to see Black people as more than their skin color?” by Rita Omokha for Elle
- “The Case for Reparations,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates for The Atlantic
Books:
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
- How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
- White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
- Biased by Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt
What to watch
- Speaks Volumes Anti Racism Activist & Educator Jane Elliot Speaks To White Citizens On Receiving
- How to deconstruct racism
- The Hate U Give, a film based on the YA novel offering an intimate portrait of race in America
- Just Mercy, a film based on civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s work on death row in Alabama
- The 1965 debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley
- Becoming, a Netflix documentary following Michelle Obama on her book tour
- When They See Us, a Netflix miniseries from Ava DuVernay about the Central Park Five
What to listen to
- Still Processing, a New York Times culture podcast with Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morrison
- Seeing White, a Scene on the Radio podcast
- Code Switch, an NPR podcast tackling race from all angles
This is not an exhaustive list, there are countless more books, articles, movies and more to help continue conversations about racism in America. Our hope is this can serve as a continuation of the conversations in our community.
