Anti-Racism Initiative

About

“The empowerment of Black women constitutes the empowerment of our entire community.”
— Kimberle Crenshaw

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
— Angela Davis

The American Medical Women’s Association is in the process of developing its Antiracism Committee. We welcome everyone’s participation. This resource page is a starting place and is not an exhaustive resource. Additional resources will be added over time. We welcome everyone’s input. If you wish to include a resource or have concerns about any resources already included, please contact us.

Get Involved   Read Our Statement   Our Commitment

Our Commitment

Racism is one of the most urgent public health crises that we face, and we commit to addressing it through the following actions:

  • Review and where necessary, update our organizational policies to ensure that they are anti-racist.
  • Incorporate a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) lens, with a focus on anti-racism, into each of our committees and initiatives with the goal of preventing and undoing racism.
  • Advocate for policies and actions that eliminate racism within our healthcare system.
  • Advocate for the inclusion, in medical schools and residency programs, of a curriculum on social determinants of health, impact of racism on health, and racism in medicine.
  • Deconstruct the notion of race as a biological determinant in health, science, and medicine
  • Expand opportunities for Black women to become physicians and realize their career aspirations.
  • Advocate for law enforcement accountability and transparency in reporting and banning of deadly force as a restraint method (e.g. neck restraints).
  • Advocate for accountability at the institutional, state, and national level.
  • Advocate for government recognition of racism as a public health crisis at both the state and federal levels and for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to commit to studying the health effects of racism.
  • Provide training to physicians and students on racism, bias, and active allyship.
  • Build a curriculum for physicians and students who do not identify as BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) to learn and participate in antiracism work.

Read full version HERE.

Online Resources

Articles

Position Statements and Academic Articles:

Articles in the Media:

Books

We suggest that you consider purchasing those books you wish to own from BIPOC-owned booksellers in your community or online.

  • Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini
  • Uprooting Racism by Paul Kivel
  • Just Medicine by Dana Bowen Matthew
  • Seeing Patients by Augustus A. White
  • Fatal Invention by Dorothy Roberts
  • Black Man in a White Coat by Damon Tweedy
  • The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
  • A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature by Jacqueline Goldsby
  • We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
  • The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward
  • So You Want to Talk About Race? by Ijeoma Oluo
  • The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality by Thomas M. Shapiro
  • Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
  • How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
  • Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
  • My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem
  • White Rage by Carol Anderson
  • When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson
  • What Truth Sounds Like by Michael Eric Dyson
  • An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
  • White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
  • Dying of Whiteness by John Metzl
  • Mindful of Race by Ruth King
  • Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington
  • Medical Bondage by Deirdre Cooper Owens
  • Biased by Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt
  • Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children In A Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey
  • Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
  • Brutal Imagination by Cornelius Eady
  • Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens The Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era by Jerry Mitchell
  • They Were Her Property by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
  • I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
  • Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Beverly Daniel Tatum
  • Genesis Begins Again by Alicia D. Williams
  • Dear Martin by Nic Stone
  • The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
  • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
  • The Color of LawT by Richard Rothstein
  • The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward
  • Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
  • Stella by Starlight by Sharon M. Draper
  • Anything by Angie Thomas
  • The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
  • Brutal Imagination by Cornelius Eady
  • The Colors Of Us by Karen Katz
  • Skin Again by bell hooks
  • Let’s Talk About Race by Julius Lester
  • Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
  • All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
  • Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
  • Monster by Walter Dean Myers
  • This Promise of Change by Jo Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy
  • This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa
  • 100 Best Books by Black Female Authors, 1850 – Present | ZORA
  • Anti-Racism Books for Kids
  • Twelve Books to Help Children Understand Race, Anti-Racism and Protest

Films/Documentaries/Videos/Series