MUSE in Focus: Confronting Structural Racism

The Grinnell College Libraries has been given temporary access to a selection of free scholarship from Project Muse publishers on the history of structural racism in the United States and how the country can realize anti-racist reform.

The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others at the hands of structural racism have shone a spotlight on racial violence, police brutality, and the deep systemic issues that enable it. Recent protests are calling not only for justice in individual cases of brutality, but for total reform of a system built on decades of racism and inequity. For real change to occur, it is essential to consult the deep corpus of existing evidence-based scholarship on race, history, and public policy to help chart a path toward an anti-racist future.

“MUSE in Focus: Confronting Structural Racism” is a selection of temporarily free books and articles from a wide range of publishers and perspectives about the history of racism in America, its endurance throughout society, and how the country can respond now to enact meaningful and lasting reform. We hope that this selection of research can help inform the necessary conversations and actions around this topic.

Many of MUSE’s participating publishers have temporarily made all or some of their content freely available on the Project MUSE platform, in response to the crucial need for remote access to reliable, vetted teaching and research materials during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Over 20,000 books and 200 journals, from more than 70 university presses and scholarly publishers, are currently available to any user worldwide, with no restrictions on access or usage.

"MUSE in Focus: Confronting Structural Racism" is one of a series of curated selections of trusted scholarly content from our participating publishers, designed to contribute historical, cultural, and social context to current events and issues on global, national, and local scales. Others available include "MUSE in FOCUS: Contextualizing Pandemic" and "MUSE in Focus: Addressing Gun Violence." When appropriate, we may offer additional MUSE in Focus compilations.