Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. Discrimination and inequality are problems that cannot be ignored by the church. Victory is committed to raising awareness about the issue of racial discrimination and promoting change. We need to treat all our brothers and sisters in Christ as equals, partnering together to share Jesus with our communities.

Below are some resources you can use to help you educate yourself, engage in conversations about discrimination, and make a difference in your community through promoting change and equality.

Click the videos below to watch and learn about how this issue impacts people in our communities and churches, and what you can do to make a difference.

Below are some links to video messages from other local churches and organizations:

• Message from Assistant Principal CL Whiteside // Wisconsin Lutheran High School
• A Conversation on Race: Where Do We Go From Here? // Wisconsin Lutheran High School
• Race: A Christian Conversation // Playlist by Time of Grace
• A Conversation on Race Relations and God's Word // Pastor Russell Scoggins, Chuqee Fletcher, and Professor Al Sorum
• Hope from Israel: Jesus Wasn't White // Pastor Mike Novotny, Time of Grace

Below are some links to blog posts about racial reconciliation and discrimination, written by Victory staff and others.

YouVersion offers several online reading plans to help you understand what God has to say about diversity and equality, as well as what Christians can do to support one another in the fight for justice.

• Race and Ethnicity: God's Word for Our World (14 days)
• Community Restoration and the Church (4 days)
• Getting It Right with Others (5 days)
• Be The Bridge: A 5-Day Reading Plan from Latasha Morrison (5 days)
• Patterns for Peace (12 days)
• Overcoming (3 days)
• Tony Evans Explores Racial Reconciliation (3 days)

These are a sampling of movies you can consider watching about discrimination and civil rights. Links in the titles will bring you to trailers for the movies.

• To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, NR): Adapted from Harper Lee's novel, this movie follows the story of a white lawyer representing a black man in a court in the south.
• 42 (2013, PG-13): This movie tells the story of Jackie Robinson and the impact his career in the MLB had on the nation.
• Remember the Titans (2000, PG): This tells the true story about people in a newly-integrated high school football team in 1971 Alexandria, VA.
• Selma, Lord Selma (2012, NR): Set in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, this movie tells the story of two young people who help Dr. King organize a black voter registration march in Selma.
• Malcolm X (1992, PG-13): This biographical movie is based on Malcolm X's autobiography and takes you through important events in his life.
• Selma (2014, PG-13): A historical drama about the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches
• 13th (2016, NR): A documentary which traces the mass incarceration of black men back to the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
• The Hate U Give (2018, PG-13): Based on Angie Thomas' 2017 young adult novel, this tells the story of Starr Carter who lives in the worlds of her impoverished neighborhood and the prep school she attends on scholarship.

Here are a few suggestions for books you can read to understand how the issues of inequality and discrimination have developed over the last several hundred years, and what you can do to make a difference:

• The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church's Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby (2020)
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (2020)
• Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson (2017)
• Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian by John Piper (2011)
• Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America by Michael O. Emerson (2001)
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum (1997)
• Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman (1996)

Additionally, there are links below to some guides you can use for discussions about injustice and discrimination.

Click the link below to view a list of books to consider reading with your children. Some of the books deal with topics of discrimination and injustice. Others include diverse characters to help expose your children to a variety of different life experiences. Books are listed in no particular order.

PLEASE NOTE: There are SO many great books on these topics that it would be difficult to list all of them. Sammi Goodger (Comm Director and educator) has read all of the books on this list, but she encourages you to speak to a librarian in your local library's children's section for more suggestions.