May 29, 2020 | jonesw
Conversations about race can be uncomfortable and challenging, but are ultimately necessary to create a more just society. The books and resources below may serve as a starting point in important anti-racist work.
E-books and E-audiobooks
Based off the original workbook, Me and White Supremacy teaches readers how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.
This book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that 'we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.' By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control-relegating millions to a permanent second-class status-even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.
In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. Stamped from the Beginning uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to offer a window into the contentious debates between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists and antiracists.
In How to Be an Antiracist , Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilites—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their posionous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism.
In his trademark style -- a mix of lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, essayistic argument, and reportage -- Coates provides readers a thrillingly illuminating new framework for understanding race: its history, our contemporary dilemma, and where we go from here.
In So You Want to Talk About Race, Editor at Large of The Establishment, Ijeoma Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the "N" word. Perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between people of color and white Americans struggling with race complexities, Oluo answers the questions readers don't dare ask, and explains the concepts that continue to elude everyday Americans.
Bennett adds his unmistakable voice to discussions of racism and police violence, Black athletes and their relationship to powerful institutions like the NCAA and the NFL, the role of protest in history, and the responsibilities of athletes as role models to speak out against injustice. Following in the footsteps of activist-athletes from Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick, Bennett demonstrates his outspoken leadership both on and off the field.
Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.
Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time.
National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
Online Resources
- "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh - McIntosh's landmark essay remains relevant 30 years after its publication and continues to introduce readers to the concept of white privilege.
- "Why You Need To Stop Saying 'All Lives Matter'" by Rachel Cargle - This 2019 article by activist Rachel Cargle unpacks the use of the phrase "All Lives Matter" in response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement.
- "The Death of George Floyd in Context" by Jelani Cobb - This article explores recent racially-charged incidents in America and their larger context.
- The 1619 Project - The New York Times published this series of essays that address the beginning of slavery in America and its enduring aftermath.
- Mapping Police Violence - This database compiles data about police violence throughout the United States in easy-to-read infographics.
- New Era of Public Safety - This toolkit provides key steps for citizens to develop, and demand, a more just system of public safety.
- Promoting Accountability - The Opportunity Agenda provides information on police accountability and how to ask for it in our communities.
- Mental Health Issues Facing the Black Community - This guide explores mental health issues as experienced by the black community and offers resources for finding help.