Anti-Racism Resources
Article: For Our White Friends Desiring to be Allies
By Courtney Ariel for the Sojourners website
This article discusses the importance of educating ourselves about systemic racism in this country rather than relying on those who are already overburdened by that systemic racism to serve as our educators. Former First Lady, Michelle Obama, was quoted, “Race and racism is a reality that so many of us grow up learning to just deal with. But if we ever hope to move past it, it can't just be on people of color to deal with it. It's up to all of us — Black, white, everyone — no matter how well-meaning we think we might be, to do the honest, uncomfortable work of rooting it out.”
There are many excellent resources out there but here are some options, some of which you had already identified as part of the Diversity Council survey:
Anti–Racist Booklist
Cultivated by Victoria Lynn Alexander, M.Ed. on Twitter
Starter kit:
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Ibram X. Kendi - A People's History of the United States
Howard Zinn
There is a "young people's" version for elementary and middle school readers - White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Robin DiAngelo - So You Want to Talk About Race
Ijeoma Oluo - I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
Austin Channing Brown - Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
Layla Saad - Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning
Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi
Intermediate kit:
- The Burning House: Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America
Anders Walker - The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander - The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America
Khalil Gibran Muhammad - Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland
Jonathan Metzl - A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America
Ronald Takaki - How to Be an Antiracist
Ibram X. Kendi - How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America
Heather Cox Richardson
Specific topics:
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond - Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond
Marc Lamont Hill - Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
James W. Loewen - Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race
Beverly Daniel Tatum - The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein - Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy
Darryl Pinkney
Bios, non-fiction, novels, personal narratives:
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson - The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin - The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X, Alex Haley, and Attallah Shabazz - Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates - Killing Rage: Ending Racism
bell hooks - Becoming
Michelle Obama - An American By Marriage
Tayari Jones - A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota
Compilation by 16 authors - The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother
James McBride - Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Bryan Stevenson - The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea
Robert Wald Sussman - Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist
Eli Saslow
Black feminism:
- How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor - Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment
Patricia Hill Collins - Ain't I a Woman Black Women and Feminism
bell hooks - Bad Feminist: Essays
Roxane Gay - Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
Brittney Cooper - In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
Alice Walker - Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Audre Lorde - Women, Race & Class
Angela Y. Davis - Assata: An Autobiography
Assata Shakur - To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe
Akwugo Emejulu and Francesca Sobande
Black LGBTQ+:
- Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin - Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - A Biomythography
Audre Lorde - Real Life: A Novel
Brandon Taylor - Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
Charlene Carruthers - No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies
E. Patrick Johnson - Since I Laid My Burden Down
Brontez Purnell - The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir
Staceyann Chin - No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America
Darnell L. Moore - The Summer We Got Free
Mia McKenzie - Black Like Me
John Howard Griffin - Black On Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity
C. Riley Snorton
The Anti–Racist Starter Pack: 40 TV Series, Documentaries, Movies, TED Talks, and Books to Add to Your List
By Brea Baker for Parade Magazine
If you prefer listening or watching to reading, this list provides television shows, documentaries, films, and Ted Talks in addition to books.
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