Racial Healing: The Institute for the Healing of Racism *
by Reginald Newkirk and Nathan Rutstein, 2000
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/83165.Racial_Healing#
Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race
by Debby Irving, 2014
https://debbyirving.com/the-book/
Uprooting Racism. How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, 3rd edition *
by Paul Kivel, 2011
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95099.Uprooting_Racism
Uprooting Racism. How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, 4th edition
by Paul Kivel, 2017
http://paulkivel.com/books/uprooting-racism-4th-edition/
http://paulkivel.com/types/tools/
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son *
by Tim Wise, 2011
http://www.timwise.org/books-and-dvds/white-like-me/
Healing Racism in America: A Prescription for the Disease
by Nathan Rutstein, 1993
To be one: A battle against racism (Global transformation)
by Nathan Rutstein, 1988
Bread is a Simple Food: Teaching Children about Cultures
by Cherry Steinwender, 2011
Bread comes in different sizes, shapes, colors, and textures. Even so, it’s all bread. Little children also come in different sizes, shapes, and colors, but they all belong to the same human race.
https://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/BookDetails/289155-Bread-is-a-Simple-Food
* May be available at a Room of One’s Own, 315 W. Gorham Street, Madison WI 53703, 608-257-7888 OR
Rainbow Bookstore, 426 W. Gilman St, Madison WI 53703, 608-257-6050
Becoming Brave: Finding the Courage to Pursue Racial Justice Now
by Brenda Salter McNeil, 2020
Reconciliation is not true reconciliation without justice! Brenda Salter McNeil has come to this conviction as she has led the church in pursuing reconciliation efforts over the past three decades. McNeil calls the church to repair the old reconciliation paradigm by moving beyond individual racism to address systemic injustice, both historical and present.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52545568-becoming-brave
Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
by Eddie S. Glaude Jr., 2020
James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race. What can we learn from his struggle in our own moment? Begin Again is Glaude’s endeavor, following Baldwin, to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/45754985-begin-again
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2015
Written as a letter to the author’s teenage son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States.
Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States” (The New York Observer)
Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
by Imani Perry, 2019
Explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in contemporary America and what it means to parent our children in a persistently unjust world.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43427045-breathe
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson
How our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51152447-caste
Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
by Richard Rothstein, 2017
Richard Rothstein argues with exacting precision and fascinating insight how segregation in America—the incessant kind that continues to dog our major cities and has contributed to so much recent social strife—is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state, and federal levels. https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/
Conversations in Black: On Power, Politics, and Leadership
by Ed Gordon, 2020
Ed Gordon offers an unvarnished collection of essays about the state of Black America, drawn from his time on the road interviewing some of today’s most prominent African American leaders and influencers.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45730916-conversations-in-black
Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools
by Amanda E. Lewis and John B. Diamond, 2015
about implicit bias and the school system.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/22104174-despite-the-best-intentions
Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence
by Doris Pilkington, 2013
This extraordinary story of courage and faith is based on the actual experiences of three girls who fled from the repressive life of Moore River Native Settlement, following along the rabbit-proof fence back to their homelands. Assimilationist policy dictated that these girls be taken from their kin and their homes in order to be made white. Settlement life was unbearable with its chains and padlocks, barred windows, hard cold beds, and horrible food. Solitary confinement was doled out as regular punishment. The girls were not even allowed to speak their language. Of all the journeys made since white people set foot on Australian soil, the journey made by these girls born of Aboriginal mothers and white fathers speaks something to everyone.
— Amazon.com
How To Be An Antiracist
by Ibram X. Kendi, 2019
https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist-1
It’s Time to Talk (And Listen): How to Have Constructive Conversations About Race, Class, Sexuality, Ability & Gender in a Polarized World
by Dr. Anatasia S. Kim and Dr. Alicia del Prado, 2019
Conversations about controversial topics can be difficult, painful, and emotionally charged. This user-friendly guide will help you engage in effective, compassionate discussions with family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers about race, immigration, gender, marriage equality, sexism, marginalization, and more.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40890203-it-s-time-to-talk-and-listen
My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love and Forgiveness Paperback
by Patricia Raybon, 1997
http://www.patriciaraybon.com/mybooks/healing-racial-hurt/
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
by Michelle Alexander, 2012
“Now and then a book comes along that might in time touch the public and educate social commentators, policymakers, and politicians about a glaring wrong that we have been living with that we also somehow don’t know how to face. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander is such a work”
— The New York Review of Books
http://newjimcrow.com/
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome – America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
by Dr. Joy Degruy, 2005
As a result of twelve years of quantitative and qualitative research Dr. DeGruy has developed her theory of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, and published her findings in the book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome – America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. The book addresses the residual impacts of generations of slavery and opens up the discussion of how the black community can use the strengths we have gained in the past to heal in the present.
https://www.joydegruy.com/shop
So You Want to Talk About Race
by Ijeoma Oluo, 2018
In this breakout book, Ijeoma Oluo explores the complex reality of today’s racial landscape–from white privilege and police brutality to systemic discrimination and the Black Lives Matter movement–offering straightforward clarity that readers need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35099718-so-you-want-to-talk-about-race
From the Southern Poverty Law Center: SPEAK UP! Responding to Everyday Bigotry
The Southern Poverty Law Center gathered hundreds of stories of everyday bigotry from people across the United States. SPLC then offers suggestions for what actions you might take.
https://www.splcenter.org/20150125/speak-responding-everyday-bigotry
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning
by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds, 2020
https://www.amazon.com/Stamped-Antiracism-National-Award-winning-Beginning/dp/0316453692
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
by Isabel Wilkerson, 2011
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
Towards Humanity: Shifting the Culture of Anti-Racism Organizing
by Tawana Petty,2018
How do current anti-racism organizing methods lead to further dehumanization of many parties involved? How do these methods reinforce the false hierarchical narrative of privilege? How can non-black allies move from “allyship” to “co-liberation”?
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
by Beverly Daniel Tatum, 1997
Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16280._Why_Are_All_The_Black_Kids_Sitting_Together_in_the_Cafeteria_?
A People’s History of the United States
by Howard Zinn, 1980
Howard Zinn (1922-2010) was a historian, playwright, and activist. He wrote the classic A People’s History of the United States, “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those … whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories” (Library Journal). The book, which has sold more than two million copies, has been featured on The Sopranos and Simpsons, and in the film Good Will Hunting. In 2009, History aired The People Speak, an acclaimed documentary co-directed by Zinn, based on A People’s History and a companion volume, Voices of a People’s History of the United States.
“The Origins of Privilege” article in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-origins-of-privilege
“The emotions of white racism and antiracism”
by Lisa B. Spanierman, Arizona State University, and Nolan L. Cabrera, University of Arizona, 2015
(how can we turn white people’s emotions of apathy, fear, rage and guilt to the more productive emotions of empathy, moral outrage, compassion, joy and hope — and encourage productive action to eliminate racial bias?)
http://works.bepress.com/nolan_l_cabrera/26/
Towards A Perspective On Eliminating Racism: 12 Working Assumptions — By Ricky Sherover-Marcuse
Because racism is both institutional and attitudinal, effective strategies against it must recognize this dual character. The elimination of institutionalized racism requires a conscious project of attitudinal transformation. The deliberate attempt to transform racist patterns of thought and action must be accompanied by political and social change. The following assumptions offer a perspective for beginning the work.
https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/towards-a-perspective-on-eliminating-racism-12-working-assumptions/
http://www.unlearningracism.org/writings.htm
Cry, the Beloved Country
by Alan Paton, 1948
An Oprah Book Club selection, Cry, the Beloved Country, the most famous and important novel in South Africa’s history, was an immediate worldwide bestseller in 1948. Alan Paton’s impassioned novel about a black man’s country under white man’s law is a work of searing beauty.
– Amazon.com
Following the Color Line, an Account of Negro Citizenship, in the American Democracy
by Ray Stannard Baker, 1908, 2012
Ray Stannard Baker was a Progressive-era journalist who studied and wrote about “the Negro question.” This book is a compilation of articles that appeared in several publications in about 1908. It represents the visits Baker made to South and North in an attempt to ascertain attitudes toward African-Americans of the day. He writes with total honesty, and some of his descriptions of lynchings are hard to take in. He interviewed both white and black Americans and offers chilling views of the attitudes of white Americans toward black ones … By today’s standards, Baker himself was a racist, but he was an honest observer and a keen student of black-white relations on the time.
Healing Racism: Education’s Role
by Mike Morgan (Author), Nathan Rutstein, 1996
Written by 16 Baha’i experts in race relations & eyewitnesses to the ravages of racial prejudice. Defines this national disease & tells how to diminish racism’s effects through classroom education emphasizing the oneness of humanity and the cousinship of all human beings. Inspirational guidebook for teachers & parents from early grades through college.
The Fatal Shore
by Robert HUGHES, 1987
The history of the birth of Australia which came out of the suffereing and brutality of England’s infamous convict transportation system. With 16 pages of illustrations and 3 maps.
Marriage Beyond Black and White
by David Douglas and Barbara Douglas, 2015
Marriage Beyond Black and White is a powerful story about the marriage of a black man and a white woman, and offers a poignant and sometimes painful look at what it was like to be an interracial couple in the United States from the early 1940s to the mid-1990s.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
by philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn, 1962, 1970, 1996
Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) argued that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a “series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions”, and in those revolutions “one conceptual world view is replaced by another”. The University of Chicago Press has released The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions to the benefit of all students of the history of science, philosophy, and the impact of science on society (and society on the development of science). If every there were a true classic on the history and development of science that is “must” reading for each new generation, it is Kuhn’s benchmark work, The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions.
— Midwest Book Review
D.W. Griffith’s the Birth of a Nation: A History of the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time
by Melvyn Stokes, 2008
The Birth of a Nation (1915) remains the most controversial American film ever made, and its director, D. W. Griffith, one of the most extraordinary figures in film history. It was the first true feature film and did more than any other to launch Hollywood both as an industry and as an idea. The film consolidated a trend in cinematic technique and an approach to dramatic narrative that define American cinema to this day. As a great but ideologically troubled film that offers us a reflection of ourselves as Americans. The Birth of a Nation continues to intrigue, challenge, infuriate, and awe. The book explores in fascinating detail the warped view of history that this great film presents. Griffith, a Southerner, was intent on resurrecting, idealizing, and justifying the South. In this deeply researched and vividly written volume, Melvyn Stokes illuminates the origins, production, reception and continuing history of this ground-breaking, aesthetically brilliant, and yet highly controversial movie.
Suggested reading on civil rights movement
The Kansas City Public Library suggests books for children (elementary, middle school, high school) about the civil rights movement:
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article54316545.html