An Anti-Racist Reading List: 20 Books Recommended by Open Culture Readers

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You may have received an email from your favorite online retailer, your
boss, university president, or the CEO of your bank: "It has come to
our attention that racism is real, and it is really, really bad."
Opportunism is real too, but a significant number of individuals seem
to have finally drawn the same conclusion and feel morally compelled to
do something about an epidemic that has-very discriminately-killed tens
of thousands of black, indigenous, and people of color in the U.S.
through the unequal distribution of medical resources, and dozens more
at the hands of the police and racist vigilantes. That's only in the
past three months.

But racism isn't new; the current conflict has been on its way for a
very long time. How long? Anti-racist scholar and activist Ibram X.
Kendi, author of the National Book Award-Winning Stamped from the
Beginning, would sayÃÂ from the country's earliest settlement and
enslavement of African people. "For nearly six centuries," he writes,
"antiracist ideas have been pitted against two kinds of racist ideas:
segregationist and assimilationist," Kendi wrote during the protests in
Ferguson and other U.S. cities. At the time, antiracists were largely
characterized in mainstream media as fringe agitators, naÃÂ¯ve Gen-Z
neophytes, and possible foreign agents, not "real Americans."

How things have changed in six years. Antiracism has become a default
position, all of a sudden, for perhaps the first time in U.S. history,
so much so that every company and institution has issued some sort of
statement in support of Black Lives Matter, and everyone is collecting
and sharing Anti-Racist Reading Lists, nearly all of which contain
Kendi's follow-up book, last year's How to Be an Anti-Racist (which he
discusses above with BrenÃÂ© Brown). How long this will last is anyone's
guess, but it is without a doubt a cultural sea change a long time in
the making.

Kendi and White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo are the "mac daddies of
the bunch" of recent antiracist authors, Lauren Michele Jackson writes
at Vulture, and it's become a crowded field as more and more Americans
attempt to come to grips with a national history many of them are
learning for the first time. As Kendi and Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 project, discuss on
Chris Hayes' podcast at the top, the country's past as it is taught to
us and as it happened are two entirely different things. Antiracism has
always recognized the vicious, ceaseless murder, disenfranchisement,
and ransacking of black and brown people, and has pushed against the
narratives that deny or excuse these acts.

Carol Anderson, author of White Rage, has given us one of the most raw,
compelling, and exhaustively researched accounts of the violence of
Reconstruction and the lynchings of the early 20th century. Above, she
links the murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery and recent police
killings to the shockingly brutal racism that followed the Civil War.
Anderson's book also routinely appears on suggested reading lists, and
well it should. All of these scholars and authors have produced
accessible work full of histories one might previously have only
encountered in graduate-level college and university courses. It is
essential information for people committed to overturning racist
systems, which is exactly why it has been left out of the textbooks.

For all the urgency of education, the anti-racist booklist is an
ambiguous kind of currency. Jackson wonders what function it serves,
exactly. Reading lists can be an erudite brush-off, a polite way of
saying, "go away and read a book." They can be a way to signal mastery
and work for online merit badges rather than real beneficial action.
They can "feel good to solicit, good to mete out, but someone at some
point has to get down to the business of reading. And there, between
giving and receiving, lies a great gulf. No one can quite account for
what happens. Reading, hopefully, but you never can be sure."

Jackson's critique of the anti-racist reading list is worth reading
before engaging with lists of books, recent and historical, that oppose
racist ideas, policies, and systems. What are we looking for in such
lists? And can we really make good use of them? She makes a case for
why fiction, poetry, and drama should not appear, since they deserve
the status of art, not as instrumental works of social change. "It is
unfair," Jackson writes, "to beg other literature and other authors,
many of them dead, to do this sort of work for someone," when the work
they set out to do is primarily creative. Ignoring genre "reinforces an
already pernicious literary divide that books written by or about
minorities are for educational purposes" only.

Despite many potential blind spots, despite the fact that "our
customarily wan attention spans have been decimated" by pandemic and
protest, the reading "has to get done," Jackson wearily admits.
Anti-racist booklists must circulate. And readers must make critical
judgments about which books to read and what to take away from them,
since we're given the equivalent of a syllabus without a class or an
instructor. We trust that our readers can find their way and will make
a good faith effort to do the reading. There won't be a graded exam;
the test is far more consequential than that.

We solicited an anti-racist reading list on Twitter and chose the books
below submitted by our readers. Since there's no such thing as a
definitive list, and different kinds of readers have different needs,
we include other collections of readings lists here, including "41
Children's Books to Support Conversations on Race, Racism, and
Resistance." You'll find an anti-racist reading list on Twitter, here,
compiled by doctoral researcher Victoria Alexander, and a list on
LinkedIn entitled "Why White People Stay Silent on Racism, and What to
Read First," from organizational psychologist Adam Grant.

If this is overwhelming but you feel you must start to engage with the
history and theory of anti-racism, don't despair or buy a pile of books
you know you can't read right now. All of the most prominent
anti-racist authors have been in high demand for interviews. "There are
snappier places to glean the long-story-short of America, like
podcasts, if it took someone this long to care," writes Jackson, or if,
like so many millions of other stressed out, angry, grieving,
out-of-work Americans, you're simply too burned out to crack another
book. But if you're willing and able to dig in, see our
reader-submitted list below and suggest other titles you'd recommend in
the comments.

Between the World and Me-Ta-Nehisi Coates: Hailed by Toni Morrison as
"required reading," a bold and personal literary exploration of
America's racial history by "the most important essayist in a
generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation
about race" (Rolling Stone)

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think,
and Do-Jennifer L. Eberhardt PhD: How do we talk about bias? How do we
address racial disparities and inequities? What role do our
institutions play in creating, maintaining, and magnifying those
inequities? What role do we play? With a perspective that is at once
scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Dr.
Jennifer Eberhardt offers us the language and courage we need to face
one of the biggest and most troubling issues of our time. She exposes
racial bias at all levels of society-in our neighborhoods, schools,
workplaces, and criminal justice system. Yet she also offers us tools
to address it.

Black Like Me-John Howard Griffin: The history-making classic about
crossing the line in America's segregated south. The Atlanta Journal &
Constitution calls it "One of the deepest, most penetrating documents
yet set down on the racial question."

How To Be An Antiracist - Ibram X. Kendi: "What do you do after you
have written Stamped From the Beginning, an award-winning history of
racist ideas? . . . If you're Ibram X. Kendi, you craft another stunner
of a book. . . . What emerges from these insights is the most
courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind, a
confessional of self-examination that may, in fact, be our best chance
to free ourselves from our national nightmare."-The New York Times

I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street-Matt Tiabbi: A work of
riveting literary journalism that explores the roots and repercussions
of the infamous killing of Eric Garner by the New York City police.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption-Bryan Stevenson: "Every
bit as moving as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so . . .
a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring
testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes
yields."-David Cole, The New York Review of Books

On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the
Twenty-First Century-Sherrilyn A. Ifill: "This pathbreaking book by
Sherrilyn Ifill shows how the ugliest messages from our racial history
and politics can hide openly in the public square. Her unflinching
memory restores hope for the common good."-Taylor Branch, Pulitzer
Prize-winning author of Parting the Waters

So You Want to Talk About Race-Ijeoma Oluo: "Ijeoma Oluo's [book] is a
welcome gift to us all -- a critical offering during a moment when the
hard work of social transformation is hampered by the inability of
anyone who benefits from systemic racism to reckon with its costs.
Oluo's mandate is clear and powerful: change will not come unless we
are brave enough to name and remove the many forces at work strangling
freedom. Racial supremacy is but one of those forces." ?Darnell L.
Moore, author of No Ashes in the Fire

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in
America-Ibram X. Kendi: The National Book Award winning history of how
racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American
society. 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. He uses the life
stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history:
Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William
Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis.

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You-Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi:
"Readers who want to truly understand how deeply embedded racism is in
the very fabric of the U.S., its history, and its systems will come
away educated and enlightened. Worthy of inclusion in every home and in
curricula and libraries everywhere. Impressive and much needed."
?Kirkus

Sundown Towns-James Loewen: In this groundbreaking work, sociologist
James W. Loewen brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in
America. In a sweeping analysis of American residential patterns,
Loewen uncovers the thousands of "sundown towns"-almost exclusively
white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks weren't
welcome-that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them
located outside of the South.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley: In the searing
pages of this classic 1964 autobiography, Malcolm X outlines the lies
and limitations of the American Dream, along with the inherent racism
in a society that denies its nonwhite citizens the opportunity to
dream.

The Color of Law-Richard Rothstein: 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.

The Fire Next Time-James Baldwin: "Baldwin's bestseller from 1963,
which commemorated the centennial of the signing of the Emancipation
Proclamation, still resonates powerfully today. The late author's book
consists of two essays that examine racial injustice in America,
including his own experience growing up as a black teenager in Harlem."

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
-Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow "took the academy and the streets
by storm, and forced the nation to reconsider the systems that allowed
for blatant discrimination."-The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Other by Wes Moore: "This is a fascinating book about two young men
from Baltimore with the same name. One, the author, became a Rhodes
Scholar while the other landed in jail. It's as much a meditation on
circumstance and luck as it is a commentary on how successful our
society is in managing those who are on the precipice, both socially
and economically."

The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias-Dolly Chugh: An
inspiring guide from Dolly Chugh, an award-winning social psychologist
at the New York University Stern School of Business, on how to confront
difficult issues including sexism, racism, inequality, and injustice so
that you can make the world (and yourself) better.

The Warmth of Other Suns-Isabel Wilkerson: 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.

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About
Racism-Robin DiAngelo: The New York Times best-selling book exploring
the counterproductive reactions white people have when their
assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain
racial inequality.

White Rage-Carol Anderson: "White RageÃÂ is a riveting and disturbing
history that begins with Reconstruction and lays bare the efforts of
whites in the South and North alike to prevent emancipated black people
from achieving economic independence, civil and political rights,
personal safety, and economic opportunity." -ÃÂ The Nation

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?-Beverly
Daniel Tatum: 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.
This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to
understand the dynamics of race in America.