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(43,134 posts) Sat Jun 6, 2020, 03:53 PM Jun 2020

18 Essential Books & Essays on Anti-Racism

https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/anti-racism-books-essays/

Though there are many facets to the centuries-long hold of white privilege and systemic racism, education has a huge role to play in both the longevity and dismantling of these issues. In the UK, we studied kings and queens while the parts about Britain’s appalling role in the slave trade and countless other acts in colonialism were conveniently skipped. And while school curriculums have to change, in the age of information, we have the ability to self-educate when it comes to social justice and deep-rooted racism. There are no excuses. To get started, we’ve put together an anti-racism reading list comprising books, poems, essays, and more. This list is by no means comprehensive, so if you have any recommendations or advice, please let us know in the comments section. You’ll find a list of black-owned book stores to buy from in the US here.

A reading list of essays, novels, poems, articles, and more for anti-racism self-education.

Wesley Lowery, They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, And A New Era In America’s Racial Justice Movement

With police killings and frontline violence tirelessly reported and researched, this book by Washington Post journalist Wesley Lowery charts such deaths and the rise of the Black Lives Matter justice movement.

Angela Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle

Scholar, activist, and writer Angela Davis was raised in Birmingham, Alabama, in a place known locally as “Dynamite Hill” due to the amount African American homes that were bombed by the KKK. Wrongfully jailed in the ’70s on charges that included conspiracy to murder, Davis is one of the world’s leading advocates of the oppressed and exploited. In this collection of essays, interviews, and speeches, she shines a spotlight on state-sanctioned brutality and oppression throughout history that remains ever-present.

Audre Lorde, Your Silence Will Not Protect You

Your Silence Will Not Protect You is a posthumous collection of essays, speeches, and poems that brings together works by American writer and activist Audre Lorde for the first time in a volume that is pertinent to the current discourse around white silence and resulting complicity. Lorde described herself as a “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” and used the power of language to drive social change and shine a light on injustices.

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Psychiatrist Frantz Fanon examined the psychological effects of colonization in his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth, looking at the rage of the colonized and how violence has been a route to change throughout history. A book that has had a major impact on civil rights and anticolonialism.

Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Housing policy expert Richard Rothstein takes down the idea that racial divides in cities is a result of income disparities or individual prejudices and instead shows how such segregation has stemmed from decisions by local and federal governments through revelatory and extensive research.

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