Books
Here’s some books that I’ve found helpful in growing my understanding of race and racism and in my examination of whiteness (note, this list is loosely categorized and the books are listed in no particular order). Please feel free to recommend others.
That center voices, stories and lived experiences of people who have been marginalized
- So you want to talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo
- Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz
- I’m still here Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
- How To Be Black by Baratunde Thurston
- Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
- How the word is passed by Clint Smith
- All the white friends I couldn’t keep by Andre Henry
- Surviving the White Gaze by Rebecca Carroll
- Ain’t I a Woman? by bell hooks
- Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho
- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
- An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States by Kyle T. Mays
About how white people came to be, whiteness, the history of race and the effects of racialization in the US
- The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
- White Trash. The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
- White Kids by Margaret A. Hagerman
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
- The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
- Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan M. Metzi
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- White Rage by Carol Anderson
- The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
- Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi (or the remix Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X. Kendi & Jason Reynolds)
That offer guidance for next steps
- What White People Can Do Next by Emma Dabiri
- How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
- My Grandmothers Hands by Resmaa Menakem
- After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging by Willie James Jennings
- Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad