
40 Books You Need to Read To Fully Understand Racism
Ask any Black person what racism feels like and we’ll be able to recount, in perfect detail, any number of times we’ve been made to feel powerless by a white person. It’s a foot on your back or a knee upon your neck. It is cruel, it is unrelenting, and it is almost never caught on tape. And for most of us, it’s rarely the overt racism white people recognize. Gone (mostly) is de jure racism, leaving in its place de facto racism, which, many would argue doesn’t truly exist.
Microaggressions are even harder to prove.
Micro-aggressions are defined as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group.”
They are the ways in which people make it clear you are an outsider. A few years back I was taking pictures in East Milton Square, Massachusetts. While crossing the street we were approached by a cop who said he was notified that I was in the area taking pics and asked us to stop. He even asked for my photographer’s card and demanded to know what we were doing there. East Milton, Massachusetts is the predominately white side of town. I knew immediately that this cop was sent to send the message that I was not welcome. Of course, he didn’t say that. He didn’t scream racial epithets in my face. But the message was received.
Still, no matter how many ways we explain how it feels, it’s hard to get to the bottom of racism without getting to the bottom of racism. Reading about the history of racism, and the ways in which polices rooted in racism continue today is truly the only way we can begin to see ourselves out of the mess we are in today. I have challenged myself to read at least two of these books every month for the foreseeable future, and I encourage you to do the same. Knowledge is indeed power.
How to Be an Antiracist by
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt PhD
The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
Uprooting Racism – 4th Edition: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice by Paul Kivel
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen
A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki
Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out by Ruth King
America’s Original Sin
An African American and Latinx History of the United States (REVISIONING HISTORY) by Paul Ortiz
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (REVISIONING HISTORY) by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society by Manning Marable
The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation by Daina Ramey Berry
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap by Mehrsa Baradaran
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley by Malcolm X, Alex Haley, and Attallah Shabazz
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Reconstruction Updated Edition: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner
On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope by DeRay Mckesson
You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain by Phoebe Robinson
Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
PIN IT
If you like this post check my post of 100 books written by Black women HERE, If there are any additional books you’d like to add to this list please comment below!
Hey, Boo! My name is Lisa and you’ve stumbled upon my own little corner of the world. I’m a 30 something-year-old writer/mother/wife who happens to love lipstick, high heels, blackness, and the truth. You’ll find a mix of everything on this site, so I won’t bore you by trying to define this space. I hope you stay awhile!
Brainwashed by Tom Burrell.
It was enlightening. Not only did I understand racism in America, I understood the remnants of colonialism in Africa.