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 Ibram X. Kendi 

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

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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!