It's not the job of black people to educate white people on the history of racism, white supremacy, and how it permeates every aspect of our society even today.
It's our job as white people to educate ourselves; to learn the history we weren't taught, acknowledge the atrocities white people have commited and continue to commit, and learn how we're taught to be racist. It's white people's responsibility to educate ourselves and each other so we can dismantle systemic racism and stop the oppression of black people.
Your kneejerk reaction as a white person might be to say, "but I'm not racist!" and that's where our learning, or rather unlearning, begins. This is an anti-racism reading list. Read these books as many times as it takes for the information to sink in. Don't allow your impulsive and defensive reactions to the truth that's in these pages get in the way of you learning. All of these books are hard to read. The truth is difficult to accept. But it is the truth, and we need to listen to it, we have to accept it, and we must change.
Start Here
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
Why I'm No Longer To White People Talking About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work by Tiffany Jewell, Aurelia Durand
Continue Here
America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis
An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz
An Indigenous Peoples' History Of The United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga
Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji, Anthony G. Greenwald
Bringing Up Race: How to Raise a Kind Child in a Prejudiced World by Uju Asika
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race by Jesmyn Ward
Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob
Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? by Mumia Abu-Jamal
How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi
How We Fight White Supremacy
by Akiba Solomon, Kenrya Rankin
I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
Mindful of Race Understanding and Transforming Habits of Harm by Ruth King
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds, Ibram X. Kendi
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Asha Bandele, Angela Y. Davis
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity by Beverly Daniel Tatum
