IMPORTANT READS ON RACE
Why does today still look like Selma, 1965? Here’s a look at books about race and justice.
As protests against racism and police violence continue nationwide and globally — prompted this time by the death of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of white police in Minneapolis — readers are seeking out books old and new on race and criminal justice.
Here are books that either were top sellers in the past week or have received acclaim in the past.
Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give” (2017), the popular young-adult novel, adapted into a film, follows a teenager who sees her friend killed by police. She’s already split between two worlds – the one where she lives and the one where she goes to a private school – and must negotiate that; the pressure to testify against the officer who killed her friend; a growing gang war in her neighborhood that draws in her father and other loved ones; and the tension between staying to work for change, and escaping. This novel “allows some readers to see the complexity of their lives mirrored in literature; for others who may be removed from Starr’s experience or haven’t lived through similar tragedies, it can help generate deeper understanding,” wrote Anna Diamond in The Atlantic.
“White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo (2018). DiAngelo, a sociologist who conducts diversity and cultural awareness workshops for companies, wondered why white people so often became defensive when their views about race and racism are questioned. The answer, she argues, is that the social system so protects whites from racial discomfort that they’re unaccustomed to it.
“Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson, the lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative. This memoir (2014) is centered on a case that helped lead to the founding of that group. In 1989, he defended Walter McMillian, a black tree cutter who the year before had been falsely accused and quickly sentenced to death for the murder of an 18-year-old white woman in Monroeville, Alabama, the hometown of Harper Lee. The memoir was adapted into a film.
Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” (2010). Alexander, a civil rights attorney, looks at why young black men are a disproportionate number of the people in U.S. prisons. They and Latinos receive the harshest penalties for illegal drugs (mostly marijuana), she writes, and imprisonment is a penalty from which most never recover, in jobs, income, housing, education and more. She blames primarily “the War on Drugs,” which Ronald Reagan began in 1982 and which “grew out of demands for ‘law and order’ that were actually a racially coded backlash to the civilrights movement,” writes Kirkus Reviews.
“So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo (2018). Oluo, a writer and editor, is black, queer, middleclass and college-educated, and the daughter of a white woman. Here she responds to questions she’s been asked or wishes she’s been asked – for example, “Is it really about race?” (and not class) and “What’s cultural appropriation?” She digs into the complex factors that create identities (intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and more). And, crucially, “when somebody asks you to ‘check your privilege’ they are asking you to pause and consider how the advantages you’ve had in life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing.” With a section on actions to take.
“Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” (2017) by Reni EddoLodge, a British journalist who embarked on this book out of frustration that discussions of race were led by people who weren’t affected by it. She offers a framework for seeing, acknowledging and countering racism.
James Baldwin’s 1963 classic, “The Fire Next Time,” laying out what life is like in black America, analyzing race relations, and rejecting militance and separatism in favor of a nation united in its work for justice. Blacks and whites could work together for change. And if change does not happen, he says, then the fire next time.
“The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race,” a collection edited by Jesmyn Ward (2016). Eighteen writers write about myriad subjects – police and other violence (Trayvon Martin, Abner Louima, worshippers at the Emanuel Church in Charleston, Eric Garner and more); fear for their children’s futures; black identity (including the complication of having white ancestry); and more. The mother of a black son told poet Claudia Rankine, “The condition of black life is one of mourning.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me” (2015), winner of the National Book Award, is an open letter to his adolescent son that centers on the murder of an old friend
by police, and explores – through history, places and experience — what it means to live in a black body in America.
“Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People” by Ben Crump (2019). Crump was the attorney for the family of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and others — and now represents the family of George Floyd. Crump uses the term “colored” to denote black and brown people, as well as people who are “colored” by their sexual orientation, religious belief or gender. He lays out the effects of racial profiling, mass incarceration, voter disenfranchisement, stand-your-ground laws, unequal educational opportunities, and environmental racism, and offers 12 “personal action steps.”
From Claudia Rankine, “Citizen: An American Lyric” (2014). A mix of poetry, impressions, short anecdotes, visual art, scripts and more, about what it’s like to be black in America. “Rankine is particularly insightful about Serena Williams, often criticized for displays of anger that the author justifies as responses to racism, conscious or not,” says Kirkus Reviews.
“Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America” by Michael
Eric Dyson (2017). The scholar and minister here argues that racism, white privilege and black subjugation, is America’s original sin and one that whites need to tackle. “White history disguised as American history is a fantasy, as much a fantasy as white superiority and white purity.” Whites need to recognize how much they’ve benefited from these myths and how much blacks have been hurt by it. With some proposals for change.
“Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation” (2019) by Latasha Morrison, a social justice advocate who founded the nonprofit, Be the Bridge. She calls on readers to use the biblical principles of lamentation, confession and forgiveness to work toward reconciliation, and calls on the U.S. government and white churches to apologize for slavery.
From Ibram X. Kendi, “How to be an Antiracist” (2019), a memoir and a study of racist ideas – which are, he argues, aided by “internalized racism,” which he calls “the real black on black crime” (he points to some of his own earlier actions as well – such as wearing color contacts to make his eyes appear lighter). “Either racist policy or black inferiority explains why white people are wealthier, healthier, and more powerful than black people today.” “Not an easy read but an essential one,” said Kirkus Reviews. Kendi won the National Book Award in 2016 for “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.”
And for children, “Antiracist Baby,” a board book also by Kendi that’s due out this week, as well as a Sesame Street picture book that has a message of unity, “We’re Different, We’re the Same.”