12 Books That Teach About Racism and White Supremacy

Following the death of George Floyd and the recent protests of #BLACKLIVESMATTER, the wave of anger against racial violence has prompted an outpouring of interest on matters of race, racism and race relations. This is not just across the US but around the world. This interest has grown such that books that teach about racism and white supremacy have begun to top New York Times Best Sellers Lists and Barnes and Noble Best Sellers.

We have decided to help make your journey to learning and knowledge much easier. Here we have come up with a list of books about racism to add to your TBR.

1. So you Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

In this book, Ijeoma Oluo explores the complex reality of racism. From white privilege and police brutality discrimination and the Black Lives Matter movement. And offering straightforward clarity that readers need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide. Ijeoma Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America. It addresses head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement and the “N” word. Oluo answers the questions readers don’t dare ask and explains the concepts that continue to elude everyday Americans. This book teaches about racism in a way that is easy to understand while not sugarcoating anything.

2. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robert DiAngelo

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.
Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and by behaviours including argumentation and silence. These behaviours, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, anti-racist educator Robin DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what can be done to engage more constructively.

ALSO READ: https://africanvibes.com/the-first-black-woman-to-win-man-booker-prize-talks-about-the-challenges-of-a-black-author/

3. How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X Kendi

In this book, Kendi weaves together an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science, bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. How to Be an Antiracist is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society.

4. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

In a profound work about racism and white supremacy coming from the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding America’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. 

5. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as “brilliant” (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.”

ALSO READ: https://africanvibes.com/see-the-african-country-dominating-the-longlist-of-womens-prize-for-fiction/

6. Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism. Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad

When Layla Saad began an Instagram challenge called #MeAndWhiteSupremacy, she never predicted it would spread as widely as it did. She encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviours, big and small. She was looking for truth, and she got it. Thousands of people participated in the challenge. And over 90,000 people downloaded the Me and White Supremacy Workbook.

7. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors

A poetic and powerful memoir about what it means to be a Black woman in America. It also explores the co-founding of a movement that demands justice for all in the land of the free. If you’re looking for a book that teaches about racism and white supremacy, here is one for you!

8. Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson 

As the country grapples with racist division at a level not seen since the 1960s, one man’s voice soars above the rest with conviction and compassion. In his 2016 New York Times op-ed piece “Death in Black and White,” Michael Eric Dyson moved a nation. Now he continues to speak out in Tears We Cannot Stop. This is a provocative and deeply personal call for change. Dyson argues that if we are to make real racial progress we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted. When you think books that teach about racism, here’s a good book.

9. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge 

In 2014, Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote about her frustration that discussions of race and racism in Britain were being led by those who weren’t affected by it. She posted a piece on her blog, entitled: ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ that led to this book.
Exploring issues from eradicated black history to the political purpose of white dominance, whitewashed feminism to the inextricable link between class and race, Reni Eddo-Lodge offers a timely and essential new framework for how to see, acknowledge and counter racism. It is a searing, illuminating, absolutely necessary exploration of what it is to be a person of colour in Britain today.

ALSO READ: How An African Overcame Racism To Become The Most Famous Black Man In Korea

10. Raising White Kids by  Jennifer Harvey

With a foreword by Tim Wise, Raising White Kids is for families, churches, educators, and communities who want to equip their children to be active and able participants in a society that is becoming one of the most racially diverse in the world while remaining full of racial tensions. For white people who are committed to equity and justice, living in a nation that remains racially unjust and deeply segregated creates unique conundrums.

11. Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

Eloquent rage keeps us all honest and accountable. It reminds women that they don’t have to settle for less.  And it took another intervention, however, to turn Brittney into the fierce feminist she is today. In Brittney Cooper’s world, homegirls emerge as heroes. She argues that ultimately feminism, friendship, and faith in one’s own superpowers are all we need to make this right again.

12. I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin

To compose his stunning documentary film about racism and white supremacy, I Am Not Your Negro, acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck mined James Baldwin s published and unpublished oeuvre, selecting passages from his books, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been. Weaving these texts together, Peck brilliantly imagines the book that Baldwin never wrote. In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck s film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin s private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America. – Goodreads

Keep the faith, keep reading. Educate yourself and conversations will arise. And when they do, you will be better for it because you have done the hard work of learning. You can have more educated conversations about race and racism armed with this knowledge. We can eradicate racism, but learning about it is always our first step.