Racial Justice Books for White People: Non-Fiction

By Micki Luckey 

This summer nearly thirty members of SURJ BA — Showing Up for Racial Justice Bay Area — voted on books for white people about racial justice, indicating those they recommend, as well as those they want to read. This blog is about nonfiction books recommended by our members. (See the Fiction list here)

One book that nearly everyone read has been integral to our chapter’s internal political education. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is a powerful description of how mass incarceration of African Americans has stripped them of their rights and trapped them in a discriminatory caste system. With ample statistics and examples, Alexander documents this “racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow.”

Exposition of the injustice in the criminal justice system is also the basis of Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson describes his life’s work defending people with wrongful or excessive punishments in Georgia and Alabama, most of whom are people of color who had no legal representation at the time of their trials. The book describes many cases but focuses on a Black man wrongfully convicted of murder who was finally released from death row. Stevenson received numerous awards and took several civil rights cases to the Supreme Court, one of which abolished mandatory life sentences for children.

Similar themes are covered in a very different way in Between the World and Me by Ta Nahisi-Coates. At times poetic, at times tragic, it is written as a letter to the author’s son to convey the threats and dangers facing Black people in this country. Filled with personal as well as historical accounts, the book argues that Blacks must resist white supremacy because violence against them is on-going in spite of the “color-blindness” then attributed to the Obama presidency.

A much earlier melding of life experience with Black philosophy and nationalism is presented in The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X. Published in 1965, the year that Malcolm was assassinated, this book gave me my first look at the painful reality of Black life and opened my eyes to the need for Black Power. This classic autobiography provided much of the source material for Spike Lee’s powerful movie “Malcolm X.”

A new book receiving much attention is a memoir from Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, who says she anchors protest in love. In When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele, Khan-Cullors shares events from her past that led to her activism, from her childhood in poverty in Los Angeles to the encouragements in school to her work as an organizer. 

Two recommended books deal with how white people deal with racism. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo describes the defensive anger, fear and guilt that emerge when white people are forced to deal with racism, for example in diversity trainings. Uprooting Racism by Paul Kivel, now in its fourth edition, provides the tools for white people to engage in racial justice work in practical, informed and accountable ways. Both Kivel and DiAngelo want us to understand what it means to be white so we can become active anti-racists in the struggle for justice.

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo gives clear, constructive language to both black and white people for how talk about racial prejudice. Each chapter addresses a question that comes up in dialogues about racism dealing with intersectionality, police brutality, privilege, affirmative action, cultural appropriation, and more.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot deals with issues of race and class in medical research.  HeLa cells, a cell line used in thousands of research labs throughout the world, are derived from a tumor in Henrietta Lacks, a poor black tobacco farmer who didn’t know her cells were taken. The book describes her family’s struggles for compensation, providing an example of the once common practice of experimentation on people of color.

A different aspect of history is presented in An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. This description of 400 years of wars against native tribes in order to seize their territories exposes how this country was founded on genocide. It reveals the extent of Native Indians’ resistance in place after place over the decades, as well as the willingness of our esteemed leaders and historians to overlook the genocide as they furthered the myths of the country’s founding.

Several of the books mentioned above are also among the books that SURJ BA members want to read. Others include: How we Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective edited by Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor is a collection of essays and interviews of radical Black feminists telling their stories of four decades of organizing.

Slavery by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon is a prize-winning book that tells the stories of thousands of emancipated slaves and their descendants as they fell back into involuntary servitude. Covering the period from the end of the Civil War to the end of World War II, it was the basis of a PBS film of the same name.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson describes the migration of African Americans out of the South over almost six decades from 1915 to 1970. Also recipient of many awards, this book gives sweeping views of what has been called the Great Migration, personalizing it by focusing on biographical details of three individuals who went to different destinations.

Sundown Towns by James W. Loewen looks at the extent and persistence of whites-only towns that bore signs warning Blacks (as well as at times Mexicans, Native Americans and Chinese) to be out of town by sundown. Loewen shows how common these towns were across the country and also describes the racist practices in real estate that allowed nearly all-white suburbs to proliferate across the nation.

The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism by Gerald Horne refers to a seventeenth century “apocalypse” in which the three horsemen are slavery, white supremacy and capitalism that bring misery to peoples of the eastern seaboard of North America, the Caribbean, Britain and Africa. With this broad lens, Horne describes the development of whiteness and the increasing cruelties it wielded.

Towards the “Other America” by Chris Crass provides practical resources for white people who strive for racial justice, drawing on his own personal development and on examples of white anti-racist organizing (including SURJ) to create with love and courage a society where Black Lives do indeed Matter. 

An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz gives a new look at U.S. history through the lens of Black and Latinx activists, showing how working class struggles against imperialism have linked civil rights and labor organizers to fight capitalism in the United States and to forge solidarity with our neighbors to the south.

Wow! So much to read, so much to discuss and think about. In addition to this list of books recommended by our SURJ BA members, a number of other individuals and organizations have put forth their own lists of recommended reading. They cover familiar themes and introduce others. Some links are:

https://www.charisbooksandmore.com/understanding-and-dismantling-racism-booklist-white-readers
 
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/16-books-about-race-that-every-white-person-should-read_n_565f37e8e4b08e945fedaf49
 
https://bookriot.com/2018/07/27/books-about-race/
 
https://www.bustle.com/p/17-books-on-race-every-white-person-needs-to-read-76401
 
A personal note: some of my favorite books were not included here and I just have to recommend these two: Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi and Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann. Check ‘em out!