Recommended Books
About this page:
We have compiled a short list of books recommended by the members of the BSS Antiracism Working Groups. We know there are many excellent books available, and suggest these as a starting point.
Recommended Books
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent
by Isabel Wilkerson
This seminal book recontextualizes racism in the U.S. Through extensive research and masterful storytelling, Isabel Wilkerson demonstrates how America's past and present has been shaped by a strict caste system.
by Matthew Horace & Ron Harris
Told from the perspective of a Black former police officer, this book serves as an eye-opening account of structural racism within law-enforcement. In addition to personal anecdotes Matthew Horace and Ron Harris describe the history of racist policing policies in the U.S. and how such policies continue to impact BIPOC.
Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race
by Derald Wing Sue
This 2016 book was written by and for educators, with assessments of why instructors and students may shy away from race talk and suggestions for more productive managing of discussions about race in academic settings.
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
by Robin DiAngelo
“A valuable guide . . . While especially helpful for those new to the critical analysis of whiteness, this work also offers a useful refresher to anyone committed to the ongoing process of self-assessment and anti-oppression work.”
—Library Journal
by Harriet A. Washington
"The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust. Harriet A. Washington is the author of Medical Apartheid, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, the 2007 PEN Oakland Award, and the 2007 American Library Association Black Caucus Nonfiction Award. She has been a fellow in medical ethics at the Harvard Medical School, a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and the recipient of a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. She is the author of Infectious Madness, Deadly Monopolies, and Medical Apartheid." - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/32502/harriet-a-washington/
Do Better: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy
by Rachel Ricketts
"Thought leader, racial justice educator, and sought-after spiritual activist Rachel Ricketts offers mindful and practical steps for all humxns to dismantle white supremacy on a personal and collective level." - https://www.rachelricketts.com/my-book
by Ibram X. Kendi
A seminal work delineating the difference between being non-racist and anti-racist.
“Kendi's title encompasses his main thesis: simply not being racist isn't enough. We must actively choose to be "antiracist." -Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
by Richard Rothstein
The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson).
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America
By Elizabeth Hinton
“Challenging the belief that America’s prison problem originated with the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society at the height of the civil rights era.”
Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics Paperback – January 1, 1948
by Oliver Cromwell Cox
A 1948 sociological analysis of the issues of caste, class, and race relations in the United States and the world.
Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism
By Derrick Bell
“In Faces at the Bottom of the Well, civil rights activist and legal scholar Derrick Bell uses allegory and historical example to argue that racism is an integral and permanent part of American society.”
The sum of us: what racism costs everyone and how we can prosper together
By Heather McGhee
An exploration of inequality and the notion of the "zero-sum paradigm". McGhee describes what she calls the "Solidarity Dividend": gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we cannot on our own.