Reading list: Race, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism in America
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I put together a list of the best writing (and podcast episodes) about white supremacy, race, and anti-Black racism in America that I’ve come across in the past several years. These are pieces that affected me, helped me better understand my own history and our current moment, and made me more equipped to discuss race and racism. They are the things that I most want white people to read.
Canonical texts
These are, to me, the foundational texts for this topic — the things I feel everyone has a duty to not look away from, to read in good faith, to fundamentally get.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (Amazon; IndieBound).
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (Amazon; IndieBound).
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond (Amazon; IndieBound).
The Case for Reparations, The Atlantic.
Segregation Now, Pro Publica.
Further reading
Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did, Daily Kos.
“What most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans. And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer. … He ended the terror of living as a Black person, especially in the south.”
The Myth of the Kindly General Lee, The Atlantic.
Ida B. Wells and the Lynching of Black Women, The New York Times.
New Orleans Mayor on Removing Confederate Monuments, Time.
The Justice Department’s stunning report on the Baltimore Police Department, Washington Post.
In Defense of Looting, The New Inquiry.
How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case, Vanity Fair.
The Shame of College Sports, The Atlantic.
(Read with this article.)
All the Greedy Young Abigail Fishers and Me, Jezebel.
The Impossible Question of Public School Uniforms, Racked.
How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality, The New York Times.
Sally Hemings wasn’t Thomas Jefferson’s mistress. She was his property., Washington Post.
How Many Black People Can You Mourn In One Week?, BuzzFeed.
Strange Fruit in Ferguson, The Nation.
Inside the Trial of Dylann Roof, The New Yorker.
White Liberals Still Don’t Understand White Supremacy, Harper’s Bazaar.
The Truth About Women and White Supremacy, The Cut.
You Owe Me an Apology, ELLE.
Love Needs Fury To Defeat Hate, The Fader.
How We Make Black Girls Grow Up Too Fast, The New York Times.
Addy Walker, American Girl, Paris Review.
We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs, Teen Vogue.
George Washington Carver, The Black History Monthiest Of Them All, NPR.
Miss Buchanan’s Period of Adjustment, Revisionist History.
The Myth that Busing Failed, The Daily.
Hoodies Up, 30 for 30.
You’ve Got Some Gauls, Serial Season 3.
The Architect of Hollywood, 99% Invisible.
One of my favorites of all time.
For Our White Friends Desiring to Be Allies, Sojourners.
“Privilege means that you owe a debt. You were born with it. You didn’t ask for it. And you didn’t pay for it either. No one is blaming you for having it. You are lovely, human, and amazing. Being a citizen of a society requires work from everyone within that society. It is up to you whether you choose to acknowledge the work that is yours to do. It is up to you whether you choose to pay this debt and how you choose to do so.”