Navigating These Challenging Times
The first thing is to gain a greater appreciation for the generations and even centuries of oppression that have created the outcomes we see today. And then to speak up and then act.
We all take our own journey on race. Below are resources for learning and challenging your perceptions compiled by our E Pluribus Unum team. They run the gamut from films and podcasts to books and articles.
There’s an old saying that “you can’t unring a bell.” But we must change.
After listening and learning more, we hope you will be inspired to change and to act to dismantle the systems that have divided us by design. See some of our recommendations below:
Historical Texts & Documents
Books & Essays
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo, PhD
How To Be An Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi
Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change by Marian Wright Edelman
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong by James W. Loewen
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen
Teaching What Really Happened by James W. Loewen
America’s Original Sin by Jim Wallis
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehesi Coates
The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward
Tears We Cannot Stop by Michael Eric Dyson
Stamped From The Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
Orlando Patterson
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
So You Want to Talk About Race – Ijeoma Oluo
Chokehold: Policing Black Men by Paul Butler
A Letter to My Nephew by James Baldwin
Policing The Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter by Jordan T. Camp & Christina Heatherton
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehesi Coates
The Black battalion that rescued Tony Blinken’s stepfather by Steven A. Holmes