11 Books About Race That Should Be On Your Reading List

A great starting point before delving deeper into conversations about race, So You Want To Talk About Race addresses the questions author Ijeomo Oluo has been asked throughout her life and questions that people aren't asking enough. It's a resource for anyone who's shied away from conversations about race because they're worried they'll be uncomfortable or awkward.

P.S.: As her book sells out, Oluo's been tracking down independent booksellers who aren't hiking up the price and posting about it on her Twitter.

Michelle Alexander breaks down the ways the United States criminal justice system targets Black people in The New Jim Crow. Throughout the book, she draws comparisons between the way Black men in particular were treated during the Jim Crow era and now, when mass incarceration, poverty, and police brutality are disproportionately threatening their lives.

In this letter to his son, Samori, Coates discusses how deeply racism is woven into the fabric of the country by describing his own experiences. Democracy and freedom are so often applauded in the United States, but Between The World And Me points out that these ideologies were founded on the backs of Black people. 

In this book born from one of Reni Eddo-Lodge's blog posts, the author describes why she's no longer engaging in conversations about race with white people who refuse to recognize the role they play in systemic racism and all its effects.

While incorporating information about Black people in British history, she explains why she's no longer trying to get beyond the "emotional disconnect" that exists between her and white people who don't want to come to terms with the privilege their skin color affords them. These conversations can't lead to progress if only one person thinks it's necessary.

No doubt, you've seen countless Audre Lorde quotes all over social media, and while beautiful, her work is always worth reading in full. Once you start in on this collection of essays and poems by the prominent feminist and civil rights activist, you won't be able to stop. In them, she discusses the importance of speaking up, about raising a Black son, and about the ways white feminism and Black feminism are not the same. ("Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface.") 

Your Silence Will Not Protect You is so good that physical copies are pretty much sold out everywhere, so your options for now are adding your name to the waiting list or reading it on an eReader platform. 

This collection of Audre Lorde's speeches and essays is still in stock...for now. 

In Sister Outsider, Lorde discusses class, sex, race, and gender and how, in the United States, they were established under patriarchy, capitalism, and, predominately benefit heterosexual and white people.

James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time is split into two essays about the racial tensions in the United States in 1963. In the first, Baldwin writes to his nephew, James. He tells James about the racial innocence adopted by non-Black "countrymen" and the many ways society has been set up against Black people. Baldwin warns his nephew not to assimilate, the only way change will happen is when white people acknowledge their role in the oppression of Black people. In the second essay, Baldwin discusses his own life and the pivotal events that helped him more deeply understand what being Black in America means. 

When this book was released in 1997, Beverly Daniel Tatum, PhD, psychologist and former president at Spelman College examined the way children and teens navigate racism and identity and how that shifts as they grow up. In 2017, following the United States presidential election, she revised and updated the book (I'm talking more than 100 additional pages) to include the 2008 recession, Black Lives Matter activism, Barack Obama's presidency, Donald Trump's election, and more.

The Hate U Give tells the story of Starr Carter, a 16-year-old whose childhood friend is murdered by a police officer and how she navigates in her mostly-Black neighborhood and her mostly-white high school afterward. Before expanding it into a book, Angie Thomas wrote The Hate U Give first as an essay in response to the 2009 murder of 22-year-old Oscar Grant by police. 

The book was adapted as a film in 2018 and stars Amandla Stenberg, Regina Hall, and Issa Rae. 

Imbram X. Kendi weaves history and his own memoir together in How To Be An Antiracist. He writes about how not being a racist isn't enough, you have to be antiracist. To elaborate, he explains how racism and capitalism are linked, he delves into the meaning of colorism, and breaks down the various forms of racism. 

Robin DiAngelo, who is white, explains why many white people are sensitive to discussing race. She writes that they've been protected from such conversations and have armored themselves with sayings like "I'm colorblind." But often, white people, including those who consider themselves liberals, will get defensive when you talk to them about race. White Fragility breaks down why that happens and the importance of white people acknowledging their implicit bias.