There have been a lot of anti-racist book lists shared on the internet. In fact, here are 3 of them:
- A Reading List On Race For Allies Who Want To Do Better
- Anti-Racist Reading List from Ibram X. Kendi
- An Essential Anti-Racist Reading List
- Antiracist Reading List
But for this list from Open Culture, the titles were recommended by readers.
If this is overwhelming but you feel you must start to engage with the history and theory of anti-racism, don’t despair or buy a pile of books you know you can’t read right now. All of the most prominent anti-racist authors have been in high demand for interviews.
Quote from Open Culture
Some of these books you’ll know, some you won’t. Some you may own, some may be on your wishlist already. The best time to be anti-racist is always now. If you can buy a book or have access to read one, I strongly recommend you do and put the learning into action.
Alongside the Open Culture list, I have chosen 5 books of my own.
Open Culture’s reading list
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt PhD
- Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
- How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
- I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street by Matt Tiabbi
- Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
- On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century by Sherrilyn A. Ifill
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
- Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
- Sundown Towns by James Loewen
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
- The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
- The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
- The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias by Dolly Chugh
- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
- White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin diAngelo
- White Rage by Carol Anderson
- Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum
My book recommendations
- Dark Days by James Baldwin
- Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Oddo-Lodge
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde
- Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah