Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism, and History


Vron Ware - 1991
    A pioneering study of the political connections between black and white women which dissects the different meanings of femininity and womanhood and tries to overcome the moralism that so often infuses anti-racism.

Learning to Be White: Money, Race, and God in America


Thandeka - 2000
    Tracing the links between religion, class, and race, she reveals the child abuse, ethnic conflicts, class exploitation, poor self-esteem, and a general feeling of self-contempt that are the wages of whiteness.

Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care


Dayna Matthew - 2015
    Health disparities have remained stubbornly entrenched in the American health care system--and in Just Medicine Dayna Bowen Matthew finds that they principally arise from unconscious racial and ethnic biases held by physicians, institutional providers, and their patients.Implicit bias is the single most important determinant of health and health care disparities. Because we have missed this fact, the money we spend on training providers to become culturally competent, expanding wellness education programs and community health centers, and even expanding access to health insurance will have only a modest effect on reducing health disparities. We will continue to utterly fail in the effort to eradicate health disparities unless we enact strong, evidence-based legal remedies that accurately address implicit and unintentional forms of discrimination, to replace the weak, tepid, and largely irrelevant legal remedies currently available.Our continued failure to fashion an effective response that purges the effects of implicit bias from American health care, Matthew argues, is unjust and morally untenable. In this book, she unites medical, neuroscience, psychology, and sociology research on implicit bias and health disparities with her own expertise in civil rights and constitutional law. In a time when the health of the entire nation is at risk, it is essential to confront the issues keeping the health care system from providing equal treatment to all.

United: Captured by God's Vision for Diversity


Trillia J. Newbell - 2014
    Yet today our churches remain segregated. Can we reflect the beauty of the last day this day?United will inspire, challenge, and encourage readers to pursue the joys of diversity through stories of the author's own journey and a theology of diversity lived out.It’s time to capture a glimpse of God’s magnificent creativity. In the pages of United, Trillia Newbell reveals the deeply moving, transforming power of knowing—really knowing—someone who is equal yet unique. As we learn to identify in Christ rather than in our commonalities, we begin to experience the depth and power of gospel unity.

A Change Is Coming


Hector Sosa Jr. - 2015
    was born in Puerto Rico. He began having visions of future events asa young boy, a gift he inherited from his mother. At age 13 he and his family joinedthe LDS Church, and the visions he had been receiving began to make sense as helearned more about the prophecies and doctrines taught by church leaders. Amongthe events he has foreseen are:�� Earthquakes in Utah�� A national financial collapse�� Plagues and sicknesses�� Concentration camps on U.S. soil�� An invasion from foreign troops�� The Saints prevail against the enemyHector's visions are specifically meant to serve as warnings to his own family, but hehopes that by sharing what he has seen, it will help others prepare for the challengingtimes that will soon come upon the world.

Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America


Keisha N. Blain - 2021
    The book challenges us to listen to a working-poor and disabled Black woman activist and intellectual from the past as we grapple with contemporary concerns around race, inequality, and social justice. Hamer's ideas and fearless activism reveal how we all, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, ability, economic status, or educational background, have the power to transform society.Born in Webster County, Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977), the youngest of twenty children, was the granddaughter of enslaved people and worked as a sharecropper before dedicating herself to activism. Hamer fought for her community by working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), assisting with Black voter registration, and serving as vice chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.Hamer’s 1964 televised speech before the DNC's credentials committee was delivered before millions, and addressed two central issues that remain relevant today: voter suppression and state-sanctioned violence. Hamer described the scare tactics and violence she and other African Americans experienced and their lack of access to the vote. Throughout her life, Hamer fought for Black voting rights, social justice, women's empowerment, human rights and economic rights.

Privilege: A Reader


Michael S. Kimmel - 2003
    In addition to readings from well-known authors in the field, this edition includes pieces from contemporary scholars breaking new ground in superordinate studies. Seventeen carefully selected essays explore the multifaceted aspects of privilege: how race, gender, class, and sexual preference interact in the lives of those who are privileged by one or more of these identities. Written from a variety of viewpoints, personal and analytic, the essays in this volume help students understand that “race” can mean white people, “gender” can mean men, and “sexuality” can mean heterosexuals.I. MAKING PRIVILEGE VISIBLE1. McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege and Male Privilege.”2. Woods, Jewel.“Black Male Privilege.” *3. Larew, John, “Why are Droves of Unqualified, Unprepared Kids Getting Into our Top Colleges?”4. Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. “On Being Okie.”5. Messner, Michael A. “Becoming 100% Straight” 6. Rochlin, M. “The Heterosexual Questionnaire.” II. UNDERSTANDING PRIVILEGE7. Johnson, Allan. “Privilege Power and Difference and Us,” from Privilege Power and Difference.*8. Brodkin Sacks, Karen. “How Jews Became White”9. Kimmel, Michael S. “Masculinity as Homophobia.” 10. Wise, Tim. “Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male.” *11. Kendall, Diana. “Class in the United States: Not Only Alive but Reproducing.” *III. EXAMINING INTERSECTIONS12. Redding, Maureen T. “Invisibility/Hypervisibility: The Paradox of Normative Whiteness.” *13. hooks, bell. “Class and Race: The New Black Elite.”14. Bérubé, Allan. “How Gay Stays White and What Kind of White it Stays.”IV. MOVING FORWARD15. Thompson, Becky. “Subverting Racism From Within.”16. Hill Collins, Patricia. “Toward a New Vision.” 17.Ferber, Abby. “Dismantling Privilege and Becoming an Ally.” *

Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology


Pamela R. Lightsey - 2015
    Using a womanist methodological approach, Pamela R. Lightsey helps readers explore the impact of oppression against Black LBTQ women while introducing them to the emergent intellectual movement known as queer theology. The author privileges their narratives and experiences as she reviews several doctrines and dogma of the Christian church. Theological reflection on contemporary debates such as same-sex marriage and ordination rights make this book a valuable resource to clergy, students of theology, LGBTQ persons and allies. "Writing in the shadow of mass killings of unarmed black persons in the United States, Lightsey's Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology is a timely publication. This valuable interdisciplinary resource provides a succinct overview of the doctrine of creation that is informed by a discussion on identity. Our Lives Matter challenges readers to move beyond theory and to acknowledge the full humanity of all persons and is a must-read for any who self-identifies as Christian." --Angela D. Sims, Dean of Academic Programs and Associate Professor of Ethics and Black Church Studies, Saint Paul School of Theology Pamela R. Lightsey is an associate dean and clinical assistant professor of contextual theology and practice at Boston University School of Theology. She is also a self-identified queer lesbian ordained elder in full connection in the United Methodist Church. A national leader among LGBTQ social justice activists, Dr. Lightsey's writings have appeared in Washington Post (online), Religion Dispatches and Black Theology Journal.

The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community


Stephanie Spellers - 2021
    CurrySometimes it takes disruption and loss to break us open and call us home to God. It's not surprising that a global pandemic and once-in-a-generation reckoning with white supremacy--on top of decades of systemic decline--have spurred Christians everywhere to ask who we are, why God placed us here and what difference that makes to the world.In this critical yet loving book, the author explores the American story and the Episcopal story in order to find out how communities steeped in racism, establishment, and privilege can at last fall in love with Jesus, walk humbly with the most vulnerable and embody beloved community in our own broken but beautiful way.The Church Cracked Open invites us to surrender privilege and redefine church, not just for the sake of others, but for our own salvation and liberation.

Under Our Skin: Getting Real about Race–And Getting Free from the Fears and Frustrations That Divide Us


Benjamin Watson - 2015
    In a country aflame with the fallout from the racial divide–in which Ferguson, Charleston, and the Confederate flag dominate the national news, daily seeming to rip the wounds open ever wider–is there hope for honest and healing conversation? For finally coming to understand each other on issues that are ultimately about so much more than black and white? An NFL tight end for the New Orleans Saints and a widely read and followed commentator on social media, Watson has taken the Internet by storm with his remarkable insights about some of the most sensitive and charged topics of our day. Now, in "Under Our Skin, " Watson draws from his own life, his family legacy, and his role as a husband and father to sensitively examine both sides of the race debate and appeal to the power and possibility of faith as a step toward healing.

Memoir of a Race Traitor


Mab Segrest - 1994
    bell hooks called it a “courageous and daring [example of] the reality that political solidarity, forged in struggle, can exist across differences.” Adrienne Rich wrote that it was “a unique document and thoroughly fascinating.”Juxtaposing childhood memories with contemporary events, Segrest described her journey into the heart of her culture, finally veering from its trajectory of violence toward hope and renewal. Now, amid our current national crisis driven by an increasingly apocalyptic white supremacist movement, Segrest returns with an updated edition of her classic book. With a new introduction and afterword that explore what has transpired with the far right since its publication, the book brings us into the age of Trump—and to what can and must be done.Called “a true delight” and a “must-read” (Minnesota Review), Memoir of a Race Traitor is an inspiring and politically potent book.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption


Bryan Stevenson - 2014
    The case exemplifies how the death penalty in America is a direct descendant of lynching — a system that treats the rich and guilty better than the poor and innocent.

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row


Anthony Ray Hinton - 2018
    Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free.But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence—full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy.

The Love That Keeps Us Sane: Living the Little Way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux


Marc Foley - 2000
    Thérèse of Lisieux.

Understanding White Privilege: Creating Pathways to Authentic Relationships Across Race


Frances E. Kendall - 2006
    Yet it is very visible for those to whom it was not granted. Understanding White Privilege is written for individuals and those in organizations who grapple with race every day, as well as for those who believe they don't need to. It is written for those who have tried to build authentic professional relationships across races but have felt unable to do so. It is written for those who believe strongly in the struggle for racial justice and need additional information to share with their friends and colleagues. Inviting readers to think personally about how race--theirs and others'--frames experiences, relationships, and the way we each see the world, Understanding White Privilege focuses squarely on white privilege and its implications by offering specific suggestions for what we each can do to bridge the racial chasm.