Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter


Jordan T. Camp - 2016
    Now a star-studded, wide-ranging collection of writers and activists offers a global response, describing ongoing struggles over policing from New York to Ferguson to Los Angeles, as well as London, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, and Mexico City. This book, combining first-hand accounts from organizers with the research of eminent scholars and contributions by leading artists, traces the global rise of the "broken-windows" style of policing, first established in New York City under Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, a doctrine that has vastly increased and broadened police power and contributed to the contemporary crisis of policing that has been sparked by notorious incidents of police brutality and killings. With contributions from Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors, Ferguson activist and St. Louis University law professor Justin Hansford, scholars Vijay Prashad and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Pakistani writer and politician Hamid Khan, and many more.

A Perilous Path: Talking Race, Inequality, and the Law


Sherrilyn A. Ifill - 2018
    Drawing on their collective decades of work on civil rights issues as well as personal histories of rising from poverty and oppression, these leading lights of the legal profession and the fight for racial justice talk about the importance of reclaiming the racial narrative and keeping our eyes on the horizon as we work for justice in an unjust time.Covering topics as varied as "the commonality of pain," "when lawyers are heroes," and the concept of an "equality dividend" that is due to people of color for helping America brand itself internationally as a country of diversity and acceptance, Ifill, Lynch, Stevenson, and Thompson also explore topics such as "when did 'public' become a dirty word" (hint, it has something to do with serving people of color), "you know what Jeff Sessions is going to say," and "what it means to be a civil rights lawyer in the age of Trump."Building on Stevenson's hugely successful Just Mercy, Lynch's national platform at the Justice Department, Ifill's role as one of the leading defenders of civil rights in the country, and the occasion of Thompson's launch of a new center of on race, inequality and the law at the NYU School of Law, A Perilous Path will speak loudly and clearly to everyone concerned about America's perpetual fault line.

Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness


Anastasia Higginbotham - 2018
    Upset, he asks his mother why; she deflects, assuring him that he is safe. Later, they visit an aunt and uncle, where the TV, always on, shows a rally in response to the police shooting. The child glimpses a moving press conference with the victim’s family while his aunt claims she simply “can’t watch the news.”The book’s narrator accompanies the child as he faces history and himself. The activities section urges kids to grow justice (“like a bean sprout in a milk carton”) inside of themselves, seek out and listen to the truth about racism and white supremacy, and prepare to be changed, heartbroken, and liberated by this experience.Part history lesson, part compassionate primer to assist children (and parents) past defensiveness, Not My Idea is a tangible tool for necessary conversations.

In the Wake: On Blackness and Being


Christina Sharpe - 2016
    Initiating and describing a theory and method of reading the metaphors and materiality of "the wake," "the ship," "the hold," and "the weather," Sharpe shows how the sign of the slave ship marks and haunts contemporary Black life in the diaspora and how the specter of the hold produces conditions of containment, regulation, and punishment, but also something in excess of them. In the weather, Sharpe situates anti-Blackness and white supremacy as the total climate that produces premature Black death as normative. Formulating the wake and "wake work" as sites of artistic production, resistance, consciousness, and possibility for living in diaspora, In the Wake offers a way forward.

Woke Church: An Urgent Call for Christians in America to Confront Racism and Injustice


Eric Mason - 2018
    They spoke hard words that often chafed and unsettled their listeners. Like the Old Testament prophets, and more recent prophetic voices like Frederick Douglass, Dr. Eric Mason calls the evangelical church to a much-needed reckoning. In a time when many feel confused, complacent, or even angry, he challenges the church to:Be Aware – to understand that the issue of justice is not a black issue, it’s a kingdom issue. To learn how the history of racism in America and in the church has tainted our witness to a watching world.Be Redemptive – to grieve and lament what we have lost and to regain our prophetic voice, calling the church to remember our gospel imperative to promote justice and mercy.Be Active – to move beyond polite, safe conversations about reconciliation and begin to set things aright for our soon-coming King, who will be looking for a WOKE CHURCH.

White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society


Kalwant Bhopal - 2018
    How, after decades of civil rights activism, do people from black and minority ethnic communities continue to be marginalized? In White Privilege, Kalwant Bhopal draws on social science research and political and economic analysis to show how people from black and minority backgrounds are continually positioned as outsiders in public discourse and interpersonal interaction. Neoliberal policies only increase that tendency, as their effects exacerbate long-standing patterns of minority disadvantage. Bhopal’s book is rooted in dispassionate analysis, but its message is unmistakable—the structural advantages of whiteness are widespread, and dismantling them will require both honesty about their power and determination to change them.

A Colony in a Nation


Christopher L. Hayes - 2017
    With the clarity and originality that distinguished his prescient bestseller, Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes upends our national conversation on policing and democracy in a book of wide-ranging historical, social, and political analysis.Hayes contends our country has fractured in two: the Colony and the Nation. In the Nation, we venerate the law. In the Colony, we obsess over order, fear trumps civil rights, and aggressive policing resembles occupation. A Colony in a Nation explains how a country founded on justice now looks like something uncomfortably close to a police state. How and why did Americans build a system where conditions in Ferguson and West Baltimore mirror those that sparked the American Revolution?A Colony in a Nation examines the surge in crime that began in the 1960s and peaked in the 1990s, and the unprecedented decline that followed. Drawing on close-hand reporting at flashpoints of racial conflict, as well as deeply personal experiences with policing, Hayes explores cultural touchstones, from the influential “broken windows” theory to the “squeegee men” of late-1980s Manhattan, to show how fear causes us to make dangerous and unfortunate choices, both in our society and at the personal level. With great empathy, he seeks to understand the challenges of policing communities haunted by the omnipresent threat of guns. Most important, he shows that a more democratic and sympathetic justice system already exists―in a place we least suspect.A Colony in a Nation is an essential book―searing and insightful―that will reframe our thinking about law and order in the years to come.

One Blood: A Parting Word to the Church on Race


John M. Perkins - 2018
    Perkins’ final manifesto on race, faith, and reconciliation We are living in historic times. Not since the civil rights movement of the 60's has our country been as vigorously engaged in the reconciliation conversation. There is a great opportunity right now for culture to change, to be a more perfect union. However, it cannot be done without the Church, because the faith of the people is more powerful than any law government can enact.The church is the heart and moral compass of a nation. To turn a country away from God you must sideline the Church. To turn a nation to God the Church must turn first. Racism won't end in America until the Church is reconciled first and then, and only then, it can spiritually and morally lead the way.In this his crowning work, Dr. Perkins speaks honestly to the church about the things he’s discovered to be crucial about reconciliation, discipleship, and justice… the principles vital to a complete ministry of reconciliation.”He offers a call to repentance to both the white church and the black church. He explains how band-aid approaches of the past won't do. And while applauding these starter efforts, he holds that true reconciliation won't happen until we get more intentional and relational. True friendships must happen and on every level. This will take the whole church, not just the pastors and staff.The racial reconciliation of our churches and nation won't be done with big campaigns or through mass media. It will come one loving, sacrificial relationship at a time. The Gospel and all that it encompasses has always traveled best relationally. We have much to learn from each other and each have unique poverties that can only be filled by one another. The way forward is to become "wounded healers" who bandage each other up as we discover what the family of God really looks like. Real relationships, sacrificial love between actual people, is the way forward. Nothing less will do.

Heavy


Kiese Laymon - 2018
    In his essays, personal stories combine with piercing intellect to reflect both on the state of American society and on his experiences with abuse, which conjure conflicted feelings of shame, joy, confusion and humiliation. Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we’ve been.In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood—and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World


Django Paris - 2017
    Bringing together an intergenerational group of prominent educators and researchers, this volume engages and extends the concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP)—teaching that perpetuates and fosters linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation. The authors propose that schooling should be a site for sustaining the cultural practices of communities of color, rather than eradicating them. Chapters present theoretically grounded examples of how educators and scholars can support Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, South African, and immigrant students as part of a collective movement towards educational justice in a changing world. Book Features: A definitive resource on culturally sustaining pedagogies, including what they look like in the classroom and how they differ from deficit-model approaches. Examples of teaching that sustain the languages, literacies, and cultural practices of students and communities of color. Contributions from the founders of such lasting educational frameworks as culturally relevant pedagogy, funds of knowledge, cultural modeling, and third space. Contributors: H. Samy Alim, Mary Bucholtz, Dolores Inés Casillas, Michael Domínguez, Nelson Flores, Norma Gonzalez, Kris D. Gutiérrez, Adam Haupt, Amanda Holmes, Jason G. Irizarry, Patrick Johnson, Valerie Kinloch, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Carol D. Lee, Stacey J. Lee, Tiffany S. Lee, Jin Sook Lee, Teresa L. McCarty, Django Paris, Courtney Peña, Jonathan Rosa, Timothy J. San Pedro, Daniel Walsh, Casey Wong“All teachers committed to justice and equity in our schools and society will cherish this book.”—Sonia Nieto, professor emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst“This book is for educators who are unafraid of using education to make a difference in the lives of the most vulnerable.” —Pedro Noguera, University of California, Los Angeles“This book calls for deep, effective practices and understanding that centers on our youths’ assets.” —Prudence L. Carter, dean, Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley

From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century


William A. Darity Jr. - 2020
    At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. Perhaps no moment was more opportune than the early days of Reconstruction, when the U.S. government temporarily implemented a major redistribution of land from former slaveholders to the newly emancipated enslaved. But neither Reconstruction nor the New Deal nor the civil rights struggle led to an economically just and fair nation. Today, systematic inequality persists in the form of housing discrimination, unequal education, police brutality, mass incarceration, employment discrimination, and massive wealth and opportunity gaps. Economic data indicates that for every dollar the average white household holds in wealth the average black household possesses a mere ten cents. In From Here to Equality, William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen confront these injustices head-on and make the most comprehensive case to date for economic reparations for U.S. descendants of slavery. After opening the book with a stark assessment of the intergenerational effects of white supremacy on black economic well-being, Darity and Mullen look to both the past and the present to measure the inequalities borne of slavery. Using innovative methods that link monetary values to historical wrongs, they next assess the literal and figurative costs of justice denied in the 155 years since the end of the Civil War. Finally, Darity and Mullen offer a detailed roadmap for an effective reparations program, including a substantial payment to each documented U.S. black descendant of slavery. Taken individually, any one of the three eras of injustice outlined by Darity and Mullen--slavery, Jim Crow, and modern-day discrimination--makes a powerful case for black reparations. Taken collectively, they are impossible to ignore.

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy


Ta-Nehisi Coates - 2017
    Now Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America's "first white president."But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period--and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation's old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective--the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates's iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including Fear of a Black President, The Case for Reparations and The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration, along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates's own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.

Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation


LaTasha Morrison - 2019
    This power-packed guide helps readers deepen their understanding of historical factors and present realities, equipping them to participate in the ongoing dialogue and to serve as catalysts for righteousness, justice, healing, transformation, and reconciliation.

But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies


Akasha Gloria Hull - 1986
    "Important and innovative."--Feminist Bookstore News

Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible


Yomi Adegoke - 2018
    From authors to politicians, to entrepreneurs to artists, black women in the UK continue to thrive against all odds and well outside of the world’s expectations. Women who look like us, grew up in similar places to us, talk like us, are shaping almost every societal sector, from the bottom and, finally, from all the way up at the top.Black women today are facing uniquely challenging experiences in all aspects of their lives. Yet when best friends Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinené’s searched for a book that addressed these challenges they realised none existed. So Slay in Your Lane – the lovechild of exasperation and optimism – was born.From education, to work, to dating, to representation, money and health, this inspirational, honest and provocative Black Girl Bible explores the ways in which being black and female affects each of these areas – and offers advice and encouragement on how to navigate them.Illustrated with stories from Elizabeth and Yomi’s own lives, and from interviews with dozens of the most successful black women in Britain – including Amma Asante, Charlene White, Jamelia, Denise Lewis, Malorie Blackman and Dawn Butler MP – Slay in Your Lane recognizes and celebrates the strides black women have already made, whilst providing practical advice and inspiration for those who want to do the same and forge a better, visible future.