Antiracism Summer Reading List 2023
Welcome to our digital exhibit on the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability (IARA) Project's Antiracism Summer Reading List. This page is a companion to the physical display in the HKS Library, last available in September 2023. Harvard affiliates can request books via HOLLIS, for pick-up at the library of your choice.
This list is curated by IARA, which is housed at HKS' Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. It was first published on July 14, 2023.
On the reading list, from IARA:
"From tales of the desegregation of Boston’s school system to an exploration of Latinos’ new collective identity within America’s racialized world to the brutal truth behind the racialized disparities of student debt, this list brings you powerful insights geared toward challenging our perspectives and changing the status quo."
Explore the Antiracism Summer Reading List below and on the Ash Center's website (complete with commentary on why they chose each book).
Full List
Click on the circular "i" icons to view book descriptions. Click on the Harvard shield icons to access ebooks (Harvard Key required).
Before Busing: A History of Boston's Long Black Freedom Struggle by
In many histories of Boston, African Americans have remained almost invisible. Partly as a result, when the 1972 crisis over school desegregation and busing erupted, many observers professed shock at the overt racism on display in the "cradle of liberty." Yet the city has long been divided over matters of race, and it was also home to a far older Black organizing tradition than many realize. A community of Black activists had fought segregated education since the origins of public schooling and racial inequality since the end of northern slavery. Before Busing tells the story of the men and women who struggled and demonstrated to make school desegregation a reality in Boston. It reveals the legal efforts and battles over tactics that played out locally and influenced the national Black freedom struggle. And the book gives credit to the Black organizers, parents, and children who fought long and hard battles for justice that have been left out of the standard narratives of the civil rights movement. What emerges is a clear picture of the long and hard-fought campaigns to break the back of Jim Crow education in the North and make Boston into a better, more democratic city--a fight that continues to this day.
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ISBN: 9781469662770Publication Date: 2022
Chain of Change: Struggles for Black Community Development by
One-time mayoral candidate, founder of the Rainbow Coalition, and longtime political activist, Mel King surveys Black life in Boston, including the forces of racism and liberation, and shows how the Black community has worked to establish its identity, language, and organizations.
ISBN: 9780896081055Publication Date: 1999
City of Dispossessions: Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and the Creation of Modern Detroit by
In July 2013, Detroit became the largest city in U.S. history to declare bankruptcy. The underlying causes were decades of deindustrialization, white flight, and financial mismanagement. More recently it has been heralded a comeback city as wealthy white residents resettle there. Yet, as Kyle T. Mays argues, we cannot understand the current state of Detroit without also understanding the longer history of Native American and African American dispossession that has defined the city since its founding. How has dispossession impacted the development of modern U.S. cities? And how does comparing the historical experiences of Native Americans and African Americans in an urban context help us comprehend histories of race, sovereignty, and colonialism? Using archives, oral and family histories, and community documents, City of Dispossessions is a cultural, intellectual, and social history that argues that physical and symbolic forms of dispossession of Native Americans and African Americans, and their reactions to dispossession, have been central to Detroit's modern development. The book begins with the first settlement by the Frenchman Cadillac in 1701 and chronicles how the logic of dispossession has continued into the present, through a wide range of forms that include memorialization of the "disappearing Indian," the physical dispossession of African Americans through urban renewal, and gentrification. Mays also chronicles the wide-ranging forms of expression through which Black and Indigenous Detroiters have contested dispossession, such as the Red and Black Power movements and culturally relevant education. Through lively, accessible prose as well as historical and contemporary examples, City of Dispossessions will be of interest to readers of urban studies, Indigenous Studies, and critical ethnic studies.
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ISBN: 9780812253931Publication Date: 2022
Concepcion: An Immigrant Family's Fortunes by
A journalist's powerful and incisive account of the forces steering the fate of his sprawling Filipinx-American family reframes how we comprehend the immigrant experience. Nearing the age at which his mother had migrated to the U.S., part of the wave of non-Europeans who arrived after immigration quotas were relaxed in 1965, Albert Samaha began to question the ironclad belief in a better future that had inspired her family to uproot themselves from their birthplace. As a rising tide of inequality and discrimination threatened to engulf her, her brother Spanky-a rising pop star back in Manila, now working as a luggage handler at San Franciso airport, his singing carrying no farther than a restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf-and others of their generation, he wondered whether their decision to abandon a middle-class existence in the Philippines had been worth the cost. Excavating his family's history back to the region's unique geopolitical roots in Spanish colonialism, Japanese occupation, and American intervention, Samaha fits his family's arc into the wider story of global migration as determined by chess moves among superpowers. And by relating their personal history with warmth and affection but also clear-eyed skepticism, 'Concepcion' explores what it might mean to reckon with imperialism's unjust legacy, to live with contradiction and hope, to fight for the unrealized ideals of an inherited homeland.
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ISBN: 9780593086100Publication Date: 2021
Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance by
With Decolonizing Wealth, a provocative analysis of the dysfunctional colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance, the award-winning funder Edgar Villanueva draws on his Native American heritage to offer a prescription for restoring balance and healing our divides. With great compassion--because the Native way is to bring the oppressor into the circle of healing, understanding that healing cannot occur unless everyone is part of the process-- Villanueva diagnoses the fatal flaws in financial institutions, unflinchingly drilling down to the core of colonialism and White supremacy. The greed, exploitation, and domination at the core of colonization are the same dynamics at play today when money is used to separate Us from Them and to separate Haves from Have-Nots. To restore harmony and heal divides--as we desperately need to do in America and the world-- we must learn how to decolonize the institutions and processes that control and move money. Although there is no quick fix for the traumatic complexity of colonization, Villanueva's "Seven Steps for Healing" outline a process to follow, from taking responsibility, to inviting the perspectives and wisdom of people most excluded and exploited by today's broken economy, to investing with integrity and making reparations. There are roles for everyone involved, whether they're rich or poor, funder or recipient, victim or perpetrator. Integrating traditional indigenous wisdom with savvy financial experience, this books explains how money can be used to facilitate relationships, to help us thrive, and to bring things back into balance.
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ISBN: 9781523097890Publication Date: 2018
Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore by
Industrial toxic emissions on the South Baltimore Peninsula are among the highest in the nation. Because of the concentration of factories and other chemical industries in their neighborhoods, residents face elevated rates of lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses in addition to heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular disease, all of which can lead to premature death. Fighting to Breathe follows a dynamic and creative group of high school students who decided to fight back against the race- and class-based health disparities and inequality in their city. For more than a decade, student organizers stood up to unequal land use practices and the proposed construction of an incinerator and instead initiated new waste management strategies. As a Baltimore resident and activist-scholar, Nicole Fabricant documents how these young organizers came to envision, design, and create a more just and sustainable Baltimore.
ISBN: 9780520976627Publication Date: 2022
The Future of Black Studies by
The marginalization of Black voices from the academy is a problem in the Western world. But Black Studies, where it exists, is a powerful, boundary-pushing discipline, grown out of struggle and community action. Here, Abdul Alkalimat, one of the founders of Black Studies in the US, presents a reimagining of the future trends in the study of the Black experience. Taking Marxism and Black Experientialism, Afro-Futurist and Diaspora frameworks, he projects a radical future for the discipline at this time of social crisis. Choosing cornerstones of culture, such as the music of Sun Ra, the movie Black Panther and the writer Octavia Butler, he looks at the trajectory of Black liberation thought since slavery, including new research on the rise in the comparative study of Black people all over the world. Turning to look at how digital tools enhance the study of the discipline, this book is a powerful read that will inform and inspire students and activists.
ISBN: 9780745347011Publication Date: 2022
Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism by
In an unprecedented demographic shift, Latinos will comprise a third of the American population in just a matter of decades. While their influence shapes everything from electoral politics to popular culture, many Americans still struggle with two basic questions: Who are Latinos, and where do they fit in America's racial order? Laura E. Gomez, a leading expert on race in America, argues that it is only recently that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others are seeing themselves (and being seen by others) under the banner of a cohesive racial identity.
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ISBN: 9781595589170Publication Date: 2020
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by
Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative--and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world. Binding these essays together is Hong's theory of "minor feelings." As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality--when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small, they're dissonant--and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her. With sly humor and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche--and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth.
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ISBN: 9781984820372Publication Date: 2020
Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies by
Since its founding as a discipline, Black Studies has been under relentless attack by social and political forces seeking to discredit and neutralize it. Our History Has Always Been Contraband was born out of an urgent need to respond to the latest threat: efforts to remove content from an AP African American Studies course being piloted in high schools across the United States. Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Our History Has Always Been Contraband brings together canonical texts and authors in Black Studies, including those excised from or not included in the AP curriculum.
ISBN: 9798888900574Publication Date: 2023
Rich White Men: What It Takes to Uproot the Old Boys' Club and Transform America by
With a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Robin DiAngelo, this provocative book investigates major corporate boardrooms and presents a data-driven analysis of how rich white men have preserved their monopoly on power--and what we can do to stop them.
It's no secret that our country has a serious problem when it comes to wealth inequality - and systemic racism and patriarchy have only exacerbated the advantages of wealthy white men. Over the past three decades, America's richest white men have only become richer, while those suffering in poverty have only gotten poorer. The divide may seem too great to bridge, but Rich White Men exposes the hidden and insidious ways that white male elites inherit, increase, and preserve their status--and, in this book, we get clear on how to uproot their monopoly on power. Serial nonprofit entrepreneur Garrett Neiman's day job is to get rich white men to donate money to good causes and organizations. In Rich White Men, Neiman brings us into corner offices of billionaires and the boardrooms of Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Stanford, Harvard, and other enclaves of silver-spooned white men to illuminate the role of rich white men in the world and how they justify inequality. He uses the analogy of compound interest to illustrate how the advantages wealthy white men inherit give them a leg up at key moments in their lives, gilding their trajectories and shutting others out. Through this rare, insider access, readers will discover new ways to persuade the elite toward progressive solutions. A hopeful polemic, the book sheds light on dark truths about inequality and the people invested in preserving it while also providing a blueprint for how America can become an equitable democracy. Rich White Men reveals that to realize America's founding aspiration of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we must recognize, dismantle, and transform our current system into one that liberates us all - including this nation's morally and spiritually impoverished wealthy white men.
ISBN: 9780306925566Publication Date: 2023-06-20
Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America by
Racism has persisted throughout history--but so have antiracist efforts to dismantle it. Through deep research and a gripping narrative that illuminates the lives of five key American figures, preeminent historian Ibram X. Kendi reveals how understanding and improving the world cannot happen without identifying and facing the racist forces that shape it. In collaboration with award-winning historian and comic artist Joel Christian Gill, this stunningly illustrated graphic-novel adaptation of Dr. Kendi's groundbreaking Stamped from the Beginning explores, with vivid clarity and dimensionality, the living history of America, and how we can learn from the past to work toward a more equitable, antiracist future.
ISBN: 9781984859433Publication Date: 2023
We Are Water Protectors by
Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth's water from harm and corruption--a bold and lyrical picture book written by Carole Lindstrom and vibrantly illustrated by Michaela Goade.
ISBN: 9781250203557Publication Date: 2020
We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power by
A landmark work of Black and Native American history that reconfigures our understanding of identity, race, and belonging and the inspiring ways marginalized people have pushed to redefine their world In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle tells the extraordinary story of the Creek Nation, a Native tribe that two centuries ago both owned slaves and accepted Black people as full members. Thanks to the leadership of a chief named Cow Tom--a Black former slave--a treaty with the U.S. government recognized Creek citizenship for its Black members. Yet this equality was shredded in the 1970s when Creek leaders revoked the citizenship of Black Creeks, even those who could trace their tribal history back generations. Why did this happen? What led to this reversal? How was the U.S. government involved? And how can marginalized people today defend themselves? These are some of the questions that award-winning journalist Caleb Gayle explores in this provocative examination of racial and ethnic identity. By delving deep into the historical record and interviewing Black Creeks suing the Creek Nation to have their citizenship reinstated, he lays bare the racism, ambition, and greed at the heart of this story. The result is an eye-opening account that challenges our preconceptions of identity as it shines new light on the long shadows of marginalization and white supremacy that continue to hamper progress for Black Americans.
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ISBN: 9780593329597Publication Date: 2022
When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age by
From cell phone footage of police killing unarmed Black people to leaked racist messages and even comments from friends and family on social media, online communication exposes how racism operates in a world that pretends to be colorblind. In When the Hood Comes Off, Rob Eschmann blends rigorous research and engaging personal narrative to examine the effects of online racism on communities of color and society, and the unexpected ways that digital technologies enable innovative everyday tools of antiracist resistance. Drawing on a wealth of data, including interviews with students of Color around the country and analyses of millions of social media posts over the past decade, Eschmann investigates the influence of online communication on face-to-face interactions. When the Hood Comes Off highlights the power of the internet as an organizing tool, and shows that online racism can be a profound wake-up call. How will we respond?
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ISBN: 9780520976894Publication Date: 2023
The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans - And How We Can Fix It by
A groundbreaking exposé of racism in the American taxation system from a law professor and expert on tax policy. Dorothy A. Brown became a tax lawyer to get away from race. As a young black girl growing up in the South Bronx, she'd seen how racism limited the lives of her family and neighbors. Her law school classes offered a refreshing contrast: Tax law was about numbers, and the only color that mattered was green. But when Brown sat down to prepare tax returns for her parents, she found something strange: James and Dottie Brown, a plumber and a nurse, seemed to be paying an unusually high percentage of their income in taxes. When Brown became a law professor, she set out to understand why. In The Whiteness of Wealth, Brown draws on decades of cross-disciplinary research to show that tax law isn't as color-blind as she'd once believed. She takes us into her adopted city of Atlanta, introducing us to families across the economic spectrum whose stories demonstrate how American tax law rewards the preferences and practices of white people while pushing black people further behind. From attending college to getting married to buying a home, black Americans find themselves at a financial disadvantage compared to their white peers. The results are an ever-increasing wealth gap and more black families shut out of the American dream. Solving the problem will require a wholesale rethinking of America's tax code. But it will also require both black and white Americans to make different choices. This urgent, actionable book points the way forward.
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ISBN: 9780525577348Publication Date: 2021
