Here are 100 books that The History of White People fans have personally recommended if you like
The History of White People.
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As a journalist, author and screenwriter, my work has always pondered loss and grief. I think this has something to do with the fact that of my mother’s religion; she was a convert to Hinduism and started conversations about the inevitability of death and how the soul and the body aren’t the same when us children were at a very young age. It probably also has something to do with the constant presence of death within my family and communities as a Black and queer person in a violently anti-Black and queerantagonistic world. I currently volunteer at a hospice, and provide community-building programming to death workers from diverse communities.
This list could be full of Toni Morrison novels and be no worse for it.
I’d argue that the late writer is the finest we’ve ever had on the topics of grief, loss, and ancestry—especially from the Black American perspective. One of my favorite examples is Song of Solomon, a mesmerizing journey through what it takes to craft an identity in the midst of racism and the ruptures it creates in our lives.
Morrison's singular prose is pure magic as it weaves a tale of the enduring power of love. A literary masterpiece.
'Song of Solomon...profoundly changed my life' Marlon James
Macon 'Milkman' Dead was born shortly after a neighbourhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly.
In 1930s America Macon learns about the tyranny of white society from his friend Guitar, though he is more concerned with escaping the familial tyranny of his own father. So while Guitar joins a terrorist group Macon goes home to the South, lured by tales of buried family treasure. But his odyssey back home and a deadly confrontation…
I lived in sixteen places by the time I was twenty-two. A peripatetic youth may teach you that different is interesting, that stereotypes don’t hold, that the emperor has no clothes. When I moved South and worked as a journalist, I found black elders’ stories so different from the official stories of white authorities. Horrified that these men and women would die with their heroism untold, I interviewed more than 150 black activists for Stories of Struggle. I want to know what is missing; I want it found. Like a detective, an anthropologist, a scientist, and yes, a journalist, I want to know, and I want others to know.
Monumental, extraordinary, a landmark: only superlatives would do in 1975 to praise Simple Justice by Richard Kluger.
If you want to understand education in America, race in America, the absence of equity in America, Simple Justice gets you there. The book begins with the South Carolina heroes of Briggs v. Elliott, impoverished rural petitioners who filed the first of five lawsuits composing Brown v. Board of Education. The book ends with the 1954 and 1955 US Supreme Court’s decisions declaring unconstitutional the legal segregation of public schools.
Kluger focuses on people, beginning with tenant farmers and sharecroppers who defied the white men controlling their every breath and petitioned for “equal everything.” Kluger’s vivid storytelling was among my inspirations, forty years after Brown, to seek South Carolina’s forgotten heroes.
Simple Justice is generally regarded as the classic account of the U.S. Supreme Court's epochal decision outlawing racial segregation and the centerpiece of African-Americans' ongoing crusade for equal justice under law.
The 1954 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education brought centuries of legal segregation in this country to an end. It was and remains, beyond question, one of the truly significant events in American history, "probably the most important American government act of any kind since the Emancipation Proclamation," in the view of constitutional scholar Louis H. Pollak. The Brown decision climaxed along, torturous…
I lived in sixteen places by the time I was twenty-two. A peripatetic youth may teach you that different is interesting, that stereotypes don’t hold, that the emperor has no clothes. When I moved South and worked as a journalist, I found black elders’ stories so different from the official stories of white authorities. Horrified that these men and women would die with their heroism untold, I interviewed more than 150 black activists for Stories of Struggle. I want to know what is missing; I want it found. Like a detective, an anthropologist, a scientist, and yes, a journalist, I want to know, and I want others to know.
Out of the House of Bondage destroys the myth of the Southern plantation mistress as a delicate, gentle being presiding over a household maintained by passive, devoted, enslaved women.
A professor of history and law at Duke University, Thavolia Glymph scoured female slaveholders’ diaries and enslaved and freed people’s narratives to expose the mistresses’ use of violence – cowhide whippings, “until she was just a piece of living raw meat”; burning with hot irons, “hot enough to take off flesh”; beating to death a crying baby – and enslaved women’s resistance, perceived then and described later as laziness, misbehavior, and insubordination.
Glymph’s uncovering of abuse upsets a familiar false narrative, dismantling previous scholarship and exposing white women’s use of violence to assert power. A seeker of missing voices and lost stories, I am deeply interested in what has been ignored, misinterpreted, or omitted.
The plantation household was, first and foremost, a site of production. This fundamental fact has generally been overshadowed by popular and scholarly images of the plantation household as the source of slavery's redeeming qualities, where 'gentle' mistresses ministered to 'loyal' slaves. This book recounts a very different story. The very notion of a private sphere, as divorced from the immoral excesses of chattel slavery as from the amoral logic of market laws, functioned to conceal from public scrutiny the day-to-day struggles between enslaved women and their mistresses, subsumed within a logic of patriarchy. One of emancipation's unsung consequences was precisely…
I lived in sixteen places by the time I was twenty-two. A peripatetic youth may teach you that different is interesting, that stereotypes don’t hold, that the emperor has no clothes. When I moved South and worked as a journalist, I found black elders’ stories so different from the official stories of white authorities. Horrified that these men and women would die with their heroism untold, I interviewed more than 150 black activists for Stories of Struggle. I want to know what is missing; I want it found. Like a detective, an anthropologist, a scientist, and yes, a journalist, I want to know, and I want others to know.
The Race Beat quickly turns to open conflict. White-owned media wake up to the atrocities of racism. (It was way past time to pay attention. Exploring that is among the reasons I appreciate the book.) What follows seem like war movies.
We learn just how hard it was to get the story, photograph, or film; get the story out; get yourself out. Journalists for the white-owned Northern press, black-owned press, and TV networks are assaulted by enraged mobs during the Montgomery bus boycott, Central High School’s desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas; James Meredith’s enrollment at the University of Mississippi; and Freedom Rides into Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama.
They dodge attack dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham and club-wielding ”posse men” in Selma. They persist. They make a daily record. Without them, the movement would have been “a bird without wings,” said John Lewis, Freedom Rider (and later, US senator).
An unprecedented examination of how news stories, editorials and photographs in the American press—and the journalists responsible for them—profoundly changed the nation’s thinking about civil rights in the South during the 1950s and ‘60s.
Roberts and Klibanoff draw on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen—black and white—revealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings that compelled its citizens to act. Meticulously researched and vividly rendered, The Race Beat is an extraordinary account of one of the most calamitous periods in our nation’s history, as told by those who…
My own collusion with white supremacy and anti-Blackness is a lifelong journey I mitigate for my soul’s redemption. I am a Mississippi-born redneck, alcoholic, psychotherapist, San Francisco Bay Area queer, higher education administrator with a Critical Race Theory doctorate. I first learned democracy by watching my Mississippi parents risk their lives and mine in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Three-Fifths Magazine recently published “My First English: The Vernacular of the KKK.” My book, “Twelve Steps for White America” won the BookFest 1st Place Gold Medal for “Society and Social Sciences: Race Culture Class and Religion.” I work to live in a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes.
Battalora’s teaching that whiteness was created in colonial America to divide the masses and ensure that white elites dominate is central to my Rigged Advantage Theory.
I love how rich this short book is for informing where “white” came from. Imagine if white people understood that King James (of Bible fame) was NOT white but that “white” was made up to prevent my 1st ancestor in the new world (an indentured servant) from ever aligning his potential for political power with enslaved people to VOTE in a multi-racial democracy. This drama persists!
Birth of a White Nation is a fascinating book on race in America that begins with an exploration of the moment in time when "white people," as a separate and distinct group of humanity, were invented through legislation and the enactment of laws. The book provides a thorough examination of the underlying reasons as well as the ways in which "white people" were created. It also explains how the creation of this distinction divided laborers and ultimately served the interests of the elite. The book goes on to examine how foundational law and policy in the U.S. were used to…
As a journalist who learned his craft on the job in the tumultuous 1960s, I happened to find myself living in states where racial history was being written. Reporting that story required me to understand why discrimination, poverty, and violence remained so deeply rooted in modern America. I wrote Ten Ways to Fight Hate, I made a movie about civil rights martyrs, and, after seeing people from around the world making a pilgrimage to the sites of the civil rights struggle, published my guidebook. Over the course of a 50-year career, I have written a million words. I am proudest of those that tried to right wrongs, and sometimes did.
Across
the South, major statues of Confederate leaders are being removed from
prominent pedestals, while schools, military bases, streets, and other memorials
named for Confederates are being renamed. No effort is more astonishing than
ending the hero worship of Robert E. Lee, the West Point graduate who chose to
fight for his home state of Virginia in the Civil War, and led the South to
defeat.
In
this deeply researched and personal history of Lee and his own reckoning of
Lee’s betrayal of the United States, West Point historian and retired Army
general Ty Seidule reveals how he, a son of the South, came to revile Lee’s
status as a southern God. As a PhD historian, Seidule dismantles many myths
about Lee, and proves that Lee was, in fact, fighting to create a new nation
based on slavery.
Ty Seidule grew up revering Robert E. Lee. From his southern childhood to his service in the U.S. Army, every part of his life reinforced the Lost Cause myth: that Lee was the greatest man who ever lived, and that the Confederates were underdogs who lost the Civil War with honor. Now, as a retired brigadier general and Professor Emeritus of History at West Point, his view has radically changed. From a soldier, a scholar, and a southerner, American history demands a reckoning.
In a unique blend of history and reflection, Seidule deconstructs the truth about the Confederacy-that its undisputed…
My professional work has always been inspired by the personal journey I've gone on–which means that my interest in religious trauma stems from my own healing as well as client work and research. Previous research and therapeutic interventions have suggested atheism as a cure for religious trauma which is often unhelpful and can create just as much rigidity as someone experienced in a high control religion. I approach religious trauma as trauma–which means that resolving religious trauma can occur in the same ways that we use to resolve other trauma. Understanding religious trauma this way opens the door for a decrease in shame, more compassion towards self, and ultimately living a whole life.
Resmaa’s book is one of the more influential books for me.
Though his focus is on racialized and generational trauma, he begins by helping the reader understand where biases, fears, and oppression become lodged in the nervous system–generations before us–and how this shapes the way we interact with anyone who is different than us.
Mixed in with excellent content are effective practices for the reader to find a sense of grounding and safety in their current surroundings which is key in being able to resolve the trauma that is living in our bodies.
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee or freeze and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. In this ground-breaking work, therapist, Menakem, examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of body-centred psychology. He argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all American bodies. This collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans - the police.
I’m a writer and a Shakespeare and critical race studies scholar who’s always been intrigued by the invisible, artificial race-based boundaries in our world. I love analyzing the lives of literary characters and seeing how they can serve as mirrors for us along lines of gender, mental health, and more. My critical interests are informed by the fact that I grew up in a predominantly Black/Latino low-income neighborhood and attended an affluent, predominantly white private school from the sixth to twelfth grade. My adolescent experiences with inclusion/exclusion dynamics required me to reflect on race, for example, so I could understand and navigate the kinds of socio-cultural dynamics that affect us all.
I love this book not only because of the hard truths it tells in relation to racial whiteness and racism but also because of how Rankine’s writerly voice reverberates through one’s mind long after finishing the book.
As someone who sometimes finds it hard to sit still to finish a book, I did not have that issue with Just Us partly because of how diverse and stimulating the content is. In addition to including poetry and prose within the text, there are many images to see and study as one internalizes the urgent points made by a witty, seasoned author whose overall tone demands that readers be part of and sit with this “American conversation” that asks us to think deeply about power, privilege, inequality, whiteness and more.
Now in paperback, Claudia Rankine's "skyscraper in the literature on racism" (Christian Science Monitor)
In Just Us, Claudia Rankine invites us into a necessary conversation about Whiteness in America. What would it take for us to breach the silence, guilt, and violence that arise from addressing Whiteness for what it is? What are the consequences if we keep avoiding this conversation? What might it look like if we step into it? "I learned early that being right pales next to staying in the room," she writes.
This brilliant assembly of essays, poems, documents, and images disrupts the false comfort of…
I’ve devoted my academic career and personal life to the limits and possibilities of white liberal approaches to civil rights reform. Trained in U.S. history and published in American Jewish history, I look closely at how ethnic groups and religious minorities interact with their racial and gender status to create a sometimes-surprising perspective on both history and our current day. At times powerful and at other times powerless, Jews (and other white ethnics) navigate a complex course in civil rights advocacy.
Another classic, Lipsitz’s book turns so many white-centered social justice assumptions on their heads. In chapters that explore incidents well known in American popular culture, and a 20th-anniversary edition that brings his subject to the current day, Lipsitz offers a much-needed correction to well-meaning social justice advocates.
George Lipsitz's classic book The Possessive Investment in Whiteness argues that public policy and private prejudice work together to create a possessive investment in whiteness that is responsible for the racialized hierarchies of our society. Whiteness has a cash value: it accounts for advantages that come to individuals through profits made from housing secured in discriminatory markets, through the unequal educational opportunities available to children of different races, through insider networks that channel employment opportunities to the friends and relatives of those who have profited most from past and present discrimination, and especially through intergenerational transfers of inherited wealth that…
I'm passionate about helping people to better manage their internal state so they can control their external behaviors under high-pressure situations. My expertise is on the following topics found in the books I've chosen: power/status, influence, leadership presence, setting boundaries, speaking clearly & concisely, emotional mastery, improvisation, compassion, and empathy for self and others. As a communication coach and trainer, I work with clients to neutralize power dynamics for more positive exchange, leaving both parties feeling safe and respected.
Improving our capacity to communicate also means putting our ego to the side so that we can receive messages, even when the packaging is not so pretty! This book expanded my ability to accept difficult messages. In the past, I’ve made a request to people close to me, "if you want to tell me something difficult to hear, please package the message respectfully." Since reading this book, when I hear something I perceive to be hostile or accusing, my job is to work on not taking it personally, because getting the message is more important than the packaging!
'With clarity and compassion, DiAngelo allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to "bad people." In doing so, she moves our national discussions forward. This is a necessary book for all people invested in societal change' Claudia Rankine
Anger. Fear. Guilt. Denial. Silence. These are the ways in which ordinary white people react when it is pointed out to them that they have done or said something that has - unintentionally - caused racial offence or hurt. After, all, a racist is the worst thing a person can be, right? But these reactions only…
