Here are 100 books that Critical Race Theory fans have personally recommended if you like
Critical Race Theory.
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I've always been fascinated by what makes life tick. I was a gifted child, not my own label, but I had all of the special classes. It took me years to get over the notion that I was supposed to have all the answers, and when I did, I found myself searching for all the answers I was supposed to have had. I went headlong into current events and psychology, again wanting to know how the world ticked. And I'm qualified to give you my list insofar as you are qualified to go look these titles up. I share the most profound repositories of knowledge with you.
I did well in history growing up, but an accident at a mountain in the 7th grade had me laid up and reading a book about Native Americans in their own words. At that point, I knew they weren’t teaching us everything.
Finding Howard Zinn later was the motherlode of what history teachers hadn’t taught us, and I absorbed it.
"A wonderful, splendid book—a book that should be read by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future." –Howard Fast
Historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools—with its emphasis on great men in high places—to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace.
Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, itis the only volume to tell America's story from the…
Every author writing about race and tax in the United States uses my article with William Whitford, “A Black Critique of the Internal Revenue Code.” Using census data, Bill and I showed that blacks and whites who earn the same income, live in the same geographic areas, have the same education and marital status, pay different amounts of federal income tax because of the race and wealth disparities outlined in Race and Wealth Disparities: A Multidisciplinary Discourse edited by Beverly Moran.
Faces at the Bottom of the Well is the book that created Critical Race Theory. It lays out the central problem of Critical Race Theory: how does racism consistently defeat law? For example, in 1954 Brown v. the Board of Education held that segregated schools are unlawful. Yet, sixty-nine years later, US schools, housing, and employment all remain segregated. This is the book that inspired every other critical race theory scholar.
The noted civil rights activist uses allegory and historical example to present a radical vision of the persistence of racism in America. These essays shed light on some of the most perplexing and vexing issues of our day: affirmative action, the disparity between civil rights law and reality, the racist outbursts of some black leaders, the temptation toward violent retaliation, and much more.
I was born and raised in Nyack, New York, and all of my degrees are from colleges and universities in New York. I have always been interested in race relations in America and understanding their causes and consequences. Hope and despair are two themes that run through the experiences of people of African ancestry in America. The books I selected include fiction and nonfiction works that highlight promises made and promises unfulfilled.
I found this book to be life-changing. No good books have explained racial wealth inequality in America for years. This book changed that oversight. I love how the book calls upon its readers to think beyond income as a measure of economic equality and consider wealth. It plainly shows the causes and consequences of racial wealth inequality in America. I am glad that the book offers some recommendations for narrowing the gap but is also realistic about the related challenges.
The award-winning Black Wealth / White Wealth offers a powerful portrait of racial inequality based on an analysis of private wealth. Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro's groundbreaking research analyzes wealth - total assets and debts rather than income alone - to uncover deep and persistent racial inequality in America, and they show how public policies have failed to redress the problem.
First published in 1995, Black Wealth / White Wealth is considered a classic exploration of race and inequality. It provided, for the first time, systematic empirical evidence that explained the racial inequality gap between blacks and whites. The Tenth…
Every author writing about race and tax in the United States uses my article with William Whitford, “A Black Critique of the Internal Revenue Code.” Using census data, Bill and I showed that blacks and whites who earn the same income, live in the same geographic areas, have the same education and marital status, pay different amounts of federal income tax because of the race and wealth disparities outlined in Race and Wealth Disparities: A Multidisciplinary Discourse edited by Beverly Moran.
I have used this textbook for over ten years. It groups Supreme Court decisions and other writings by Hispanics, Native Americans, Blacks, and Asians in a way that allows students to understand how doctrine shifts over almost three hundred years of jurisprudence. The text gently gets students to expand their knowledge base and confront what they learned (or did not learn) in other courses. I enjoy this textbook every time that I use it.
This casebook presents interdisciplinary, critical perspectives on race and racism and covers the roles of law and history in shaping the meanings of race in the United States. Updates the second edition with new material on: President Obama's election and "post-racialism"; important studies of implicit bias; the Voting Rights Act and allegedly race-neutral restrictions on voting; recurring violence against and harassment of Latino immigrants; book-banning in Arizona; and demographic changes and their implications. Includes new cases such as Shelby County v. Holder and Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, current statistics, and updated references. Features rich historical treatment of…
I was weaned on Cuban stories by my Havana-born mother and first visited the island in 1998. Since then, I earned a PhD in history from the Graduate Center, City University of New York–where I studied twentieth-century Cuban politics. While conducting research in Havana and Miami, I confirmed that legends were imbibed with the same fervor as café cubano.All histories are marked by tall tales, but Cubans are governed by theirs, inside and out, more than most.
This is only a biography in the loosest sense, one of Afro-Cubans from the year slavery was abolished until an ugly racial massacre that claimed thousands of innocent victims. In 1892, José Martí famously declared that “There is no racial hatred because there are no races.” The following year he wrongly predicted that “In Cuba, there will never be a racial war.” Cuba’s independence myth was founded on the idea that there would be no white or black Cubans, only Cubans. Yet in 1912, two Afro-Cuban politicians, Pedro Ivonet and Evaristo Estenoz, both veterans of Cuba’s independence struggle, some of their followers, and thousands of Afro-Cubans in the wrong place at the wrong time, were massacred in a frenzy of racial hatred.
In Our Rightful Share , Aline Helg examines the issue of race in Cuban society, politics, and ideology during the island's transition from a Spanish colony to an independent state. She challenges Cuba's well-established myth of racial equality and shows that racism is deeply rooted in Cuban creole society. Helg argues that despite Cuba's abolition of slavery in 1886 and its winning of independence in 1902, Afro-Cubans remained marginalized in all aspects of society. After the wars for independence, in which they fought en masse, Afro-Cubans demanded change politically by forming the first national black party in the Western Hemisphere.…
I was born and raised in Nyack, New York, and all of my degrees are from colleges and universities in New York. I have always been interested in race relations in America and understanding their causes and consequences. Hope and despair are two themes that run through the experiences of people of African ancestry in America. The books I selected include fiction and nonfiction works that highlight promises made and promises unfulfilled.
I am so glad Dr. Glaude continues the tradition of encouraging Americans to hold a mirror up to themselves in Democracy in America and ask whether there is a gap between what we value as a society and how we treat people. I find the book very accessible to people from diverse backgrounds. This book is not written with scholars or college students in mind but for anyone who wants to understand better what democracy has, can, and could look like.
A powerful polemic on the state of black America that savages the idea of a post-racial society.
America’s great promise of equality has always rung hollow in the ears of African Americans. But today the situation has grown even more dire. From the murders of black youth by the police, to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, to the disaster visited upon poor and middle-class black families by the Great Recession, it is clear that black America faces an emergency—at the very moment the election of the first black president has prompted many to believe we’ve solved America’s race…
I am a teacher, a mom, a bubbe, and a writer. I taught elementary school and college courses, directed a daycare, and owned a children’s bookstore, but my favorite job is scribbling words on paper. I have two grown children and four wonderful granddaughters who love to listen as I read to them. Many of my ideas come from my experiences with my granddaughters and from their questions. Our family and friends are a mix of religions and cultures, and most of my books reflect the importance of diversity, acceptance, and knowledge.
I am recommending this book because it is a great story of friendship. It also captures the atmosphere in the South after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.
Joe and John Henry are best friends and do everything together. When the two boys, one black and one white, want to swim in the town pool, they discover that even though a law was passed to allow everyone to swim together in the same pool, there are people in the town who don’t want to follow the law. They want blacks and whites to stay separate.
I love the way Joe stands up for John Henry. At the end, we see a more positive future as Joe and John Henry walk into the General Store together. This book is a great conversation starter.
Two boys—one black, one white—are best friends in the segregated 1960s South in this picture book about friends sticking together through thick and thin.
John Henry swims better than anyone I know. He crawls like a catfish, blows bubbles like a swamp monster, but he doesn’t swim in the town pool with me. He’s not allowed.
Joe and John Henry are a lot alike. They both like shooting marbles, they both want to be firemen, and they both love to swim. But there’s one important way they're different: Joe is white and John Henry is black, and in the South…
I am a history professor at Boston University, where I teach and write about modern American popular thought, political culture, trade, travel, and war especially in urban and transnational contexts. I enjoy histories that are based on deep and creative bodies of research and that push past timeworn myths and clichés about the American past.
Delmont’s sweeping story about the complex wartime outlooks and experiences of Black Americans necessarily includes the travails and triumphs of combat fighters; the battlefield contributions of Black GIs have been too often dismissed or ignored.
But here they appear alongside a fascinating, broader cast of war workers battling racism while doing their bit to defeat the Axis across the world’s continents. From the engineers carving roads out of impenetrable Asian jungle or Alaskan tundra to the women of the all-Black 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion who sorted mail in an unheated English warehouse while under bombardment, Delmont’s subjects offer a reminder of the awesome scope of this war.
• Winner of the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction • A New York Times Notable Book • A Best Book of the Year from TIME, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Washington Independent Review of Books, and more!
The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont
“Matthew F. Delmont’s book is filled with compelling narratives that outline with nuance, rigor, and complexity how Black Americans fought for this country abroad while simultaneously fighting for their rights here in the United States. Half American belongs firmly within the…
Nelson Johnson is a New York Times bestselling author (Boardwalk Empire) and has been fascinated with history and Clarence Darrow’s career all his life. From having practiced law many years and presided over 200(+) jury trials as a New Jersey Superior Court Judge, Nelson is uniquely qualified to tell the story of Darrow’s and his wife Ruby’s worst two years together. Nelson’s first four books have all prepared him to tell this story. It’s a tale that asks the reader to judge Darrow.
Shipler’s book is as timely today as when written nearly 25 years ago. Slavery is our nation’s founding sin and was responsible for racism being written into America’s DNA. I spent years researching my book The Northside: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City. Shipler’s research was an invaluable aid in understanding where we are today regarding race relations. In everything from pay differentials, education and housing, to healthcare, drug addiction, and death at the hands of police, the chasm between whites and many black Americans is virtually intractable. Shipler does a yeoman’s job of putting race and racism into perspective, making sense of a complex and disturbing issue.
A Country of Strangers is a magnificent exploration of the psychological landscape where blacks and whites meet. To tell the story in human rather than abstract terms, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David K. Shipler bypasses both extremists and celebrities and takes us among ordinary Americans as they encounter one another across racial lines.
We learn how blacks and whites see each other, how they interpret each other's behavior, and how certain damaging images and assumptions seep into the actions of even the most unbiased. We penetrate into dimensions of stereotyping and discrimination that are usually invisible, and discover the unseen…
Rajiv Sethi is an economist, currently a professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His research deals with information and beliefs, with particular focus on how stereotypes condition interactions among strangers.
Elizabeth Anderson writes with exceptional clarity and precision in ways that are jargon-free and accessible to a broad audience.
In this book she tackles a broad range of important and interconnected issues, including the burdens faced by negatively stereotyped individuals who must spend time and effort to dispel clouds of suspicion, and the proper understanding of meritocracy in selection practices.
More than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would argue that we have finally arrived at a postracial America, but The Imperative of Integration indicates otherwise. Elizabeth Anderson demonstrates that, despite progress toward racial equality, African Americans remain disadvantaged on virtually all measures of well-being. Segregation remains a key cause of these…
