Here are 100 books that The Possessive Investment in Whiteness fans have personally recommended if you like
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness.
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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.
Peter Irons, at attorney, investigated the incarceration of US citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. He became so upset that he devoted his own legal career to securing a rare Supreme Court reversal of its infamous Korematsu decision. This book tells that story.
Details the case of Fred Koremsatsu, a Japanese American arrested in 1942 because of his Japanese ancestry, who in 1982 launched a legal battle to clear his record
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.
A classic, this book was one of the first to challenge prevailing white attitudes about the assimilation and acculturation of Africans and African Americans to life under slavery. Mullin describes how greater levels of assimilation translated into more effective means of protest.
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.
By investigating what white liberal Greensboro meant with the word “civility” against what black activists meant by “civil rights,” Chafe dives deep into the limits of white liberalism, undermining the claim that civil rights could be achieved by following a slow, southern, and civil, approach.
Reveals how whites in Greensboro used the traditional Southern concept of civility as a means of keeping Black protest in check and how Black activists continually devised new ways of asserting their quest for freedom.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
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.
While many celebrated the ethnic revival of the 1960s and the social justice causes that grew from them, Steinberg offers a powerful and challenging thesis that argues the limits of ethnicity. A sense of ethnic re-birth, he argues, can only occur once ethnicity is gone. Rather than empowering a new generation of social justice youth, ethnicity proves a myth.
You hold in your hand a dangerous book. Because it rejects as it clarifies most of the current wisdom on race, ethnicity, and immigration in the United States, The Ethnic Myth has the force of a scholarly bomb. --from the Introduction by Eric William Lott
In this classic work, sociologist Stephen Steinberg rejects the prevailing view that cultural values and ethnic traits are the primary determinants of the economic destiny of racial and ethnic groups in America. He argues that locality, class conflict, selective migration, and other historical and economic factors play a far larger role not only in producing…
Teachers and children’s writers are some of each other’s biggest fans, and I have been both, so I couldn’t resist putting a teacher in my book. Besides that, teachers are very useful characters because they can make kids in books do things like write reports or keep a journal. Initially, my main character, Patsy, doesn’t especially like her teacher, Miss Ashman. Patsy thinks she’s too strict. But by the end of the book, she realizes that challenging students and having high expectations are some of the things that make a great teacher. If you’ve ever had a teacher you loved, you’ll want to check out the books on this list.
I immediately fell in love with Cassie Logan, the spunky, resourceful main character in this classic novel. But by the end of the book, I had as much affection for her courageous mother, Mrs. Logan, a teacher who, in depression-era Mississippi, runs a school for African-American kids.
Among her pupils are some her own children, which I know from personal experience can be complicated. Of all the powerful themes in this book, an important, but often overlooked one is the power of teachers and schools to build community and respect for self and others.
Readers should know this book, written by a Black woman based on her childhood experiences, uses strong racial epithets, and young readers could benefit from thoughtful discussion with an adult.
The stunning repackage of a timeless Newbery Award Winner, with cover art by two-time Caldecott Honor Award winner Kadir Nelson!
With the land to hold them together, nothing can tear the Logans apart.
Why is the land so important to Cassie's family? It takes the events of one turbulent year-the year of the night riders and the burnings, the year a white girl humiliates Cassie in public simply because she is black-to show Cassie that having a place of their own is the Logan family's lifeblood. It is the land that gives the Logans their courage and pride, for no…
Youth play such a significant role in the history of our struggles for justice–and yet most teenagers I meet in the classroom have limited access to these important stories. These stories are more relevant than ever as we see current youth-led activism for #BlackLivesMatter and Youth4Climate Marches. When I talk to youth about historical youth-led protests, their eyes light up–they make these connections lightning fast and say–why aren’t we being taught about things like this more in school?
It is a classic must-read book that not only sets up an interesting, thought-provoking premise but also grounds us in the thoughts of very different teens and how they find their way to each other under a system designed to keep them apart. Malorie Blackman’s writing is concise and crisp, her gaze unflinching, and yet the book is all heart.
Two star-crossed lovers fight for a more just world in this searing novel with a critically-acclaimed BBC series adaptation now streaming on NBCUniversal’s Peacock platform!
Sephy is a Cross: dark-skinned and beautiful, she lives a life of privilege and power. But she’s lonely, and she burns with injustice at the world she sees around her.
Callum is a nought: pale-skinned and poor, he’s considered to be less than nothing, there to serve Crosses, but he dreams of a better life.
They’ve been friends since they were children, and they both know that’s as far as it can ever go. Noughts…
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
In grade school, when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, I was immediately swept up in the craze for space and dreamt of being an astronaut. Until I was told by my teacher that girls weren’t allowed to be astronauts. I added that to a growing list of things I was told girls couldn’t do. Flash-forward to 2017, when a prominent man insisted that females should “dress like a woman” at work. Women from all walks of life–athletes, astronauts, emergency workers, and scientists posted photos of themselves in gear appropriate for their jobs, not the dress-and-heels implied. I was inspired by those photos and my childhood feelings of injustice.
This book captured my heart from the first time I read it. As a toddler, the main character is praised for being “a big girl,” but as she continues to grow, she discovers that being a “big girl” soon becomes a negative thing that prevents her from doing what she wishes.
The illustrations are amazing, and fold-out pages can barely contain the growing main character and the empathy you’ll have for her.
A book you will hug when you’re done reading it, then immediately read it again.
3
authors picked
Big
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
4,
5,
6, and
7.
What is this book about?
Once there was a girl with a big laugh and a big heart and very big dreams. She grew and grew and grew. And it was good... until it wasn't.
When the girl grows big, the world begins to make her feel small. She feels out of place and invisible, and soon she isn't herself at all. But with the girl's size comes huge inner strength - and this helps her look past the hurtful words to see how perfect she really is.
With beautiful illustrations and a gatefold flap, this quietly reassuring story explores the experience of being big…
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…
This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands of…
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 History of White People tracks the creation of race as a fact, rather than an idea or social construct, and of Anglo-Saxon whiteness, for the free male, as a promise of power and supremacy.
Nell Irvin Painter, a Princeton professor of American history, emerita, begins with Greek historians and Roman conquerors BCE, who thought not of race but of place, the highlands and lowlands shaping appearance and temperament.
Along the way, Rome’s scrubbed-up copies of Greek statuary become the ideal for beauty, and skin colors and skull measurements become a way to rank superiority. Painter traces the United States’ enslavement of Africans, slaughter of Native Americans, eugenics, endorsement of male brutality (Ralph Waldo Emerson! Teddy Roosevelt!), and race-oriented immigration control: all play a role in whiteness.
Telling perhaps the most important forgotten story in American history, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, illuminating not only the invention of race but also the frequent praise of "whiteness" for economic, scientific, and political ends. A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White People closes a huge gap in literature that has long focused on the non-white and forcefully reminds us that the concept of "race" is an all-too-human invention whose meaning, importance, and reality have changed as it has been driven by a long and…
