Some of my favorite books on antiracism

The first book I’m choosing is How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram Kendi. The reason I’m choosing it is because too few people have spent time constructing a productive definition of racism. Many know extreme examples of bigotry as racism, but struggle when things becomes more grey. Kendi defines racism by an action that has a negative impact on a race or because of race.

This may even seem silly to many of you. This would mean that a disease could be racist, or that a well-intentioned comment could be racist. But this allows us to evaluate the impact of our actions in a meaningful manner. Without this definition it becomes very easy to avoid making important changes. For instance, I hear a lot in schools that when we teach good lessons that all students will learn. But this allows teachers to avoid confronting what they are currently doing that causes Black students to do worse in school.

You can read Kendi’s work at The Atlantic (24.99 for a teacher’s subscription!), and if you want a denser book he also wrote Stamped From the Beginning which is a historical text about the history of racism in America through the lens of racists, antiracists and assimilationists.

The second book I’m choosing is The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. The reason I’m choosing this book is because as people begin reading they will begin to feel more comfortable and will overestimate the progress we have made towards racial justice. Yet this book was written 117 years ago and expresses the same ideals then that we continue to fight today. And in those same fights happened 100 years before this book and 100 years before that.

We continue to fight and people to continue to fight back against antiracism. It is important to measure the progress and our current report card is not one to celebrate. Currently we have young Black people and white allies protesting peacefully while being attacked by police riots. Yet the narrative that propagates casts blame on those who seek justice while undermining their cause. Currently our schools are more segregated. Currently more Black people are unemployed. It takes 11.5 Black households to add up to the wealth of the median white household. When Black children are taught poorly in schools we look to children to determine to find solutions.

So an important lesson to keep in mind as you start reading books is that this is not new, it is just new to you. The philosophies of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Frederick Douglass all continue in similar forms today. If you have this book and are a teacher, page 72 is my favorite. Much of the book uses language that’s over my head, but that page I had a strong connection to.

The third book I’m choosing is We Want To Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love.

"When you understand how hard it is to fight for ed. justice, you know that there are no shortcuts and no gimmicks; you know this to be true deep in your soul, which brings both frustration and determination.”

This was a highly motivating book to read. Teachers know that too often students get to a point where the expectations shift to just surviving. Just turning in work, just attending, just staying awake in class, just doing an extra assignment. And these low expectations reach Black students more frequently. Bettina outlines her own personal experiences as a basketball star and helps teachers understand both how difficult it is to help students thrive as well as practical steps to be successful. Of all of the books I read this year, this was the one I bought for my mom to read.

The fourth book I’m choosing is Whistling Vivaldi by Claude M. Steele. This is a book about stereotype threat which very few people know about even though you’ve likely experienced it. Stereotype threat is when performance is diminished due to a negative stereotype threat about your identity that exists. For me as a white male this can easily be accomplished in sports and can also be done in academics. If I take a math test in a room of Asian students and attention is drawn to my race beforehand I will score worse on the test because my cognitive load will be partially occupied by the stereotype that Asian people are better at math.

The title of the book is from Claude’s childhood when he would whistle The Four Seasons by Vivaldi whenever he walked alone so that white people would not feel threatened by him. The book is about the various experiments about stereotype threat, how the experiment was conducted, and what the results were. The methods used are creative and enlightening, in particular for teachers. There is a section about a University of Texas professor who did research on helping Black students do better in calculus and reported intense gains in student achievement. A lot of the book otherwise focuses on the problem of stereotype threat, but the solutions are not always evident or simple. In the current book I’m reading they talk about how growth mindset works in opposition to stereotype threat and how to effectively help students have a growth mindset (it’s not by putting up a poster).

This is a book teachers should read. Stereotype threat is complicated and it should be an annual professional development session. But as far as I know I have never seen it offered in 15 years of teaching. If you read this book please let me know because I want someone to talk about it with.

The fifth book I’m choosing is The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. The reason I’m choosing this book is because this was one of the first books that really changed my perspective. As a white person something that wasn’t explicit but was in my head was how I would act if I were Black. This book was really helpful to expose me to the fact that no matter what you do you’re going to fight an uphill battle that you are likely to lose regardless of the choices you make. It wouldn't matter if I did everything right. So many Black people worked so hard, accomplished so much, and then lost everything to white mob violence. The concrete examples helped me understand some, although I continue to feel the same disconnect at times when I listen to Black people talk about their experiences.

If you do not know what redlining was then you should read this book. If you know what redlining is but do not know of anyone that was negatively impacted by it, you should read this book. If you've never heard of Black Bottom, Black Wall Street, the MOVE bombing, etc. you should read this book. I have a copy if anyone wants to borrow it.

The 6th book I’m choosing is Making Black Scientists by Marybeth Gasman and Thai-Huy Nguyen. I had read a lot of books prior to this one in search of how to teach Black students better and I felt pretty stupid by about the second chapter. The premise of this book is that teachers search far and wide to improve their teaching of Black students but never actually go to the source of people who are the most successful at doing so. This book profiles HBCUs, what their staffs do, what their students do, and their philosophies. They also show how HBCUs are far more successful than Primarily White Institutions (PWIs).

An overall theme that emerges is that HBCUs focus on the student first. I know a lot of teachers think they do that, I’m sure our district would say we do that, but we value our systems first. It was enlightening to read what HBCUs do and they are a great measuring tool for teachers to push themselves. This is an extremely informative book that can really help you with how to teach better. I know teachers ask for a checklist sometimes and that just doesn’t exist. It takes hard work to teach better, but this book will help you do that.

The 7th book I’m choosing is Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie. As my lunch friends can attest to, I’m not the best at reading fiction. But the narrative in this book is powerful enough that even I can take away a lot.

Ifemelu is the main character and she leaves Nigeria to study in the US at Princeton. She starts to blog about her first experiences with racism. In Nigeria she was just a person, but in the US she experiences being a Black person for the first time.

I also read The Purple Hibiscus and will likely read the rest of Adichie’s books in the next couple of years. If you’ve never seen her talk about the Dangers of a Single Story it is an amazing counter message to the in group/out group world that we live in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

The 8th book I’m choosing is Multiplication is For White People by Lisa Delpit. I’ve actually read Other People’s Children more recently and both are wonderful.

Lisa’s books are a strong combination of a mother’s voice both in her role as a mother and a teacher. But she gracefully mixes in facts to learn with personal anecdotes to supplement. Her balance of personal information as a teacher, parent, and expert on antiracism is highly motivating to read. This is a good book to read in August right before school starts. It’s also helpful if you feel motivated to do better but aren’t sure how to do so.

The 9th book I’m choosing is The Other Side of the River by Alex Kotlowitz. This is the story of an unsolved murder of a Black child that happened between St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, MI.

The mystery is the backdrop to the book, but the focus that emerges is the hostility, history, and healing between the two towns. I think this is something we all deal with. The surrounding areas that people look down on with little knowledge of those places. I know in Plymouth-Canton it is common to hear disparaging comments about Wayne or Westland. Downriver is pretty much one big chain of it. This is a natural tendency to form groups and have in-group and out-group dynamics. It is a toxic tendency.

One of the stories that I remember from the book was that teenagers from St. Joseph would do an activity called bricking. They would drive around and throw bricks at people in Benton Harbor. If you missed then you had to retrieve the brick. I’ll never stop thinking about that and how it encapsulates the dehumanization based on groupings. I saw similar ideals in the documentary America to Me, my high school experience, my teaching experience, and typical social conversation.

The 10th book I’m choosing is Timestamp by Marcus Granderson. Marcus was a student at PCEP who wrote a book that describes his transitions as he moved from a primarily white suburban school to Harvard to his work in New York City.

Marcus was generous enough to come talk to our teachers about his experiences. I didn’t have him as a student but I knew him slightly through a few others who did. I was also lucky to get to see his graduation speech years ago. His voice is one that will be sought out as teachers are looking for what they should be doing differently. This book details the moments he found impactful and how he perceived those moments. Unlike some of the other books that I’ve posted, this one is quite short if you’re not into long nonfiction reads. I have a copy in my classroom if anyone wants to borrow it, but you’re also welcome to support one of our recent graduates by buying a new copy! A few of us took him out to lunch after his speech and he's a lovely individual.

The 11th book I’m choosing I just finished yesterday and is Culturally Responsive Teaching And The Brain. To me cognitive science is a critical piece of antiracism because without it people are too quick to assign racism as a character trait which prevents them from meaningful change. Instead people should work to understand racist actions using system 1 and system 2 thinking so they can be pragmatic.

This book is the follow up to that learning. It has a lot in it so this is just the tip of the iceberg here. The start works to undermine misconceptions about using culture in learning. Using culture doesn’t mean putting up a poster, wearing a style of clothes, or eating a certain type of food. Culture is about language and communication. Culture is about being able to present information so that students can make connections to that information.

This book also walks through how teachers fail to teach students how to think critically. It goes through what we do, why some students get it, and how to change so that more students are taught better. Learning involves sensory memory being activated, short term memory processing, encoding into long term memory and retrieval. Hammond labels these as ignite, chunk, chew, and review. Igniting and chewing are the two spots where most students get left behind. A large number of solutions are presented for both.

Some other books that I didn’t post but are worthwhile:

Factfulness by Hans Rosling - This book is great for learning about how your perception of the world is wrong and how to change your perception to one based on facts and evidence.

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander - I’m reading this one currently and the personal stories and statistics are gut wrenching. The thing I keep thinking about with this one is how when we watch a white character on tv (like Ryan from The Office) that it’s funny when they do illegal drugs. Yet in real life people’s lives are ruined because of harsh, inconsistent, and racist policies/enforcement. 

The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson - This one is really odd for me to read because the murderer has the same last name as me. It’s a gross book, but something that’s problematic with many of these books is that it’s easy to see the statistics and get overwhelmed, but here they focus on a single person. And all of those statistics are the same thing. A life ruined, a family destroyed. 

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - There is a cognitive piece to racism that too few people understand. When using a brain based system 1 and system 2 model it becomes very easy to understand how racist actions happen and how to correct them. Teachers should be teaching their students about the experimental evidence in this book. 

Behave by Robert Sapolsky - This is what happens in your body and your brain before you do something. This was Thinking Fast and Slow but with twice as much in it. This book is long, but every chapter was intensely fascinating. The evidence provided is perfect for teachers to learn about how they perpetuate racism and what they can do to stop. 

Every Day Antiracism a collection of essays edited by Mica Pollock - This is a good book to read in a group. Too often people think about abstract ideas of antiracism without enough concrete examples. Concrete examples cause many to become uncomfortable and withdrawn. This book allows you to discuss concrete examples with other teachers so you can practice and learn.

Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram Kendi - This book is amazing, but it is a history text. It's a difficult read. The first and last chapters are the best where Kendi frames racism, antiracism, and neutrality in a historical context as racists, antiracists and assimilationists. If you don't want the full history, his book How To Be An Antiracist has those writings in a much lighter read.

The Dawn of Detroit by Tiya Miles - This book was a bit too complicated for me to understand easily. Somewhat similar to Stamped From the Beginning, but this book focuses on slavery in Michigan where I live. A large portion of the enslaved were Native Americans and the names of those slave owners linger today (Macomb, Woodward, etc.).