A list of important texts for especially white people seeking to educate themselves about white supremacy in no particular order, from authors based in the U.K., Europe, US, Canada and Australia [thread]:
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How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi (because being “not racist” is not the same as being actively and proactively “antiracist”)
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White Fragility by Robin Di Angelo (and I’ve just found her book on white racial literacy which may also be worth a look - note also that this concept needs critical engagement!)
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Charles W Mills’s The Racial Contract (important for grasping that racism is a global and local political system, produced by racial capitalism and 400yrs of colonialism, settler colonialism and imperialism)
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The Combahee River Collective Statement: an absolutely essential text from a Black lesbian feminist collective which is a foundational text in “identity politics” and shows its never not been about materiality
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Against Purity by Alexis Shotwell
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The Heart of Race: Black Women in Britain by Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie, Suzanne Scafe
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Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism And History by Vron Ware
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Lots of resources on
@MrPranPatel
’s The Teacherist blog and website w special focus for UK based educators especially teacher leaders
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Borders by Nadine El-Enany is a recent text on British borders and immigration as a continuation of colonial and imperial looting, see here for book launch and discount code
For those who missed it, here is the recording of my book launch
#ArmchairEvent
@ManchesterUP
AND a 50% discount code - Bordering50 - so you can get it for £10 until the end of May!
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Hostile Environment by Maya Goodfellow explains the racist history of the hostile environment up to and through the New Labour years and successive Tory govt’s right up through Brexit
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Whitewashing Britain by Kathleen Paul offers a similar history without the post-1997 party political stuff, and shows how “immigration” controls were really about managing which British subjects got to come to Britain, and count as British citizens
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Race and the Undeserving Poor by Robbie Shilliam offers an important account of how in the years between abolition and Brexit British ideas about poverty and race were co-constructed at home and in colonies (link to symposium discussion of the book)
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Sister Outsider and everything else by Audre Lorde. In particular, I always find myself going back to the essay The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action. See also The Cancer Journals.
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Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith
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Words of Fire, an anthology of Black Feminist Social Theory edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall (a really really useful and important reader for anyone who thinks they know, again, what “identity politics” or “Intersectionality” means)
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Speaking of intersectionality, Intersectionality by Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge (See also Hill Collins separate solo authored monograph on a critical analysis of the concept)
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Any edition of Lennard Davis’s Disability Studies reader, which certainly in the 3rd-5th editions all include important papers on the co-constitution of racism and ableism (see esp Nirmalla Erevelles & Andrea Minnear, Josh Lukin, Anna Mollow this vol)
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Traces of History by Patrick Wolfe, an Australian anthropologist who theorises settler colonialism and offers a useful account of how race-as-socially-constructed caches out
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Why Race Still Matters by Alana Lentin, as well as Racism: A Beginner’s Guide. Check out this book group livestream where Alana reads excerpts from her new book and answers questions
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Both of Frantz Fanon’s major works, namely Black Skin, White Masks (a psychophilosophical analysis of colonizer and colonized consciousness) and The Wretched of the Earth (on resistance to colonial oppression). Latter is here
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Anything, everything by W E B DuBois (pronounced Du-Boyz), who is now regarded as one of the erased but essential founding figures of sociology and infographics as well as critical race theory. Here is The Souls of Black Folk
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White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race by Gloria Wekker (intro chapter here)
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Another from Charles Mills just because: Global White Ignorance
NB for Mills ignorance isn’t a simple state of lacking knowledge; it is a complex systemic production whereby ignorance is actively produced, resilient, and the result of ignoring practices
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Nell Irvin Painter's History of White People (h/t
@bratyoulater
for the nudge and
@ArchaeologyFitz
for the link)
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Everything by Angela Davis. Here is Women Race & Class:
Are Prisons Obsolete?
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