The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread focused on racism, its causes, its symptoms, it effects and consequences.



This thread's purpose is to expose racism and to foster better behavior and reflection on the negative impact that racism has on our society and the world.

Please add books which deal with this topic - no self promotion please.

What is Racism?

Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another, which often results in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity.

The use of the term "racism" does not easily fall under a single definition.

The ideology underlying racism often includes the idea that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups that are different due to their social behavior and their innate capacities, as well as the idea that they can be ranked as inferior or superior.

Historical examples of institutional racism include the Holocaust, the apartheid regime in South Africa, slavery and segregation in the United States, and slavery in Latin America.

Racism was also an aspect of the social organization of many colonial states and empires.

While the concepts of race and ethnicity are considered to be separate in contemporary social science, the two terms have a long history of equivalence in both popular usage and older social science literature.

"Ethnicity" is often used in a sense close to one traditionally attributed to "race": the division of human groups based on qualities assumed to be essential or innate to the group (e.g. shared ancestry or shared behavior).

Therefore, racism and racial discrimination are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial.

According to a United Nations convention on racial discrimination, there is no distinction between the terms "racial" and "ethnic" discrimination.

The UN convention further concludes that superiority based on racial differentiation is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous. It also declared that there is no justification for racial discrimination, anywhere, in theory or in practice.

Racist ideology can manifest in many aspects of social life.

Racism can be present in social actions, practices, or political systems (e.g., apartheid) that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices or laws. Associated social actions may include nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, supremacism, and related social phenomena.

Remainder of article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

Source: Wikipedia

Dogeaters
Novel with a Purpose

by Jessica Hagedorn

Synopsis:

In Dogeaters, Jessica Hagedorn has transformed her best-selling novel about the Philippines during the Marcos reign into an equally powerful theatrical piece that is a multilayered, operatic tour de force.

As Harold Bloom writes "Hagedorn expresses the conflicts experienced by Asian immigrants caught between cultures...she takes aim at racism in the U.S. and develops in her dramas the themes of displacement and the search for belonging."

"As sharp and fast as a street boy's razor" (The New York Times Book Review), Dogeaters is an intense fictional portrayal of Manila in the heyday of Marcos, the Philippines' late dictator.

In the center of this maelstrom is Rio, a feisty schoolgirl who will grow up to live in America and look back with longing on the land of her youth

Awards:

American Book Award (1991)

National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1990)

Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice (Paperback)

by Paul Kivel

Synopsis:

Continuously at the top of New Society Publishers’ best-seller list for five years, Uprooting Racism has sold over 25,000 copies since its first printing. Substantially revised and expanded, the new edition has more tools to help white people understand and stand-up to racism.

Uprooting Racism explores the manifestations of racism in politics, work, community, and family life. It moves beyond the definition and unlearning of racism to address the many areas of privilege for white people and suggests ways for individuals and groups to challenge the structures of racism.

Uprooting Racism’s welcoming style helps readers look at how we learn racism, what effects it has on our lives, its costs and benefits to white people, and what we can do about it.

In addition to updating existing chapters, the new edition of Uprooting Racism explores how entrenched racism has been revealed in the new economy, the 2000 electoral debacle, rising anti-Arab prejudice, and health care policy.

Special features include exercises, questions, and suggestions to engage, challenge assumptions, and motivate the reader towards social action. The new edition includes an index and an updated bibliography.

Witnessing Whiteness (Paperback)

by Shelly Tochluk (no photo)

Synopsis:

Witnessing Whiteness invites educators to consider what it means to be white, describes and critiques strategies used to avoid race issues, and identifies the detrimental effect of avoiding race on cross-race collaborations.

The author illustrates how racial discomfort leads white educators toward ineffective teaching pedagogy and poor relationships with students and colleagues of color.

Questioning the implications our history has for educational institutions, school reform efforts, and diversity initiatives, this book considers political, economic, socio-cultural, and legal histories that shaped the meanings associated with whiteness.

Drawing on dialogue with well-known figures within education, race, and multicultural work, the book offers intimate, personal stories of cross-race friendships that address both how a deep understanding of whiteness supports cross-race collaboration and the long-term nature of the work of excising racism from the deep psyche.

Concluding chapters offer practical information on building knowledge, skills, capacities, and communities that support anti-racism practices, a hopeful look at our collective future, and a discussion of how to create a culture of witnessing educators who support allies for social and racial justice.

Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race (Paperback)

by Derald Wing Sue (no problem)

Synopsis:

Learn to talk about race openly, honestly, and productively Most people avoid discussion of race-related topics because of the strong emotions and feelings of discomfort that inevitably accompany such conversations. Rather than endure the conflict of racial realities, many people choose instead to avoid the topic altogether, or remain silent when it is raised.

Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race puts an end to that dynamic by sharing strategies for smoothing conversations about race in a productive manner.

A guide for facilitating and participating in difficult dialogues about race, author Derald Wing Sue - an internationally recognized expert on multiculturalism, diversity, and microaggressions - explores the characteristics, dynamics, and meaning behind discussions about race as well as the hidden "ground rules" that inhibit honest and productive dialogue.

Through emotional and visceral examples, this book explains why conversations revolving around racial issues are so difficult, and provides guidelines, techniques, and advice for navigating and leading honest and forthright discussions.

Readers will develop a stronger ability to build rapport with people unlike themselves, and discover how not talking about race impacts society as a whole.


Overcome and make visible the fears associated with race talk Learn practical ideas for talking openly about race Facilitate and navigate discussion with expert strategy Examine the hidden rules that govern race talk Understand the benefits of successful conversations Discussions about race do not have to result in disastrous consequences, and can in fact be highly beneficial to all parties involved. It's important that people have the ability to converse openly and honestly with their students, colleagues, children, and neighbors, and Race Talk provides the path for achieving this goal.

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching about Race and Racism to People Who Don't Want to Know

by Tema Okun (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don't Want to Know offers theoretical grounding and practical approaches for leaders and teachers interested in effectively addressing racism and other oppressive constructs.

The book draws both on the author's extensive experience teaching about race and racism in classroom and community settings and from the theory and practice of a wide range of educators, activists, and researchers committed to social justice.

The first chapter looks at the toxic consequences of our western cultural insistence on profit, binary thinking, and individualism to establish the theoretical framework for teaching about race and racism.

Chapter two investigates privileged resistance, offering a psycho/social history of denial, particularly as a product of racist culture.

Chapter three reviews the research on the construction and reconstruction of dominant culture both historically and now in order to establish sound strategic approaches that educators, teachers, facilitators, and activists can take as we work together to move from a culture of profit and fear to one of shared hope and love.

Chapter four lays out the stages of a process that supports teaching about racist, white supremacy culture, explaining how students can be taken through an iterative process of relationshipbuilding, analysis, planning, action, and reflection.

The final chapter borrows from the brilliant, brave, and incisive writer Dorothy Allison to discuss the things the author knows for sure about how to teach people to see that which we have been conditioned to fear knowing.

The chapter concludes with how to encourage and support collective and collaborative action as a critical goal of the process.

The New Jim Crow (Paperback)

by Michelle Alexander

Synopsis:

"Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote.

His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests.

Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole."

As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life.

Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness.

The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Paperback)

by Ibram X. Kendi (no photo)

Synopsis:

The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society.

Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society.

But racist thought is not just alive and well in America--it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.

In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history.

He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis.

As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities.

In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.

Reviews:

"We often describe a wonderful book as 'mind-blowing' or 'life-changing' but I've found this rarely to actually be the case. I found both descriptions accurate for Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning... I will never look at racial discrimination again after reading this marvellous, ambitious, and clear-sighted book." - George Saunders, Financial Times, Best Books of 2017

"Ambitious, well-researched and worth the time of anyone who wants to understand racism." - Seattle Times

"A deep (and often disturbing) chronicling of how anti-black thinking has entrenched itself in the fabric of American society." - The Atlantic

"An engrossing and relentless intellectual history of prejudice in America.... The greatest service Kendi [provides] is the ruthless prosecution of American ideas about race for their tensions, contradiction and unintended consequences."—Washington Post

Awards:

Winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction

A New York Times Bestseller

A Washington Post Bestseller

Finalist for the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Review of Books, The Root, Buzzfeed, Bustle, and Entropy

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (Paperback)

by Daily Books (no photo)

Synopsis:

When acclaimed Emory University historian Carol Anderson wrote in her op-ed for The Washington Post calling the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri as “the latest outbreak of white rage,” the whole nation paid attention.

In White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide, Anderson thoroughly presents her expanded account of how state powers in America have worked to rollback African American progress since the Civil War, and how it has continued to destabilize America’s democracy.

Riveting and disturbing, Anderson persuasively argues that white rage had been deliberate and relentless all these years.

Awards:

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner

New York Times Bestseller

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year

A Boston Globe Best Book of 2016

A Chicago Review of Books Best Nonfiction Book of 2016

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race (Paperback)

by Beverly Daniel Tatum (no photo)

Synopsis:

With a discussion guide and a new Epilogue by the author, this is the fifth anniversary edition of the bestselling work on the development of racial identity

The New Jim Crow (Paperback)

by Michelle Alexander

Synopsis:

"Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote.

His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests.

Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole."

As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life.

Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness.

The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise

by Eduardo Porter

Synopsis:

A sweeping examination of how American racism has broken the country's social compact, eroded America's common goods, and damaged the lives of every American--and a heartfelt look at how these deep wounds might begin to heal.

Compared to other industrialized nations, the United States is losing ground across nearly every indicator of social health. Its race problem, argues Eduardo Porter, is largely to blame.

In American Poison, the New York Times veteran shows how racial animus has stunted the development of nearly every institution crucial for a healthy society, including organized labor, public education, and the social safety net. The consequences are profound and are only growing graver with time. Leading us through history and across America--from FDR's New Deal through Bill Clinton's welfare reform to Donald Trump's retrograde and divisive policies--Porter pieces together how racial hostility has blocked American social cohesion at every turn, producing a nation that fails not only its black and brown citizens but white Americans as well.

American Poison is at once a broad, rigorous argument, and a profound cri de coeur. Even as it uncovers our most tenacious national pathology, it points the way toward hope, illuminating the ways in which, as the nation becomes increasingly diverse, it may well be possible to construct a new understanding of racial identity--and a more cohesive society on top of it.

That looks like an interesting read Lorna - thank you so much for the thoughtful adds.

White Fragility

by Robin DiAngelo

Synopsis:

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.

Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, anti-racist educator Robin DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what can be done to engage more constructively.