For Indivisibles, By Indivisibles: A Racial Justice Reading List

Introduction

In July 2023, on the second anniversary of John Lewis’ passing, Indivisible sent out a survey asking our network how they were continuing their education about racial justice. Over 500 Indivisibles responded with clarity, passion, and beautifully diverse recommendations.

This resource was cultivated from those survey responses to create For Indivisibles, By Indivisibles: A Racial Justice Reading List.

Every entry on this list received at least one submission from our network, and the majority of the books were cited multiple times. We split the recommendations into two lists:

The top five most read racial justice books by Indivisibles (these books were submitted up to 45 times)
A curated list of racial justice readings taken from the responses with an eye toward impact, education, and diverse styles.

This book list is not exhaustive, but we hope it is a useful resource for Indivisibles looking to find more ways to expand their knowledge and broaden their understanding of racial justice.

Top Five

*Descriptions taken from either publisher or author websites*

#1 - Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

Purchase Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson at bookshop.org.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

#2 - The 1619 Project created by Nikole Hannah Jones (et. al)

Purchase The 1619 Project created by Nikole Hannah Jones (et. al) at bookshop.org.

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.

The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

This book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.

#3 - How to be Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi

Purchase How to be Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi at bookshop.org.

Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America--but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. Instead of working with the policies and system we have in place, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.

In his memoir, Kendi weaves together an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science--including the story of his own awakening to antiracism--bringing it all together in a cogent, accessible form. He begins by helping us rethink our most deeply held, if implicit, beliefs and our most intimate personal relationships (including beliefs about race and IQ and interracial social relations) and reexamines the policies and larger social arrangements we support. How to Be an Antiracist promises to become an essential book for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step of contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society.

#4 - White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Purchase White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo at bookshop.org.

In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’” (Claudia Rankine). 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, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

#5 - The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Purchase The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander at bookshop.org.

As the United States celebrates its “triumph over race” with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of black men in major urban areas are under correctional control or saddled with criminal records for life. Jim Crow laws were wiped off the books decades ago, but today an extraordinary percentage of the African American community is warehoused in prisons or trapped in a parallel social universe, denied basic civil and human rights—including the right to vote; the right to serve on juries; and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. Today, it is no longer socially permissible to use race explicitly as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet as civil-rights-lawyer-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander demonstrates, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways in which it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once labeled a felon, even for a minor drug crime, the old forms of discrimination are suddenly legal again. In her words, “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.”

Alexander shows that, by targeting black men through the War on Drugs 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 colorblindness.

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.

Curated List

*Blurbs written by Indivisible*

Personal Essay and Narrative

Love and Justice - Maya Moore

Former WNBA player Maya Moore’s journey of quitting the league in order to pursue justice for her wrongly incarcerated husband.

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness - Austin Channing Brown

A journey towards self love, self worth, and self-acceptance as a Black woman growing up and living in a majority White society.

Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Coates letter to his son giving him perspective and lessons from his own life on navigating the world as a Black person.

Just Mercy - Bryan Stevenson

Stevenson’s story of working as a lawyer to defend some of the most desperate from the criminal justice system.

The Purpose of Power - Alicia Garza

Garza's lessons as a longtime organizer and one of the originators of #BlackLivesMatter and how they could lead to change.

Explicitly Addressing Whiteness

The Sum of Us - Heather McGhee

How racism has also worked against the economic benefit of White Americans while oppressing people of Color.

All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep - Andre Henry

A treatment on the idea that themes like diversity hires, polite conversation, and education are not enough to break through White supremacy.

The End of White Politics - Zerlina Maxwell

The liberal obsession with catering to the White, male working class and ignoring women and People of Color will be its undoing.

Radical Black Feminism

Hood Feminism - Mikki Kendall

Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues.

Feminist Theory - bell hooks

A critique and examination of American feminist theory from one of the preeminent Black feminist voices.

Emergent Strategy - adrienne marie brown

Inspired by Octavia Butler’s idea that “God is change” in her Earthseed series, brown radically embraces change as a strategy towards revolution.

History and Context

Lies My Teacher Told Me - James Loewen

Breaking down the inadequacy of America’s education system when it comes to teaching our history.

Just Medicine - Dayna Bowen Matthew

Implicit bias is the single most important determinant of health and health care disparities, Matthew confronts those disparities and tries to find a path to equal treatment.

The Warmth Of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson

The story of the Great Migration of Black Americans from the south in the early 20th century.

Novel

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

Morrison’s first novel navigating racism, class, self-love, and abuse follows Pecola Breedlove, a young Black girl who prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she can feel beautiful.

All American Boys - Jason Reynolds, Brendan Kiely

What happens in the aftermath of a cop brutally assaulting a Black child over thinking he was shoplifting