By Ron | Mar 15, 2020
Inclusion does not imply agreement.
Books on Particularism (Racism)"
This list is heavily weighted toward the uniquely ugly situation inside the US Empire. Over time, more classical and universal texts will be added. Because overcoming a stubborn notion requires an understanding of its appeal, books promoting delusion and division are also listed. As always, inclusion does not imply agreement. There is no call to believe everything we think, read, or hear.
A Basic Call to Consciousness: The Hau De No Saw Nee Address to the Western World
Published Geneva, Switzerland, Autumn 1977
by Mohawk Nation
What is presented here is nothing less audacious than a cosmogony of the Industrialized World presented by the most politically powerful and independent non-Western political body surviving in North America. It is, in a way, the modern world through Pleistocene eyes.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
A People’s History of the United States
by Howard Zinn
A 1980 nonfiction book presenting a long-neglected side of history that avoids the typical “nationalist glorification of country”. Zinn does not hide or sugarcoat the many tragedies of US history. The book is assigned in many high schools and colleges across the United States, and has inspired in a quiet revolution in the field of historical research, which now commonly includes previously ignored stories.
In a 1998 interview, Zinn said his goal in writing the book was to inspire a “quiet revolution”. “Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions. In the workplace, the workers would take power to control the conditions of their lives."
In a 1998 interview, Zinn said his goal in writing the book was to inspire a “quiet revolution”. “Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions. In the workplace, the workers would take power to control the conditions of their lives."
African Studies in Social Movements and Democracy
America’s Racial Karma: An Invitation to Heal
by Larry Ward
Immediate, illuminating, and hopeful: this is the key set of talks given by leading Zen Buddhist teacher Larry Ward, PhD, on breaking America’s cycle of racial trauma.
American on Fire
Immediate, illuminating, and hopeful: this is the key set of talks given by leading Zen Buddhist teacher Larry Ward, PhD, on breaking America’s cycle of racial trauma.
An African American and Latinx History of the United States (ReVisioning American History)
Published 2018
by Paul Ortiz
Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the “Global South” was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Scholar and activist Paul Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations like “manifest destiny” and “Jacksonian democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms US history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism.
Between the World and Me
In the form of a letter to his teenaged son, Coates distills what it means to be black in the US today. Toni Morrison has described this book as a “required reading”.
Beyond Wage Slavery
by Ken Coates
Citizen and Subject
Critical Race Theory
A note of sanity against biased propaganda circulating through the corporate echo chamber. The academic field of critical race theory challenges traditional ways of looking at race and racism. The field’s theoreticians argue that supposedly neutral concepts and institutions, such as meritocracy and legal assumptions, mask systemic inequality and institutionalized racism. This book is one of the discipline’s classics. Some conservatives view critical race theory as “dangerous” because some of its proponents view the Constitution and the fabric of the US democracy as imbued with racism.
Dark Times
by Ken Coates
Defending My Enemy: American Nazis, the Skokie Case, and the Risks of Freedom
by Aryeh Neier
Are the victims of Nazism, Zionism, Trumpism, and similar racist ideologies entitled to freedom of expression in a democracy?
In 1977, Frank Collin, leader of the National Socialist Party of America, sought to hold a Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois. In this Chicago suburb, over half the population was Jewish, and many were victims of the Holocaust in Europe.
The proposed march sparked a host of legal challenges. Skokie asked for an injunction to prevent the Nazis from marching, and new ordinances were adopted to block the march. Collin applied to hold a march on a later date, but was denied.
An ACLU lawsuit was brought in federal court seeking to invalidate the ordinances put in place to prevent the Nazi march. In the end, the Nazis did not march in Skokie, but in 1978 the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in defense of free speech rights for all.
The ACLU was severely weakened by a backlash from seemingly liberal groups who conveniently ignored their liberal principles when the targets of censorship were their own perceived enemies.
Writing from his perspective as national executive director of the ACLU, Aryeh Neier tells the story, and ponders the consequences, of Skokie and other cases in which the enemies of freedom claim for themselves rights that they would (often with the best of intentions) deny to other enemies of freedom.
In 1977, Frank Collin, leader of the National Socialist Party of America, sought to hold a Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois. In this Chicago suburb, over half the population was Jewish, and many were victims of the Holocaust in Europe.
The proposed march sparked a host of legal challenges. Skokie asked for an injunction to prevent the Nazis from marching, and new ordinances were adopted to block the march. Collin applied to hold a march on a later date, but was denied.
An ACLU lawsuit was brought in federal court seeking to invalidate the ordinances put in place to prevent the Nazi march. In the end, the Nazis did not march in Skokie, but in 1978 the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in defense of free speech rights for all.
The ACLU was severely weakened by a backlash from seemingly liberal groups who conveniently ignored their liberal principles when the targets of censorship were their own perceived enemies.
Writing from his perspective as national executive director of the ACLU, Aryeh Neier tells the story, and ponders the consequences, of Skokie and other cases in which the enemies of freedom claim for themselves rights that they would (often with the best of intentions) deny to other enemies of freedom.
Democracy in America
Diminished Democracy
Emancipation Betrayed
Published 2006
by Paul Ortiz
In this penetrating examination of African American politics and culture, Paul Ortiz throws a powerful light on the struggle of black Floridians to create the first statewide civil rights movement against Jim Crow. Concentrating on the period between the end of slavery and the election of 1920, Emancipation Betrayed vividly demonstrates that the decades leading up to the historic voter registration drive of 1919-20 were marked by intense battles during which African Americans struck for higher wages, took up arms to prevent lynching, forged independent political alliances, boycotted segregated streetcars, and created a democratic historical memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Contrary to previous claims that African Americans made few strides toward building an effective civil rights movement during this period, Ortiz documents how black Floridians formed mutual aid organizations—secret societies, women’s clubs, labor unions, and churches-to bolster dignity and survival in the harsh climate of Florida, which had the highest lynching rate of any state in the union. African Americans called on these institutions to build a statewide movement to regain the right to vote after World War I. African American women played a decisive role in the campaign as they mobilized in the months leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.
The 1920 contest culminated in the bloodiest Election Day in modern American history, when white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan violently, and with state sanction, prevented African Americans from voting. Ortiz’s eloquent interpretation of the many ways that black Floridians fought to expand the meaning of freedom beyond formal equality and his broader consideration of how people resist oppression and create new social movements illuminate a strategic era of United States history and reveal how the legacy of legal segregation continues to play itself out to this day.
Contrary to previous claims that African Americans made few strides toward building an effective civil rights movement during this period, Ortiz documents how black Floridians formed mutual aid organizations—secret societies, women’s clubs, labor unions, and churches-to bolster dignity and survival in the harsh climate of Florida, which had the highest lynching rate of any state in the union. African Americans called on these institutions to build a statewide movement to regain the right to vote after World War I. African American women played a decisive role in the campaign as they mobilized in the months leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.
The 1920 contest culminated in the bloodiest Election Day in modern American history, when white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan violently, and with state sanction, prevented African Americans from voting. Ortiz’s eloquent interpretation of the many ways that black Floridians fought to expand the meaning of freedom beyond formal equality and his broader consideration of how people resist oppression and create new social movements illuminate a strategic era of United States history and reveal how the legacy of legal segregation continues to play itself out to this day.
Geography, Race and the Malleability of Man: Karl Von Baer and the Problem of Academic Particularism in the Russian Human Sciences
Published 2018
by Nathaniel Knight
The question of national specificity in science was vigorously debated in 19th century Russia and remains relevant to the geographical and cultural contextualization of scholarship. This article introduces the term academic particularism to denote this phenomenon and addresses it through an examination of the career, ideas and legacy of Karl von Baer in the fields of geography, ethnology and physical anthropology. The article traces significant shifts in Baer’s interests and views after his relocation to Russia in 1835 and identifies a cluster of key ideas present in Baer’s work in the mid-19th century that were further developed by subsequent scholars in the late 19th century and came to constitute a distinctive strain in the Russian human sciences. Echoes of these early ideas on race can be found in many other cultures, and are still heard today.
Give Me Liberty!
by Eric Foner
Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm
Published January 14, 2020
by Kazu Haga
In Kingian Nonviolence, a philosophy developed out of the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., there is a distinction made between nonviolence spelled with a hyphen, and nonviolence spelled without a hyphen. “Non-violence” is essentially two words: “without” “violence.” When spelled this way, it only describes the absence of violence. As long as I am “not being violent,” I am practicing non-violence. And that is the biggest misunderstanding of nonviolence that exists.
Invisible Man
In this seminal 1952 novel, an unnamed narrator recounts his epic life-story, from coming-of-age in a rural Southern town, to the violent streets of Harlem.
La Seconde Revolution Tranquille
Mein Kampf (My Fight)
by Adolf Hitler
Required reading for all would-be fascists, and those who seek to understand and resist. Hitler originally wanted to call his book Viereinhalb Jahre (des Kampfes) gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit, or Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice. Max Amann, head of the Franz Eher Verlag and Hitler’s publisher, is said to have suggested the much shorter “Mein Kampf”.
Although Hitler originally wrote Mein Kampf for the at that time small group of followers of National Socialism, it grew in popularity after he rose to power. Hitler had made about 1.2 million Reichsmarks from the book by 1933 (equivalent to €4,714,299 in 2009), when the average annual income of a teacher was about 4,800 Marks (equivalent to €18,857 in 2009). He accumulated a tax debt of 405,500 Reichsmark (roughly in 2015 1.4 million EUR) from the sale of about 240,000 copies before he became chancellor in 1933 (at which point his debt was waived).
Hitler began to distance himself from the book after becoming chancellor of Germany in 1933. He dismissed it as “fantasies behind bars” that were little more than a series of articles for the Völkischer Beobachter, and later told Hans Frank that “If I had had any idea in 1924 that I would have become Reich chancellor, I never would have written the book.” Nevertheless, Mein Kampf was a bestseller in Germany during the 1930s. During Hitler’s years in power, the book was in high demand in libraries and often reviewed and quoted in other publications. It was given free to every newlywed couple and every soldier fighting at the front. By 1939 it had sold 5.2 million copies in eleven languages. By the end of the war, about 10 million copies had been sold or distributed in Germany.
Although Hitler originally wrote Mein Kampf for the at that time small group of followers of National Socialism, it grew in popularity after he rose to power. Hitler had made about 1.2 million Reichsmarks from the book by 1933 (equivalent to €4,714,299 in 2009), when the average annual income of a teacher was about 4,800 Marks (equivalent to €18,857 in 2009). He accumulated a tax debt of 405,500 Reichsmark (roughly in 2015 1.4 million EUR) from the sale of about 240,000 copies before he became chancellor in 1933 (at which point his debt was waived).
Hitler began to distance himself from the book after becoming chancellor of Germany in 1933. He dismissed it as “fantasies behind bars” that were little more than a series of articles for the Völkischer Beobachter, and later told Hans Frank that “If I had had any idea in 1924 that I would have become Reich chancellor, I never would have written the book.” Nevertheless, Mein Kampf was a bestseller in Germany during the 1930s. During Hitler’s years in power, the book was in high demand in libraries and often reviewed and quoted in other publications. It was given free to every newlywed couple and every soldier fighting at the front. By 1939 it had sold 5.2 million copies in eleven languages. By the end of the war, about 10 million copies had been sold or distributed in Germany.
- A variety of restrictions, annotations or special circumstances apply in many countries.
- The U.S. government seized the copyright in September 1942 during the Second World War under the Trading with the Enemy Act
- The government of Bavaria, in agreement with the federal government of Germany, refused to allow any copying or printing of Mein Kampf in Germany. It also opposed copying and printing in other countries, but with less success.
- Under German copyright law, the entire text entered the public domain on January 1, 2016, 70 years after the author’s death.
- In 1999, the Simon Wiesenthal Center documented that the book was available in Germany via major online booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. After a public outcry, both companies agreed to end these sales to addresses in Germany.
- In March 2020, Amazon banned sales of new and second-hand copies, and several other Nazi publications, on its platform.
Race Matters
by Cornell West
One of Cornel West’s most important books, Race Matters bluntly takes on affirmative action, black crime, religion within the black community–and what solutions, if any, there are.
Remembering Jim Crow
Resurrecting Empire
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
When Donald Trump lost the 2016 presidential election, and won the presidential college selection, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots.
Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold.
As Jedediah Purdy put it in the New Republic, “Hochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives… [Her] attentive, detailed portraits…reveal a gulf between Hochchild’s ‘strangers in their own land’ and a new elite.”
Already a favorite book in communities and on campuses across the country and called “humble and important” by David Brooks and “masterly” by Atul Gawande, Hochschild’s book has been lauded by Noam Chomsky, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, and countless others.
Tears We Cannot Stop
Published 2017
by Michael Eric Dyson
Short, emotional, literary, powerful―Tears We Cannot Stop is the book that all in the US who care about the current and long-burning crisis in race relations should read.
As the country grapples with racist division at a level not seen since the 1960s, one person’s voice soars with conviction and compassion. In his 2016 New York Times op-ed piece “Death in Black and White,” Michael Eric Dyson moved a nation. Now he continues to speak out in Tears We Cannot Stop―-a provocative and deeply personal call for change. Dyson argues that if we are to make real racial progress we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.
As the country grapples with racist division at a level not seen since the 1960s, one person’s voice soars with conviction and compassion. In his 2016 New York Times op-ed piece “Death in Black and White,” Michael Eric Dyson moved a nation. Now he continues to speak out in Tears We Cannot Stop―-a provocative and deeply personal call for change. Dyson argues that if we are to make real racial progress we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Through a life of passion and struggle, Malcolm X became one of the most influential leaders of the 20th Century. In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister. Here, the man who called himself “the angriest Black man in America” relates how his conversion to true Islam helped him confront his rage and recognize the brotherhood of all mankind. A brilliant, painful, important book that transformed Malcom X’s life into his legacy.
The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government
by David Talbot
The Fire Next Time
Anything by James Baldwin is worth reading. This is one of his most important collection of essays, exploring themes of race, religion and identity. In this landmark meditation on race and religion in the US, published to immediate acclaim in 1963, Baldwin makes a fervent and unsparing plea to “end the racial nightmare” of life in the US. Structured as a letter to his fourteen-year-old nephew, Baldwin’s words are a scorching indictment of a country in moral bankruptcy, yet also a galvanizing call to action for US residents of of every race. Sadly, this book remains highly relevant. Perhaps the most staggering thing about this book is how little has changed since it was written.
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race
Dedicated to Trayvon Martinn, this searing anthology is edited by two-time National Book Award winner Jesymn Ward. Envisioned as a contemporary response to James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, The Fire This Time assembles essays and poems from writers including Jericho Brown, Edwidge Danticat, and Kevin Young, who dissect the historic legacy of structural racism in the US, unpack the violent inequities of the contemporary moment, and envision a brighter future for people of color.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
With a Forward by Cornell West.
The Port Huron Statement
by Tom Hayden
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
by Jeff Hobbs
This moving biography recounts the life of Robert Peace, a young man who escaped the streets of Newark, New Jersey, to attend Yale University–only to lose his life after graduating.
The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois
Things That Make White People Uncomfortable
Published 2020
by Michael Bennett
Super Bowl Champion and two-time Pro Bowler Michael Bennett is an outspoken proponent for social justice and a man without a censor. One of the most scathingly humorous athletes on the planet, he is also a fearless activist, grassroots philanthropist, and organizer.
Written with award-winning sportswriter and author Dave Zirin, Things That Make White People Uncomfortable is a sports book for our times, a sports memoir and manifesto as hilarious as it is revealing.
Bennett, a defensive end for the Seattle Seahawks, has gained international recognition for his public support for the Black Lives Matter Movement and women’s rights. Bennett donates all his endorsement money and half of the proceeds from his jersey sales to fund health and education projects for poor underserved youth and minority communities, and has recently expanded his reach globally to provide STEM programming in Africa.
Dave Zirin has been called the “finest, most important writer on sports and politics in America,” by Dr. Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at the Harvard Divinity School. He is sports editor for The Nation and author of several titles for Haymarket Books, including his critically acclaimed book The John Carlos Story, written with 1968 Olympian John Carlos.
Written with award-winning sportswriter and author Dave Zirin, Things That Make White People Uncomfortable is a sports book for our times, a sports memoir and manifesto as hilarious as it is revealing.
Bennett, a defensive end for the Seattle Seahawks, has gained international recognition for his public support for the Black Lives Matter Movement and women’s rights. Bennett donates all his endorsement money and half of the proceeds from his jersey sales to fund health and education projects for poor underserved youth and minority communities, and has recently expanded his reach globally to provide STEM programming in Africa.
Dave Zirin has been called the “finest, most important writer on sports and politics in America,” by Dr. Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at the Harvard Divinity School. He is sports editor for The Nation and author of several titles for Haymarket Books, including his critically acclaimed book The John Carlos Story, written with 1968 Olympian John Carlos.
We the People
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
Published W.W. Norton &Amp; Company, New York, 2005
by Ira Katznelson
In this “penetrating new analysis” (New York Times Book Review) Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of twentieth-century US history, demonstrating that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created and/or administered in a deeply discriminatory manner. Through mechanisms designed by ex-enslaved-holding Southern Democrats that specifically excluded maids and farm workers, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity. In the words of noted historian Eric Foner, “Katznelson’s incisive book should change the terms of debate about affirmative action, and about the last seventy years of American [sic] history.”
Copyright (c) 2024, Ron Liskey