2 Books White People Need to Read
I’m serious, you need to read them.
I am white. My paternal great grandparents were immigrants from Ireland, and my maternal great grandparents immigrants from Germany. I have a large family (30+ relatives) and we are all white. I grew up in Portland Oregon, one of the country’s whitest cities. In fact, in 2019 the City of Roses earned the title of “5th least diverse major city in America” with an estimated three out of every four people being white. I only had two friends growing up who were not white. I grew up without seeing much diversity, and race was not an active factor in my life. I didn’t know anyone who was racist, nor did I witness racist situations. That said, I also wasn’t exposed to many people of other races, because nearly everyone I knew looked like me.
When racially motivated hate crimes made national news, such as the senseless murder of Eric Garner in 2014, I was horrified. How could violence like that still be happening in modern times? I remember everyone I knew talking about it, absolutely stunned. We assumed racism was mostly prevalent in southern states, a section of the country with culture so different from ours that we couldn’t possibly understand it. That made racism an easy thing to write off — it only happened in other places, places much different from us. At least, that’s what we told ourselves. This, combined with the reality that we didn’t see daily occurrences of racism because the majority of us were the same race, resulted in the majority of us having little to no true understanding of the differing experiences between white and nonwhite Americans. It is easy to talk about your support for a community when they aren’t sitting at the table with you, and that is the epitome of white privilege.
That is not to say that racism was not and is not alive and well in Portland, because it certainly is (a well researched article titled “The Racist History of Portland, the Whitest City in America” was published by The Atlantic in 2016; I highly recommend checking it out if you are interested). The problem was that the majority of us simply weren’t exposed to it, and therefore it wasn’t something that we talked about. At school, there were only a handful of students who were people of color, and most of them were “half white”. This was always acknowledged; a casual microaggression, as if their having a white parent made them any less a person of color (this is called colorism by the way, and is a immensely complex topic in of itself). Our schools failed us by only teaching us about racism through a historical lens and ignoring modern racial issues, including those occurring within the school walls.
Monocultures like ours left little room for seeing and understanding different experiences and perspectives. Racism seemed like a problem that was far removed from us as white people and our bubble of mostly other white people. We were aware of our privilege, but wore it like a birthmark; it was there, had always been there, and was easily forgotten until pointed out.
Note: I’ve been saying “we”. That is a bold assumption. This is how I felt, and how I assumed most of the other white people around me felt. The reality is, I don’t know, because we never truly talked about it in depth. Discussing race as a white person to other white people can be a strange experience that is tinged with feelings of discomfort. I sometimes sense a reluctance, or even dread, from other white people when the topic of race is brought up. Perhaps its out of fear of saying the wrong things, or the idea that we don’t have room to speak on race as we are not minorities. However, our silence isn’t doing anyone any good.
It wasn’t until I read these two books that I truly began to understand the complexity of racism in America. These books should be mandatory reading for all white people, and should be included in all public school curriculum, especially in areas that are not ethnically diverse. These books contain truths that are devastating. They tackle topics such as institutional racism (what does that mean, how does it work, what are the latent and manifest functions?) and the failures of the criminal justice system (spoiler alert-mostly failures), but in a digestible, understandable format. These books are valuable, especially for those of us who want to better understand why our friends, family members, and neighbors of color are systematically treated differently than we are. Without further ado, here they are.
#1. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
This book was written by Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. It was released in 2014 and has won many awards, including the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Nonfiction. It was a New York Times Bestseller, remaining on the list for more than eight weeks, and made the Notable Book List. Recently, Just Mercy was adapted to the big screen in a 2019 film that starred Jamie Fox, Brie Larson and Michael B. Jordan. Stevenson is a lawyer who has dedicated his life to helping people on death row, and this book is about his career. It focuses heavily on the death penalty and people of color on death row. The death penalty is applied unevenly, and people of color in this country have been put to death for crimes they did not commit. This book is great because Stevenson is a talented writer, so it reads like a story. I don’t want to ruin any part of this book for anyone, because there is so much power in reading Stevenson’s words and learning from what he has seen and experienced. This book is depressing, enraging, upsetting, and scary; but it is also powerful and inspiring and hopeful. We are lucky to live in the same world as Bryan Stevenson.
#2. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Author Michelle Alexander is a highly respected civil rights lawyer, and her perspective on mass incarceration and what is has done to our society is an unforgettable and important read. This book came out in 2010 and sat on the New York Times Bestseller’s List for more than a year, and it also won the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction. It focuses on how the United States has recreated a caste system through our laws and legislation, and breaks down how certain laws and systems affect people of color disproportionately. This book goes into detail about how marking young people of color with titles such as “felon” for committing crimes-for which they are persecuted more often and more harshly than their white counterparts-creates a system in which it is legal to discriminate against them. Felons can lose the right to vote, can be legally turned away from certain public benefits, and can be passed over for work opportunities and housing. The repercussions of this and what it means for our country are discussed in this book. It discussed how laws written to protect us do not protect all of us, and in some instances do much more damage than good.
That’s it! That’s the list.
These books changed the way I look at the world. I believe as white people who don’t face this unfair system, the least we can do is listen to the experiences of those that do. Being passive about racial inequality is a waste of our (unearned) privilege. We need to take it upon ourselves to learn from people who have suffered through a system that targets them, and we need to do more than just not be racist ourselves. We need to understand how this happens, and fight for a better system that treats everyone as equals. We need to listen to what people of color are saying, and ask how to help. Being an ally requires work. This is an easy first step.
If you are white, you need to read these books. You will learn things that will surprise and (hopefully) anger you. If you see similarities between your own life and mine, I urge you even more to pick up one of these books. This material matters, and requires our attention. You can’t change where you grew up or what your skin color is. What you can do is educate yourself and realize that the system is something that we actively participate in and can change, piece by piece. We can’t expect the people being oppressed by our system to somehow fix it on their own. This fight will require us all to work together.
So, to all my fellow white people; this is your direct call to action. I am pointing out the birthmark that is your privilege, and I am asking you to use it.
