My Mostly-White Book Club Read These Antiracist Books
How can reading a book enlighten you?
Reading a book about racial injustice doesn’t make it go away. It doesn’t change the current of anger flowing through our country. It doesn’t bring back lost lives in the black community. What good can reading a book do?
Made up of mostly white middle-aged women, my book club was created for a neighborhood group of moms to talk about their kids, drink wine, and read together. Each year, we plan out the books for the entire year. I point this out because there isn’t just one member picking books on social injustice; the choices are a collective agreement of all the members.
The book club has two unspoken rules:
- The book has to invoke intellectual curiosity.
- The book has to entertain.
2018’s Book: We Were Eight Years in Power
In 2018, we read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power. In a collection of essays, Coates tackles reparations for African Americans, mass incarceration, and asks why “so few blacks” study the Civil War.
Here are some insightful passages from We Were Eight Years in Power:
“The four million enslaved bodies, at the start of the Civil War, represented an inconceivable financial interest — $75 billion in today’s dollars — and the cotton that passed through their hands represented 60 percent of the country’s exports. In 1860, the largest concentration of multimillionaires in the country could be found in the Mississippi River Valley, where the estates of large plantations loomed.”
“Black people are not the descendants of kings. We are — and I say this with big pride — the progeny of slaves. If there’s any majesty in our struggle, it lies not in fairy tales but in those humble origins and the great distance we’ve traveled since.”
“Before Emancipation, enslaved blacks were rarely lynched, because whites were loath to destroy their own property. But after the Civil War, the number of lynchings rose, peaked at the turn of the century, then persisted at a high level until just before the Second World War, not petering out entirely until the height of the civil rights movement, in the 1960s.”
Almost 200 anti-lynching bills have been introduced in Congress in the first half of the 20th century, yet none of them have passed. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is on the precipice of passing, making lynching a federal crime.
2019’s Book: How to Be an Antiracist
In 2019, we read How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. A professor of history and international relations, Kendi runs the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. Kendi weaves his own story of personal growth throughout his antiracist roadmap on how we can do better as a people.
Kendi supports legislation and policy change, stating, “When someone discriminates against a person in a racial group, they are carrying out a policy or taking advantage of the lack of a protective policy. We all have the power to discriminate. Only an exclusive few have the power to make policy.”
Other notable Kendi passages include:
“What’s the problem with being ‘not racist’? It is a claim that signifies neutrality: ‘I am not a racist, but neither am I aggressively against racism.’ But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is anti-racist.”
“The common idea of claiming ‘color blindness’ is akin to the notion of being ‘not racist’ — as with the ‘not racist,’ the color-blind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist passivity. The language of color blindness — like the language of ‘not racist’— is a mask to hide racism.”
“The source of racist ideas is the history of powerful policy-makers erecting racist policies out of self-interest, then producing racist ideas to defend and rationalize the inequitable effects of their policies, while everyday people consume those racist ideas, which in turn sparks ignorance and hate.”
The following are Kendi’s steps for eliminating racial inequity:
- Admit racial inequity is a problem of bad policy, not bad people. Identify racial inequity in all its intersections and manifestations.
- Investigate and uncover the racist policies causing racial inequity.
- Invent or find antiracist policy that can eliminate racial inequity.
- Figure out who or what group has the power to institute antiracist policy.
- Disseminate and educate about the uncovered racist policy and anti-racist policy correctives.
- Work with sympathetic antiracist policymakers to institute the antiracist policy.
- Deploy antiracist power to compel or drive from power the unsympathetic racist policymakers to institute the antiracist policy.
- Monitor closely to ensure the antiracist policy reduces and eliminates racial inequity.
- When policies fail, do not blame the people. Start over and seek out new and more effective antiracist treatments until they work.
- Monitor closely to prevent new racist policies from being instituted.
2020’s Book: Go Tell It on the Mountain
In 2020, we read writer and activist James Baldwin’s semi-autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain. Although written in 1953, Baldwin’s book is always a timely read considering what is happening with racial relations in our country today.
Our book club isn’t special because we are white women reading about racial injustice. We are just mothers who hopefully take what we learn and pass it on to our sons and daughters. As we did, start by educating yourself, and by understanding American history and what brought us to the point where we are today.
We need to do better. But how?
It’s not enough to read a few books, but it’s a start. I’d like to believe our country can learn from our past, but I won’t believe this unless something changes. We need to teach antiracism in our schools. We need legislation in place to prevent racism and to recognize systemic injustice. We need to apologize for our present actions and to accept the blame of our past. We need to educate. We need to heal.
