Do the Work: an Anti-Racist Reading List
As we mourn and seek justice for the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop and Tony McDade (to name but a few), many black people are wondering what will happen when the news cycle is over, the social justice memes are no longer posted, and the declarations for inclusivity, diversity and “doing the work” have died down?
How do we actually create an anti-racist world and rid ourselves of this sickness and system of white supremacy, when the people who benefit from it are not showing up to do the work?
Audre Lorde famously wrote: “Revolution is not a one-time event.”
In order to understand what we are seeing on the news and experiencing in our lives, it’s important to understand how history has shaped this moment. Reaching back to books published by black thinkers and feminists decades ago shows us how things are still very much the same, but also gives us language and context for understanding what we are seeing now – and therefore the ability to disrupt tactics of oppression that still operate today.
Literature To Read
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Gal-Dem called this debut “the black British bible”. It began with a 2014 blog post addressed to those who refused to recognise the structural racism of British society, to those who “truly believe that the experiences of their life as a result of their skin colour can and should be universal.” It’s a dramatic recognition of what she calls “white denial”
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, Evaristo’s novel follows the lives of a dozen British people, predominantly female, predominantly black. The different storylines of the characters – who range in age from 19 to 93 – are engrossing and empathetic, portraits of struggle, imagination and perseverance.
Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch
Hirsch is the daughter of a black Ghanaian woman and a white English man; her book is part memoir, part history, part polemic, an interrogation of her own identity and an examination of the roots of prejudice, taking to task those progressives who claim they “don’t see colour”.
The Good Immigrant ed. Nikesh Shukla
These 21 essays by black, Asian and minority ethnic writers comprise “a document of what it means to be a person of colour” in Britain today, writes Shukla. Published by Unbound, the crowdfunded website, the book received a huge boost with a £5,000 donation by J. K. Rowling; a companion volume for American writers was published to great acclaim last year. There is a terrific diversity of voices and experiences in both.
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
This book answers some of the most common questions we hear from white people about racism in chapters such as, “Why am I always being told to ‘check my privilege’?”, “Is police brutality really about race?” and “What are microaggressions?”