Showing titles in Racism & Discrimination

Arguably the most important American lawyer of the 20th century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the US Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and to cost him his life. In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall, who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve....

In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the "N" word. Perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between people of color and white Americans struggling with race complexities, Oluo answers the questions listeners don't dare ask and explains the concepts that continue to elude everyday Americans.

"Black people are not dark-skinned white people", says advertising visionary Tom Burrell. In fact, they are much more. They are survivors of the Middle Passage and centuries of humiliation and deprivation, who have excelled against the odds, constantly making a way out of "No way!" At this pivotal point in history, the idea of Black inferiority should have had a "Going-Out-of-Business Sale." After all, Barack Obama reached America's Promised Land. Yet, as Brainwashed testifies, too many in Black America are still wandering in the wilderness.

In 1955 the killers of Emmett Till, a black Mississippi youth, were acquitted because they were white. Forty years later, despite the strong DNA evidence against him, accused murderer O. J. Simpson went free after his attorney portrayed him as a victim of racism. The age of white supremacy has given way to an age of white guilt—and neither has been good for African Americans. Through articulate analysis and engrossing recollections, acclaimed race relations scholar Shelby Steele sounds a powerful call for a new culture of personal responsibility.

In this "penetrating new analysis" ( New York Times Book Review), Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of 20th century American history and demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. Through mechanisms designed by southern democrats that specifically excluded maids and farm workers, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity.

A revelatory look at why we dehumanize each other, with stunning examples from world history as well as today's headlines.

Aviva Chomsky dismantles 21 of the most widespread and pernicious myths and beliefs about immigrants and immigration in this incisive book. They Take Our Jobs! challenges the underlying assumptions that fuel misinformed claims about immigrants, radically altering our notions of citizenship, discrimination, and US history. With fresh material including a new introduction and revised timeline, this expanded edition is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand how these myths are used to promote aggressive anti-immigrant policies.

Over the summer of 2013, the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II led more than a 100,000 people at rallies across North Carolina to protest restrictions to voting access and an extreme makeover of state government. These protests - the largest state government-focused civil disobedience campaign in American history - came to be known as Moral Mondays and have since blossomed in states as diverse as Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York.

The names Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery may not be well known, but the image of them from September 1957 surely is: a Black high-school girl, dressed in white, walking stoically in front of Little Rock Central High School, and a White girl standing directly behind her, face twisted in hate, screaming racial epithets. This famous photograph captures the full anguish of desegregation - in Little Rock and throughout the South - and an epic moment in the civil rights movement.

From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the 1619 Project comes a landmark book that tells the full story of racial health disparities in America, revealing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation.

Part historical exploration, part travel memoir, Beyond the Shores reveals poignant histories of a diverse group of African Americans who have left the United States over the course of the past century. Together, the interwoven stories highlight African Americans’ complicated relationship to the United States and the world at large. Beyond the Shores is not just about where African Americans stayed or where they ate when they traveled but also about why they left in the first place and how they were treated once they reached their destinations.

In Teaching White Supremacy, Donald Yacovone shows us the clear and damning evidence of white supremacy’s deep-seated roots in our nation’s education system in a fascinating, in-depth examination of America’s wide assortment of texts, from primary readers to college textbooks and other higher-ed course materials. Sifting through a wealth of materials, from the colonial era to today, Yacovone reveals the systematic ways in which white supremacist ideology has infiltrated American culture and how it has been at the heart of our collective national identity.

Black women have higher rates of premature birth than other women in America. This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class Black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income White women in the United States. Dána-Ain Davis looks into this phenomenon, placing racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas which developed during the era of slavery.

June Cross was born in 1954 to Norma Booth, a glamorous, aspiring White actress, and James "Stump" Cross, a well-known Black comedian. Sent by her mother to be raised by Black friends when she was four years old and could no longer pass as White, June was plunged into the pain and confusion of a family divided by race. Secret Daughter tells her story of survival. It traces June's astonishing discoveries about her mother and about her own fierce determination to thrive.

Instead of thinking about social justice as a process that starts with changing people's minds, Embodied Activism understands our bodies—how we feel in them and relate to others through them—as the sites of transformation.

Beyond race or class, our lives are defined by a powerful, unspoken system of divisions. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson gives an astounding portrait of this hidden phenomenon. Linking America, India and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson reveals how our world has been shaped by caste - and how its rigid, arbitrary hierarchies still divide us today. With clear-sighted rigour, Wilkerson unearths the eight pillars that connect caste systems across civilisations and demonstrates how our own era of intensifying conflict and upheaval has arisen as a consequence of caste.

Editor Angela P. Dodson brings together the voices of more than thirty-five accomplished women writers on the topic of violence and injustice against Black men. These writers are journalists, authors, scholars, ministers, psychologists, counselors, and other experts. They are also wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, aunties, and friends. Each lends her voice to shine a new light on the injustices and dangers Black men face daily, and how women feel about the vulnerability of our sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, uncles, friends, and other males we care about.

At the center of the current immigration debate are migrants from Central America fleeing poverty, corruption, and violence in search of refuge in the United States. In Central America’s Forgotten History, Aviva Chomsky answers the urgent question “How did we get here?” Centering the centuries-long intertwined histories of US expansion and indigenous and Central American struggles against inequality and oppression, Chomsky highlights the pernicious cycle of colonial and neocolonial development policies.

Author Bakari Sellers expands on the issues he addressed in his New York Times bestseller My Vanishing Country, examining national politics and policies that deeply impact not only Black people in his home state of South Carolina but the lives of millions of African Americans in communities across the nation. Four years later, Sellers has an answer to the question he raised on CNN, offering much-needed prescriptions to help all Black American lives.

The findings from wide-ranging interviews and careful historical research, Black Genius explores the roots of Black achievement in America. The results are surprising and inspiring. Interweaving past and present, beginning with this country's inception, Russell covers the importance of continuity and tradition in nurturing Black artists, scientists, and leaders. Here are memorable portraits of Wynton Marsalis, Ralph Ellison, Louis Armstrong, Toni Morrison, Duke Ellington, James Baldwin, Paul Robeson, Muhammad Ali, Lois Mailou-Jones, and other Black notables.