BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

The Racial Equity Tools Website has created a helpful glossary of terms that will likely come up in the following resources. CLICK HERE to view this as a webpage. It is also available as a PDF - CLICK HERE.

From a leading voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian, and female that exposes how white America’s love affair with “diversity” so often falls short of its ideals. This author traces the oppression and injustices she experienced growing up as a young woman of color in a white dominated world.

Author: Austin Channing Brown

Interrogates the US being among the top three most heavily structured, pervasive, and problematic caste constructs in world history and how this results in creating dangerous systemic racial threats to people of color.

Author: Isabel Wilkerson

Based upon extensive research, Wilkerson tells the story of America’s great migration of six million people from the “South for northern and western cities” “in search of a better life” and documents how this great migration altered “our cities, our country, and ourselves.”

Author: Isabel Wilkerson

Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.
This guide provides useful insights in becoming a more effective, positive challenger of racism. 

Author: Ibram X. Kendi

From a leading voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian, and female that exposes how white America’s love affair with “diversity” so often falls short of its ideals. This author traces the oppression and injustices she experienced growing up as a young woman of color in a white dominated world.

Author: Austin Channing Brown

This resource provides recommendations in engaging others in difficult discussions pertaining to racial inequities.

Author:Robin DiAngelo

Sister Joan Chittister—a rabble-rousing force of nature for social justice and fervent proponent of personal faith and spiritual fulfillment—draws on the wisdom of prophets, both ancient and modern, to help us confront the societal forces that oppress and silence the sacred voices among us. This well-known nun activist provides useful guidance in becoming involved in social activism. 

Author: Sister Joan Chittister

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This exhaustive resource list was developed by The HOPE Speaks Project, a local nonprofit working to normalize conversations about race and racism through a family-centered approach. It contains lists of developmentally appropriate books for people of all ages (babies-adults), podcasts, YouTube videos, Ted Talks, websites, TV shows and movies to support additional learning.

Click Here To View

Confronting racism is difficult but essential work if we are to heal the brokenness in our society and our church. In the author's words, "We all are wounded by the sin of racism... How can we struggle together against an evil that harms us all?" Racial Justice and the Catholic Church examines the presence of racism in America from its early history through the Civil Rights Movement and the election of Barack Obama. It also explores how Catholic social teaching has been used--and not used--to promote reconciliation and justice.

Fr. Bryan Massingale

This work fosters greater understanding of the racial inequities arising within Minnesota. Essays that challenge, discomfort, disorient, galvanize, and inspire all of us to evolve now, for our shared future, from sixteen of Minnesota’s best writers providing a range of perspectives on what it is like to live as a person of color in one of the whitest states in the nation.

Editor: Sun Yung Shin