This is a list of resources on race from a predominantly white congregation that is journeying together to deconstruct whiteness in an increasingly diverse culture. If you are a white person interested in exploring privilege and power and how to be a better ally to people of color and other marginalized people groups, this is a good primer. We must do the work ourselves and not expect our brothers and sisters of color to inform us. White people created systems of racism and we have a responsibility to begin the process of dismantling it in our own hearts, communities, and the world.

Books to Read:

The South Side – Natalie Y. Moore
The Invention of the White Race – Theodore W. Allen
The Blood of Emmett Till – Timothy B. Tyson
Evicted – Matthew Desmond
Divided by Faith – Michael O. Emerson, Christian Smith
Color of Law – Richard Rothstein
Tears We Cannot Stop – Michael Eric Dyson
White Like Me – Tim Wise
The Soul of Black Folk – W.E.B. Du Bois
Birth of a White Nation – Jacqueline Battalora
The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander
*Just Mercy – Bryan Stevenson
America’s Original Sin – Jim Wallace
Disunity in Christ – Christena Cleveland
Black Like Me – John Howard Griffin
A Black Theology of Liberation – James Cone
*Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coats
The Economics of Racial Discrimination and Segregation in the Housing Markets of Cities in the North During the Great Migration, 1915-1930 – Andrew D. Branch
Roadmap to Reconciliation – Brenda Salter McNeil

Films/Documentaries to Watch (always better with a group!):

I am not your negro
*13th
Racism in the media
The Central Park Five
LA 92
OJ vs the People
The House I Live In
Dark Girls
Let the Fire Burn
*Fruitvale Station
*Selma
Birth of a Nation
The Wire

Music to Listen To:

Nina Simone (Mississippi Goddamn)
Curtis Mayfield
The Freedom Singers
Billy Holiday (Strange Fruit)
Charles Mingus
Ray Charles
Sam Cooke
Harry Belafonte
Marvin Gaye
Stevie Wonder
The Staples Singers
Mahalia Jackson (We Shall Overcome)
Public Enemy
N.W.A.
Tupac
Common
Kendrick Lamar

Yes, this list is long. But don’t be scared off by its length. Just watch/read/listen to one thing…then choose something else. It’s a journey of growing understanding, of being willing to hear a perspective that is not your own.