Confronting racism requires white allies to listen, learn, and educate themselves.

Dismantling the legacy of white supremacy in America demands a deeper understanding of the systems of oppression we all live within. The Kalamazoo College Library has a wealth of anti-racism resources both in print and online.

Though the Library building is closed, our online resources are available 24/7. If you would like to read a title we only have in print, your local public library may have an online version or be open for circulating print copies. You can also get online books for free through the Open Libraries project of the Internet Archive. You can also purchase them (used or new) through black-owned booksellers such as Semicolon Bookstore, Source Booksellers, or Brain Lair Books; through local Kalamazoo bookstores This Is a Bookstore, Michigan News Agency, or Kazoo Books; and via other online retailers such as AbeBooks, alibris, Better World Books, or Powell’s Books.

Suggested Readings

Kalamazoo College Inclusive Excellence (KCIE) has purchased and recommends the following book collection to all K College Students, Faculty, and Staff looking to engage with antiracist ideas and practices. 

We have several titles recommended by ERACCE (Eliminating Racism and Creating/Celebrating Equity) both online and in print.

Further, Medium.com recently published a Detailed List of Anti-Racism Resources that includes books, movies, articles, and more.

Also check out these titles:

Ebooks

• Can we talk about race? : and other conversations in an era of school resegregation / Beverly Daniel Tatum.
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness / Michelle Alexander.
• Pagans in the Promised Land : Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery / Steven T. Newcomb.
• Settlers : the mythology of the white proletariat from mayflower to modern / J. Sakai.
• The souls of Black folk / W.E.B. Du Bois (another version is online here).

Print Books

• Investigating Christian privilege and religious oppression in the United States / Warren J. Blumenfeld, Khyati Y. Joshi and Ellen E. Fairchild [editors].
• An indigenous peoples’ history of the United States / Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
• The souls of black folk ; essays and sketches / W.E.B. Du Bois.
• Leading anti-bias early childhood programs : a guide for change / Louise Derman-Sparks, Debbie LeeKeenan, John Nimmo ; foreword by Mariana Souto-Mannin.
• The world that trade created : society, culture, and the world economy, 1400-the present / Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik.
• White by law : the legal construction of race / Ian F. Haney López.
• White fragility : why it’s so hard for White people to talk about racism / Robin DiAngelo.
• Chinese America : the untold story of America’s oldest new community / Peter Kwong and Dušanka Miščević.
• Creating contagious commitment : applying the tipping point to organizational change / Andrea Shapiro ; forward by Patricia Zigarmi.
• Thinking in systems : a primer / Donella H. Meadows ; edited by Diana Wright.
• Dying of whiteness : how the politics of racial resentment is killing America’s heartland / Jonathan M. Metzl.
• Islamophobia : the ideological campaign against Muslims / Stephen Sheehi.
• New perspectives on racial identity development : integrating emerging frameworks / edited by Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe and Bailey W. Jackson III.
• Cross-X / Joe Miller.
• Embracing cultural competency : a roadmap for nonprofit capacity builders.
• Walking on water : reading, writing, and revolution / Derrick Jensen.
• Social epidemiology / edited by Lisa F. Berkman, Ichiro Kawachi.
• This changes everything : capitalism vs. the climate / Naomi Klein.
• The revolution will not be funded : beyond the non-profit industrial complex / edited by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence.
• Color of violence : the Incite! anthology / Incite! Women of Color Against Violence.
• Working toward whiteness : how America’s immigrants became white : the strange journey from Ellis Island to the suburbs / David R. Roediger.
• 1491 : new revelations of the Americas before Columbus / Charles C. Mann.
• Teaching community : a pedagogy of hope / Bell Hooks.
• How Jews became white folks and what that says about race in America? / Karen Brodkin.
• Borderlands : the new mestiza = La frontera / Gloria Anzaldúa.
• A different mirror : a history of multicultural America / Ronald Takaki.
• Orientalism / Edward W. Said.