With regard to anti-racist reading list, I think political education is important. I think historical texts that help people understand how we arrived in this moment are important. But people should be clear that these texts are an entry point, not the end of the work itself.
Reading recommendation lists, especially in a moment like this, can be performative, but I think they can also be helpful. Some folks might post a reading list just to signal solidarity, some might actually get the books and do the reading. We can't control who does which thing.
I want ppl to read books on how housing segregation shaped this country. I want ppl to read books on how mass incarceration is breaking families apart. I also want those texts to inform how ppl move through the world, how they structure their communities, and the way they vote.
I think people of good faith can have different opinions about which books are included on these lists and which books tend to be left out. These decisions deserve to be interrogated, as does the notion of what sort of texts constitute as “anti-racist” in the first place.
I've given this example before, but I think all the time about how one of the men I work with in DC Jail read THE COLOR OF LAW, and how it gave him a new language & framework to understand the community he came from. How housing segregation impacted his life in a direct way.
He talked about how liberating it was to read something that helped him understand that the reason the community he came from looked the way that it does, wasn't the fault of people in that community, but was reflective of what has been done to that community for generations.
There is, I think, power in that. It also speaks to the idea that books about racism are not *just* for white ppl (my student is black), they can also be emancipatory texts for black folks. Texts that help ppl understand what has been done to us, and what continues to be done.
Again, I get that this is a moment in which people are attempting to sort out the difference between empty gestures of solidarity and those that reflect real commitment. That makes sense. I hear it. And what's real is that it can all messy, and many things can be true at once.
What's also true is that anti-racist work, learning about racism, understanding how racism has shaped this country (or however you decide to frame it) is never done. No matter how many books you read. It's not some threshold you cross and then you're done. It's ongoing. Always.
