Real change takes action. To be able to act, we have to understand. Books are a great way to expand our current understanding and step into the experience of someone else. This list is a compilation of books referenced during our last sermon series and used in class settings here at St. Luke’s. In no particular order, here are 11 books to start your Anti-Racism journey. 

How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

What You’ll Experience: What an Anti-Racist society would look like and how we can help shape that vision. 

Notable Quote: “The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what -- not who -- we are.”

America’s Original Sin by Jim Wallis

What You’ll Experience: A look at the founding of this country and the legacy of that founding. A personal call to action that speaks candidly to Christians, especially white Christians. 

Notable Quote: “Let nobody give you the impression that the problem of racial injustice will work itself out. Let nobody give you the impression that only time will solve the problem. That is a myth, and it is a myth because time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively.”

White Fragility by Robin Diangelo

What You’ll Experience: An in-depth look at how white fragility develops and how it protects racial equality. 

Notable Quote: “The key to moving forward is what we do with our discomfort. We can use it as a door out—blame the messenger and disregard the message. Or we can use it as a door in by asking, Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean for me if this were true?”

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 

What You’ll Experience: A poignant letter written from a father to his adolescent son examining some of the biggest questions about race in America. 

Notable Quote: “That is what it truly means to think as an antiracist: to think there is nothing wrong with Black people, to think that racial groups are equal. There are lazy and unwise and harmful individuals of African ancestry. There are lazy and unwise and harmful individuals of European ancestry. There are industrious and wise and harmless individuals of European ancestry. There are industrious and wise and harmless individuals of African ancestry. But no racial group has ever had a monopoly on any type of human trait or gene—not now, not ever.”

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander 

What You’ll Experience: A look at mass incarceration in the United States. 

Notable Quote: “The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that's why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world.”

The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby 

What You’ll Experience: A look back to the root of injustice in the American church, highlighting the cultural and institutional tables we have to flip in order to bring about progress between black and white people.

Notable Quote: “Throughout the course of US history, when Christians had the opportunity to decisively oppose the racism in their midst, all too often, they chose silence. They chose passivity. The refusal to act in the midst of injustice is itself an act of injustice. Indifference to oppression perpetuates oppression.”

Waking Up White by Debby Irving 

What You’ll Experience: An unpacking of one woman's long-held beliefs about color blindness, being a good person, and wanting to help people of color, revealing how each of these well-intentioned mindsets actually perpetuated her ill-conceived ideas about race.

Notable Quote:“The story emerging for me, however, tells a tale of black and brown people being held down so long that white folks have come to believe they got there on their own. The removal of legal barriers that once separated the races has done little to change the distorted belief system that lives on in the hearts and minds of millions of individuals. At this point, the only thing needed for racism to continue is for good people to do nothing.”

I’m Still Here by Austin Channing Brown 

What You’ll Experience: An eye opening look at growing up Black, Christian, and female in middle-class white America. 

Notable Quote: “Our only chance at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort. It's not a comfortable conversation for any of us. It is risky and messy. It is haunting work to recall the sins of our past. But is this not the work we have been called to anyway? Is this not the work of the Holy Spirit to illuminate truth and inspire transformation? It's haunting. But it's also holy.”

Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

What You’ll Experience: A deeply researched look at anti–Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history.

Notable Quote: “That is what it truly means to think as an antiracist: to think there is nothing wrong with Black people, to think that racial groups are equal. There are lazy and unwise and harmful individuals of African ancestry. There are lazy and unwise and harmful individuals of European ancestry. There are industrious and wise and harmless individuals of European ancestry. There are industrious and wise and harmless individuals of African ancestry. But no racial group has ever had a monopoly on any type of human trait or gene—not now, not ever.”

Rediscipling the White Church by David W. Swanson

What You’ll Experience: A look at moving past cheap diversity that reinforces the status quo to true discipleship and community. 

Notable Quote: “If discipleship practices offer the means to lead us from segregation to solidarity, lament provides the mood. We dare not come to this ministry of reconciliation with any other posture. We move forward humbly, as those only slowly awakening to the extent of the damage done by our previously defective discipleship. The road ahead will often feel unnatural to those of us who’ve been discipled in the narrative of racial difference.”

Everyone’s journey to becoming anti-racist is different. Some people have read many books, some are seeing these for the first time. Regardless of where you are, not only can you take a step by purchasing and reading a book (or another book) to learn more, but you can also do this by supporting a Black owned bookstore when you buy one of the above books. Here is a great round up of 125 Black Owned Bookstores in the United States.

Which book are you starting with? Each book on this list will ask hard questions, bring up things that make you uncomfortable, and challenge you to look at things differently than you did before. This work isn’t easy but it is important. 

We want to know what you are reading! Or perhaps you have a favorite resource that isn’t on our list. Join the conversation on social media by tagging @stlukesindy and use the hashtag #antiracistindy