We encourage members of our campus community to learn more about racism, anti-racism, and diversity. We asked UChicago students, faculty, and staff what they are reading and what they recommend to help individuals understand and address current events and history. While not exhaustive, this list can serve as a starting point.
Affirmative Action
- For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law, book by Randall Kennedy
- Affirmative Action Around the World, book by Thomas Sowell
Anti-Racism/Racism
- White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, book by Carol Anderson
- The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, book by Grace Lee Boggs
- I Was a Racist Teacher and I Didn’t Even Know It, article by Laurie Calvert
- We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation, book by Jeff Chang
- Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America, book by Jeff Chang
- White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, book by Robin DiAngelo
- How to Be an Antiracist, book by Ibram X. Kendi
- The Elect, serial by John McWhorter
- Small Great Things, book by Jodi Picoult
- Feminist Accountability: Disrupting Violence and Transforming Power, book by Ann Russo
- Me and White Supremacy, book by Layla F. Saad
- Seeing White series, podcast by Scene on Radio
- Feeling Raw, Facing Intensity, meditation by Ten Percent Happier
- Tacit Racism, book by Anne Warfield Rawls and Waverly Duck
Asians/Asian Americans
- The Myth of the Model Minority: Asians Americans Facing Racism, book by Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin
- Go Home!, book edited by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
- Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, book by Cathy Park Hong
- The Making of Asian America, book by Erika Lee
- The Asian American Achievement Paradox, book by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou
- Asian Enough, podcast series by the Los Angeles Times
- Asian Americans, PBS television series
- Asian Americana, podcast series by Quincy
- Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, book by Ronald Takaki
- Night Sky with Exit Wounds, book by Ocean Vuong
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, book by Ocean Vuong
- The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, book by Ellen D. Wu
- Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, book by Frank H. Wu
- Interior Chinatown, book by Charles Yu
- Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, book by Helen Zia
Blackness
- Sestina for the Looting of the Black Body, poem and photo essay by AV Benford
- Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black book by Timuel D. Black Jr., as told to Susan Klonsky, edited by Bart Schultz
- Between the World and Me, book by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Black Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, book by Brittney Cooper
- Negroland, book by Margo Jefferson
- Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, book by John McWhorter
- The Other Wes Moore, book by Wes Moore
- Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class, book by Mary Pattillo
- Citizen: An American Lyric, book by Claudia Rankine
Community Engagement
- Community Engagement Matters (Now More than Ever), article by Melody Barnes and Paul Schmitz
Diversity
- The Enigma of Diversity: The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice, book by Ellen Berry
Education
- Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, book edited by Maurianne Adams and Lee Anne Bell
- Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown vs. Board of Education, book by Danielle Allen
- The Color of Mind: Why the Origins of the Achievement Gap Matter for Justice, book by Derrick Darby and John L. Rury
- We Demand: The University and Student Protests,book by Roderick A. Ferguson
- Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, book by bell hooks
- The Privileged Poor, book by Anthony Abraham Jacks
- Doing Diversity in Higher Education, article by Scott Jaschik
- Anti-racist Pedagogy: From Faculty’s Self-reflection to Organizing Within and Beyond the Classroom, article by Kyoko Kishimoto
- America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States, book by Erika Lee
- Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, book edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzalez, and Angela P. Harris
- “We Are All for Diversity, but...”: How Faculty Hiring Committees Reproduce Whiteness and Practical Suggestions for How They Can Change, article by Ozlem Sensoy & Robin DiAngelo
- Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of the Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States, book by Joel Spring
- Immigrant Stories, multimedia project by the University of Minnesota
- If These Halls Could Talk, film by Lee Mun Wah
- Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities, book by Craig Steven Wilder
History
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, book by Michelle Alexander
- The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap, book by Mehrsa Baradaran
- Homegoing, book by Yaa Gyasi
- Stories from the Front of the Room: How Higher Education Faculty of Color Overcome Challenges and Thrive in the Academy, book by Michelle Harris, Sherrill L. Sellers, Orly Clerge, and Frederick W. Gooding Jr.
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
- The 1619 Project: A Critique, book by Phillip W. Magness
- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, book by Richard Rothstein
- Remembering Emmett Till by Dave Tell
- A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, book by Ronald Takaki
- How Did We Get Here?: 163 years of The Atlantic’s Writing on Race and Racism in America, article by Gillian B. White
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, book by Isabel Wilkerson
Justice System/Policing
- Beyond the Usual Beating: The John Burge Police Torture Scandal and Social Movements for Police Accountability in Chicago, book by Andrew S. Baer
- A Discussion on How to Reform Policing, article by Emily Bazelon
- Language Guide for Communicating About Those Involved in The Carceral System by Berkeley Underground Scholars
- Citizen Brown: Race, Democracy and Inequality in the St. Louis Suburbs, book by Colin Gordon
- The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence, book by Laurence Ralph
- American Police: Thoroughline, radio show, NPR
- Dragnets, Dirty Harrys and Dying Hard: A Syllabus for 100 Years of the Police in Pop Culture, article by Alyssa Rosenberg
- From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
- Teaching the History of Policing by Zinn Education Project
Sexuality
- Queer People of Color in Higher Education, book edited by Joshua Moon Johnson and Gabriel Javier
South Side
- Everywhere You Don't Belong, book by Gabriel Bump
- Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side, book by Eve Ewing
- The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, book by Natalie Y. Moore
- High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing, book by Audrey Petty