So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo

“This is a good book to help white people and non-black people of colour answer often spoken and unspoken questions about race and racism,” said Thomonique Moore, an incoming master’s candidate at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College in New York City.

From MeToo to Black Lives Matter, protest music is in the air

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander

In The New Jim Crow, legal scholar Alexander argues that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it”. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws created in the late 1800s and early 1900s that enforced racial segregation and encouraged the disenfranchisement of black people in the US.

“Alexander breaks down the historic ‘war on crime’ and how the explosive increase in the number US citizens incarcerated, namely black men, is just another trickier, evolved, version of slavery, and Jim Crow,” Moore said.

White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo

In this bestselling book, academic, lecturer and author DiAngelo explores the defence mechanisms white people commonly employ when challenged on their assumptions about race. These counterproductive reactions, DiAngelo explains, prevent white people from having much needed conversations to usher in progress.

Racism Without Racists, by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

In this book, Bonilla-Silva makes a powerful argument against the idea that race doesn’t exist, or that being “colourblind” is an appropriate solution to racism. Crystal Fleming, associate professor of sociology and Africana studies at Stony Brook University in New York, called this “one of the most important books on racism”.

“In particular, Bonilla-Silva helps us understand how the rhetoric of colourblindness reinforces the racial status quo,” she said.

How to Be Less Stupid About Race, by Crystal Fleming

In addition to recommending other authors, Fleming suggests a book she wrote on the topic of racism, which serves as a primer on the topics of racial oppression and white supremacy.

“I wrote the book to help people understand the historical roots of white supremacy and to be able to draw connections between past and present racism. The last chapter includes 10 concrete steps that everyone can take to help dismantle systemic racism,” she said.

Two Faced Racism, by Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin

This book features more than 600 journal entries of racial events kept by white students at 28 universities in the US. It exposes how closely held racist beliefs are still very much a part of American culture.

“Picca and Feagin analyse data from journal entries provided by white college students which reveals how racism works behind closed doors as well as in public and semi-public spaces,” Fleming said.

The Ethnic Project, by Vilna Bashi Treitler

In this historical narrative work, Treitler, a sociology professor in the department of black students at the University of California at Santa Barbara, examines the ethnic history of the US from the arrival of the English in North America to the present day. She shows how each group of immigrants, from Irish to Chinese people, negotiated their place in the pecking order of ethnic groups within the country.

Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach by Tanya Golash Boza

Golash Boza tackles critical topics including how and when the idea of race was created, how it developed, and how structural racism has created inequality. “This book is an excellent overview of systemic and institutionalised racism,” Fleming said.

White Rage, by Carol Anderson

Anderson explores how each time blacks in America have made progress, there has been strong white backlash.

“The book is a critical reflection of why racism persists in the United States, including things that enrage white people about racial issues,” said Augustine Kposowa, professor and chair of the department of sociology at the University of California, Riverside.

“In the book, it is evident that no matter what happens in America, including the most open outrages like police killings of blacks, whites never seem interested.”

Racist America: Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations, by Joe Feagin

Feagin incorporates more than 200 recent research studies and reports in his book, which illustrates the origins of racism in the US, and how it still pervades white culture today.

“Feagin is white and he is privy to secret conversations that whites have in white networks that blacks can never join,” Kposowa said.

Black Americans, by Alphonso Pinkney

Pinkney, a distinguished Afro-American sociologist and former long-term chairman of the department of sociology at Hunter College in New York, explores several facets of different black experiences in the US, including homicide as a public health problem and the prevalence of police brutality.

“Pinkney’s book is a comprehensive account of black life in America, and covers why, in almost every sphere, blacks are forced to stay behind,” Kposowa said.

Code of the Street, by Elijah Anderson

Yale professor Anderson presents an explanation for high rates of violence among black teens in the US. Anderson explains how living in impoverished areas without access to economic opportunities, being separated from mainstream society, as well as persistent discrimination was linked with antisocial attitudes and violent behaviour in black teens.

Mansa Bilal Mark King, associate professor of sociology at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, said it’s one of the most important books non-black people could read.

The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon

Fanon was a distinguished psychiatrist from Martinique, a Caribbean island, who took part in the Algerian Nationalist Movement, a movement that fought for the rights of French colonisers to be extended to native Algerians. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon captures the psychology of the colonised and their path to liberation.

“This book can be hard for most non-black Americans to read, and it can be even more difficult for them to see how it relates to African-Americans, particularly those of us whose families survived American slavery and Jim and Jane Crow apartheid. That is exactly why people need to read it,” King said.

The Mis-Education of the Negro, by Carter Woodson

Woodson was an American historian, author, journalist and one of the first scholars to study the history of the African diaspora. In this book, he argues that black people were being indoctrinated, rather than educated, in American schools, and that black Americans needed to educate themselves on the history of race and racism.

“This book is almost a century old, and the fact that its basic critique remains a valid one should help readers to understand a key source of black American anger,” King said.

Black Wealth/White Wealth, by Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro

Sociological researchers Oliver and Shapiro capture just how large the wealth gap is between black and white Americans.

“This book helps people of all races begin to understand that it was white America that systematically chooses for us to have almost all black, low-income, ‘ghetto areas’,” King said. “Equally important, this imposed reality means that black children are born at a disadvantage, in the vast majority of cases, through no fault of their own.”

Unesco General History of Africa, by Joseph Ki-Zerbo and G. Mokhtar

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has put together comprehensive titles on the history of Africa and its people that are useful for any American of any colour to read. These works “help the reader overcome the poor historical education that most Americans get when it comes to Africa”, King said.