Race In America

An in-depth look at Race in America.

Athena is a guided learning experience featuring curated reading lists of “must-read” books that span a multitude of topics to help you do everything from turbocharge your health or career, improve your sex life, find inner happiness and even up your chess game. Here, we present the key insights and takeaways from the most insightful books about Race in America.

White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo

If we are to make meaningful progress in overcoming the obstacles to racial justice, we must confront the barrier that is white fragility: the many ways in which white people avoid engaging with uncomfortable truths and thereby become complicit in perpetuating racism.

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander

If Jim Crow laws — designed to oppress newly freed slaves after the Civil War — were an effective means to control the black population, then modern mass incarceration, Alexander argues, is its successor.

How To Be An Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi

An idea, policy or person is either racist — by contributing to a history that considers and treats different races as inherently unequal — or antiracist because it is trying to dismantle that history and build a more equitable society. There is nothing in between.

So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo

Drawing from her personal experience and expert knowledge, Ijeoma Oluo offers guidance to white people and minorities alike on how to have uncomfortable conversations about race in a way that can effectively move the country forward in its struggle against racial oppression and social injustice.

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

From one of the country’s most esteemed writers on race, Between the World and Me offers a powerful new framework for looking at America’s past, one that was built on the backs of black bodies, as well as an expression of tender concern by a father for his adolescent son.

Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson

The American criminal justice system disproportionately punishes the poor, people with mental illness and people of color. It focuses far more on punishment than rehabilitation, devastates communities and leaves little room for equal justice — or mercy.