On June 18th 2020, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and the weeks of nationwide protests in the US that followed, I saw something I have never seen before: most of Amazon’s “Top 20 Most Sold & Most Read Books of the Week” in non-fiction had to do with racism! Even if the top book was by a White person:
1. Robin J. DiAngelo: White Fragility (2018) – White people get upset when talking about racism because of White fragility, which comes from what they mislearned from the civil rights movement of the 1960s. No doubt after the Riots of 2081 there will be a book about what White people mislearned about (their own) racism in the 2020s, maybe some of it from these very books. Maybe even from this one.
2. Ibram X. Kendi: How to Be an Antiracist (2019) – or at least how he became one. For those who do not have a racist bone in their body. His follow-up to “Stamped” (2016), which tells how the US became pro-racist (see #5 below).
3. Ijeoma Oluo: So You Want to Talk About Race (2018) – Everything you always wanted to know about racism but were afraid to ask. It answers questions like “Why can’t I touch your hair?” and “What if I hate Al Sharpton?”
4. Layla F. Saad: Me and White Supremacy (2020) – a 28-day workbook for clueless White people by a White anti-racist educator. Topics: White supremacy, anti-Blackness, racial stereotypes, cultural appropriation, allyship, etc.
5. Ibram X. Kendi: Stamped from the Beginning (2016) – the US is still racist. A history of its racist ideas, as shown by Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois and Angela Davis. Racism is largely a rationalization of the status quo.
6. Chris Wallace: Countdown 1945 (2020) – the dropping of the first atom bomb and the 116 days that led up to it. By Chris Wallace, son of Mike Wallace and one of the last journalists at Fox News.
7. Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow (2010) – the mass incarceration of Black people and the weakening of their constitutional rights that grew out of the War on Drugs. Excellent.
8. Alex Berenson: Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns (2020) – yes, the US is still in a pandemic! The Wikipedia says Berenson’s past books have earned him “denunciations from many in the scientific and medical communities”.
9. Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the World and Me (2015) – an open letter to his son by the nation’s foremost Negro whisperer. James Baldwiny but with less rage. Beloved by White Liberals.
10. Glennon Doyle: Untamed (2020) – a White, Oprah-endorsed author finds herself after falling in love with a woman.
Honourable mentions:
12. Michelle Obama: Becoming
13. Bryan Stevenson: Just Mercy
14. Trevor Noah: Born a Crime
15. Richard Rothstein: The Color of Law
16. Beverly Tatum: Why Are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria
18. Austin Channing Brown: I’m Still Here
I highly recommend Michelle Alexander (#7) and Beverly Tatum (#16). They helped me to understand the US as it is. “Stamped” (#5) sounds good too but I have not yet read it.
I disrecommend Michelle Obama (#12). Well-written but Whitewashed.
– Abagond, 2020.
Sources: Amazon, Goodreads.
See also:
- books
- George Floyd
- White Liberals
- Jefferson
- American abolitionists
- William Lloyd Garrison
- W.E.B. Du Bois
- Angela Davis
- James Baldwin
- My advice to White people
548
Abagond 
Brilliant news. Education.
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The Hiroshima book seems interesting, but I beg to ask, what does it have to do with blacks? The Japanese at that time were our enemies, you know, and in some ways were more fanatical than even the Nazis because of the Shintoism cult they used to have. I once read a book about a girl who had survived the blast back in middle school, only to die at the very young age of twelve or so. It was called “Sadako and the Paper Cranes” or something like it.
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@pomare
So your opinion is that massacring non-combatants/civilians is ok?
According to agreements made by 12 nations (First Geneva convention 1863) they discussed the humane treatment of enemy combatants which resulted in the 2nd Geneva Convention (1906) agreement signed by 35 nations and so forth….
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/geneva-convention#:~:text=The%20Geneva%20Convention%20was%20a,non%2Dmilitary%20civilians%20during%20war
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@abagond
In August, the dropping of the bomb is remembered…have you written anything on Black leaderships opinions on these issues?
Came across this article……..
https://theecologist.org/2016/aug/17/why-japan-racism-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-bombings
Racism’ is probably not the first word that springs to mind as we reflect on these terrible events, and their immediate and ongoign aftermath.
But according to a fascinating book by Vincent J. Intondi, published last year and entitled African Americans Against the Bomb, it was the recognition of those bombings as an act of racism that drew African Americans into the nuclear disarmament movement and future wars that kept them there.
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@ Everett F. Pomare
Because this isn’t a reading list devoted to African American topics or racism. It’s a list of the top-selling nonfiction books about any topics at Amazon this week. That’s why a few of the books are different, like the one on Hiroshima or the one about the corinavirus.
What’s amazing is so many of the top 20 best sellers this week are about racism and how to become an anti-racist. The specific topics and the sheer number of purchases both suggest that the majority of these books are being bought by white people who are trying to educate themselves.
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I have most of these on my bookshelf and in my book stacks. I need more book shelves.
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Consider my book: Dying While Black (2006) alsoon amazon.
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Mr Pomare: Racism against Japanese people and other East Asians played an important part in how the USA fought and perceived the war in the Pacific. See WAR WITHOUT MERCY by John Dower. I haven’t read the Chris Wallace book but a book published in this decade about the Pacific Theater that ends without mentioning this context is bad.
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