Race, racism and protest reading list
This list of resources collates just some of the works in our library collections that you might find helpful in learning about and reflecting on race, racism and protest.
About the reading list
The reading list was created by Bath Spa Library in collaboration with the Psychology and Sociology departments. We've included fiction and non-fiction, as well as links to other types of resources including some Box of Broadcast playlists and external sites.
The Students' Union have also shared a number of recommendations including streaming suggestions and Instagram accounts to follow.
We encourage you to talk about this with your friends and family, and please consider sharing recommendations with them so that the conversation can go further.
Bath Spa Library Collections
Ebooks
- Race on the Brain: What Implicit Bias Gets Wrong About the Struggle for Racial Justice - Jonathan Kahn, 2018
- Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge, 2018
- Freshwater - Akwaeke Emezi, 2018
- Sister Outsider - Audre Lorde, 1984
- Ain’t I a Woman - Bell Hooks, 1981
- Becoming - Michelle Obama, 2018
- Back to Black: retelling Black radicalism for the 21st century - Kehinde Andrews, 2018
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - Michelle Alexander, 2010
- Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code - Ruha Benjamin, 2019
- Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain - 2018
- Race and Nature: From Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance - Paul Outka, 2008
- Political Speech as a Weapon: Microaggression in a Changing Racial and Ethnic Environment - Sylvia Gonzalez-Gorman, 2018
- Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race in America - George Yancy, 2017
- Blackness in Britain - Lisa Amanda Palmer and Kehinde Andrews, 2016
- Policing and the Legacy of Lawrence - edited by Nathan Hall, John Grieve and Stephen P. Savage, 2009
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America - Ibram X. Kendi, 2017
- The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B Du Bois, 1903
- Racism and Education. Coincidence or Conspiracy? - David Gillborn, 2008
- The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write - edited by Sabrina Mahfouz, 2017
- We Should All be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2014
- Darwin's Hunch: Science, Race and the Search for Human Origins - Christa Kuljian, 2016
- Don't Touch my Hair - Emma Dabiri, 2019
- Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India - Shashi Tharoor, 2018
- There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack - Paul Gilroy, 2002
- Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement - Angela Y. Davis, 2016
- The Good Immigrant: 21 Writers Explore What It Means to Be Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic in Britain Today - Edited by Nikesh Shukla, 2016
- Becoming - Michelle Obama, 2018
- Diversify: How to Challenge Inequality and Why we Should - June Sarpong, 2019
- Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible - Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinené, 2019
- White Fragility: Why it's so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism - Robin Diangelo, 2019
- The Fire this Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race - edited by Jesmyn Ward
- Brit(ish): on Race, Identity and Belonging - Afua Hirsch, 2018
- How Europe underdeveloped Africa - Rodney Walter, 1972
- Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance - Barack Obama, 1995
- Judith Butler, Race and Education - Charlotte Chadderton, 2018
- How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir - Saeed Jones, 2019
- Thick: and Other Essays - Tressie McMillan Cottom, 2018
- They Can't Kill Us until They Kill Us - Hanif Abdurraqib, 2019
- Redemption Ground: Essays and Adventures -Lorna Goodison, 2018
- Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women that White Feminists Forgot - Mikki Kendall, 2020
- Afropean: Notes from Black Europe - Johnny Pitts, 2019
- Culture and Imperialism - Edward W. Said, 1993
- Futures of Black Radicalism- edited by Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin, 2017
- My Seditious Heart - Arundhati Roy, 2019
- A Mouth Full of Blood: Essays, Speeches and Meditations - Toni Morrison, 2019
- My Name is Why - Lemn Sissay, 2019
- Reframing the Musical : Race, Culture and Identity - Sarah Whitfield, 2019
- Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches - Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer, 2016
Print only
- Natives: race and class in the ruins of empire - Akala, 2019
- So You Want To Talk About Race - Ijeoma Olou, 2018
- Well Read Black Girl: Finding our Stories, Discovering Ourselves - edited by Glory Edim, 2019
- I know why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou, 1984
- How to be an anti-racist - Ibram X. Kendi, 2019
- Safe: on Black British Men Reclaiming Space - Derek Owusu, 2019
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot, 2019
- Between The World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2015
- How to Argue with a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality - Adam Rutherford, 2020
- The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself - Olaudah Equiano, 1789 (also free version on Google Books)
- A Billion Black Anthropocenes Or None - Kathryn Yusoff, 2018
- Critical Race Theory in England - Namita Chakrabarty, Lorna Roberts and John Preston, 2014
- Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela, 1995
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X: With the Assistance of Alex Haley - Malcolm X and Alex Haley, 1965
- Taking up Space: The Black Girl's Manifesto for Change - Chelsea Kwakye and Ọrẹ Ogunbiyi
Ebooks
- Noughts and crosses - Malorie Blackman, 2006
- Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2014
- Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2006
- The Perseverance - Raymond Antrobus, 2018
- Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe, 1958
- Beloved - Toni Morrison, 1997
- An American Marriage - Tayari Jones, 2018
- Their Eyes Were Watching God- Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
- Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison, 1952
- Wade in the Water - Tracy K Smith, 2018
- Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi, 2017
- The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas, 2017
- Kumukanda - Kayo Chingonyi, 2017
- Don’t Call us Dead - Danez Smith, 2018
- Such a Fun Age - Kiley Reid, 2020
- Washington Black - Esi Edugyan, 2018
- Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo, 2019
- Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie, 2017
- Surge - Jay Bernard, 2019
- The Sellout - Paul Beatty, 2016
- The Book of Night Women - Marlon James, 2009
- I Am Not Sidney Poitier - Percival Everett, 2020
- Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin, 1954
- Friday Black - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, 2018
- Sing, Unburied, Sing - Jesmyn Ward, 2017
- There There - Tommy Orange, 2018
- The Terrible - Yrsa Daley-Ward, 2018
Print only
- Red at the Bone - Jacqueline Woodson, 2020
- Queenie - Candice Carty-Williams, 2019
- The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead, 2017
- That Reminds Me - Derek Owusu, 2019
- White Teeth - Zadie Smith, 2001
- The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney - Okechukwu Nzelu, 2019
Ebooks
- No One is Too Small to Make a Difference - Greta Thurnberg, 2019
- Race and riots in Thatcher's Britain - Simon Peplow, 2019
- Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest - Zeynep Tufekci, 2017
- Resister: A Story of Protest and Prison During the Vietnam War - Bruce Dancis, 2014
- Posters for Change: Tear, Paste, Protest - Avram Finkelstein, 2018
- Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age - Manuel Castells, 2015
- This is Not a Drill: the Extinction Rebellion Handbook - edited by Clare Farrell, 2019
- How to resist: turn protest to power - Matthew Bolton, 2017
- When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir - Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele, 2018
Print only
- Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist - Sunil Yapa, 2016
- Artivism - Daniela Poch and Arcadi Poch, 2018
Journals
- The Journal Race, Ethnicity and Education
- SAGE Resources on Structural Racism and Police Violence
- Springer Resources on Black Lives Matter
Journal articles
- Arday, J. (2018). Dismantling power and privilege through reflexivity: Negotiating normative Whiteness, the Eurocentric curriculum and racial micro-aggressions within the Academy. Whiteness and Education 3(2): 141-161.
- Arday, J. (2018). Understanding mental health: What are the issues for black and ethnic minority students at University?. Social Sciences 7(10): 196.
- Arday, J. (2018). Understanding race and educational leadership in higher education: Exploring the Black and ethnic minority (BME) experience. Management in Education 32(4): 192-200.
- Bonilla-Silva, E. (2012) The invisible weight of whiteness: the racial grammar of everyday life in contemporary America. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35(2): 173-194.
- Chadderton, C. (2012) Problematising the role of the white researcher in social justice research. Ethnography and Education 7:3, pp. 363-380.
- Chadderton, C. & Wischmann, A. (2014) Racialised norms in apprenticeship systems in England and Germany, Journal of Vocational Education & Training 66:3, pp.330-347.
- Chadderton, C. and Edmonds, C. (2015) Refugees and access to vocational education and training across Europe: a case of protection of white privilege? Journal of Vocational Education and Training 67:2, pp. 136-152.
- Garner, S. (2006) The uses of whiteness: what sociologists working on Europe can draw from US research on whiteness, Sociology, 40: 257-75.
- Jones, J. M., & Dovidio, J. F. (2018). Change, challenge, and prospects for a diversity paradigm in social psychology. Social Issues and Policy Review, 12(1), 7-56.
- Kraus, M. W., & Torrez, B. (2020). A psychology of power that is embedded in societal structures. Current opinion in psychology, 33, 86-90.
- Phillips, L. T., & Lowery, B. S. (2018). Herd invisibility: The psychology of racial privilege. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 156-162.
- Richeson, J. A., & Sommers, S. R. (2016). Toward a social psychology of race and race relations for the twenty-first century. Annual review of psychology, 67, 439-463.
- Salter, P. S., Adams, G., & Perez, M. J. (2018). Racism in the structure of everyday worlds: A cultural-psychological perspective. Current directions in psychological science, 27(3), 150-155.
- Singh, G. (2018) Post-racial pedagogy – challenges and possibilities, Race Ethnicity and Education, 21:4, 555-563
- Trawalter, S., Bart-Plange, D. J., & Hoffman, K. M. (2020). A socioecological psychology of racism: making structures and history more visible. Current opinion in psychology, 32, 47-51.
- Wallace, S., Nazroo, J., & Bécares, L. (2016). Cumulative effect of racial discrimination on the mental health of ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom. American Journal of Public Health, 106(7), 1294-1300.
- Williams, M. T. (2019). Adverse racial climates in academia: Conceptualization, interventions, and call to action. New ideas in Psychology, 55, 58-67.
Box of Broadcast playlists and episodes
You may need to first sign in to Box of Broadcasts.
Databases
- Two open-access databases exploring slavery: Runaways and Slave Voyages
- Drama Online Aurora Metro Books Collection
- Black Cultural Archives
- The African and Asian Visual Arts Archive
External resources
- Reni Eddo-Lodge’s podcast
- The Guardian Podcast ‘How the Bristol Bus Boycott Changed UK Civil Rights’
- A Video Examining Racism Through a Mental Health Lens (TW: Racist language and disturbing content)
- Brunel University Protest Through Poetry Art Slam
- ‘Top 10 Books to Read’ by British student YouTuber ‘Empowered by Vee’
- Violet Vincent has put together a collation of all the resources floating around for white people right now on instagram. It is being constantly updated. She is an arts student upset with the amount of white silence amongst her peers during this crisis.
- Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes Experiment, Jane Elliot
- Black Gals Livin' podcast
- Say Your Mind by Kelechi Okafor
- In Good Company is a podcast for working women, hosted by Women Who founder Otegha Uwagba.
- A Reflection on the Toppling of the Colston statue, by a Bristol Resident
- The Truth about Racism in the UK (Creative Review article)
- 10 Ways White People Can Make Black Lives Matter
- White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh
- A statistical analysis linking violence to injustice and historical slavery
- Effective Decolonisation in Higher Education
- The Guardian’s ‘Black History Timeline'
- Cognitive Reserve and Racial Privilege in STEM: “Black and Brown students and their intersecting identities carry both an invisible and visible workload that many of our cis, white and white passing peers do not share.
- Diversity is a Dangerous Set-up: “Promoting diversity rather than substantive structural change will not create equal opportunity and equal outcomes.”
- Intersectionality as a Blueprint for Postcolonial Scientific Community Building
- PNAS article: Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex. “In the U.S., African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people.”
- Violent protests are not the story. Police violence is. “The protests will eventually end. But state-sanctioned violence against black Americans won’t”
- Remember, No One Is Coming to Save Us. “Eventually doctors will develop a coronavirus vaccine, but black people will continue to wait for a cure for racism.”
- No More Money for the Police: “Redirect it to emergency response programs that don’t kill black people.
- Resistance Reading List
- Anti Racism Resources For All Ages
- A List of Resources for Supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement (in the UK)
- How to be an anti-racist and white ally - a guide collated by the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team at the University of Bath.
- Antiracism resources and readings