10 books about social justice

From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a bracingly original approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society--and in ourselves. "The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it--and then dismantle it." Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America--but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it. In this book, Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science, bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. How to Be an Antiracist is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society. Advance praise for How to Be an Antiracist "This latest from the National Book Award-winning author is no guidebook to getting woke. . . . Rather, it is a combination of memoir and extension of . . . Kendi's towering Stamped From the Beginning that leads readers through a taxonomy of racist thought to anti-racist action. . . . Never wavering . . . Kendi methodically examines racism through numerous lenses: power, biology, ethnicity, body, culture, and so forth. . . . If Kendi is justifiably hard on America, he's just as hard on himself. . . . This unsparing honesty helps readers, both white and people of color, navigate this difficult intellectual territory. Not an easy read but an essential one."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Ibram Kendi is today's visionary in the enduring struggle for racial justice. In this personal and revelatory new work, he yet again holds up a transformative lens, challenging both mainstream and antiracist orthodoxy. He illuminates the foundations of racism in revolutionary new ways, and I am consistently challenged and inspired by his analysis. How to Be an Antiracist offers us a necessary and critical way forward."--Robin DiAngelo, New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility

Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Best Nonfiction

Explores counterproductive reactions white people have when discussing racism that serve to protect their positions and maintain racial inequality.

James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the Civil Rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race. In the era of Trump, what can we learn from his struggle? "Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again." --James Baldwin We live, according to Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., in the after times, when the promise of Black Lives Matter and the attempt to achieve a new America were challenged by the election of Donald Trump, a racist president whose victory represents yet another failure of America to face the lies it tells itself about race. We have been here before: For James Baldwin, the after times came in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, when a similar attempt to compel a national confrontation with the truth was answered with the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In these years, spanning from the publication of The Fire Next Time in 1963 to that of No Name in the Street in 1972, Baldwin was transformed into a more overtly political writer, a change that came at great professional and personal cost. But from that journey, Baldwin emerged with a sense of renewed purpose about the necessity of pushing forward in the face of disillusionment and despair. In the story of Baldwin's crucible, Glaude suggests, we can find hope and guidance through our own after times, this Trumpian era of shattered promises and white retrenchment. Mixing biography--drawn partially from newly uncovered interviews--with history, memoir, and trenchant analysis of our current moment, Begin Again is Glaude's attempt, following Baldwin, to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.

An urgent exposé of the mental health crisis in our courts, jails, and prisons America has made mental illness a crime. Jails in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago each house more people with mental illnesses than any hospital. As many as half of all people in America's jails and prisons have a psychiatric disorder. One in four fatal police shootings involves a person with such disorders. In this revelatory book, journalist Alisa Roth goes deep inside the criminal justice system to show how and why it has become a warehouse where inmates are denied proper treatment, abused, and punished in ways that make them sicker. Through intimate stories of people in the system and those trying to fix it, Roth reveals the hidden forces behind this crisis and suggests how a fairer and more humane approach might look. Insane is a galvanizing wake-up call for criminal justice reformers and anyone concerned about the plight of our most vulnerable.

From a leading philosopher, an urgent and eye-opening book that makes the case that safeguarding humanity from extinction is the central challenge of our time. From nuclear war and climate change to AI and synthetic biology, the risk of human extinction during this century is frighteningly high. Reducing these risks should be the top global priority-but it isn't. Bringing together key scientific evidence and insight from the humanities, Toby Ord, University of Oxford professor and advisor to the World Bank, U.S. National Security Council, and other global organizations, provides novel tools and concrete strategies for making the largest possible difference in saving our species. The moral argument is simple: society has begun to value diversity across a wide array of genders, races, religions, and sexual orientations, and the Western world is beginning to see the injustice of devaluing those who live in distant countries as well. The next step is to recognize the equality of people distant from us in time-the millions of future generations that should follow our own. The value of many trillions of lives, billions of years of civilization, and untold heights of flourishing and achievement dramatically increases the stakes of existential risks. To destroy such a future would break the partnership across the generations that has raised the human project up to its current heights; it would betray the collective virtues of our civilization; and it might even eliminate the only part of the universe that will ever be capable of appreciating its wonders. Despite the daunting stakes we face, The Precipice resists doom and gloom: Ord's style and message are optimistic, and the book is animated by an inspiring vision of our vast potential.

"The church has always taught certain undeniable truths that can and should affect our society. But over the years, these teachings have been distorted, misunderstood, and forgotten. With the help of fourteen saints, it's time we reclaim Catholic social teaching and rediscover it through the lives of those who best lived it out. Follow in the saints' footsteps, learn from their example, and become the spark of authentic social justice that sets the world on fire." -- http://brandonvogt.com/saints-and-social-justice/, viewed July 2, 201

Illustrations and easy-to-read, rhyming text encourage the reader to speak up about everything from their own name being mispronounced to someone bring a weapon to school. Includes author's note about real people who have found their voices, when to speak up, and how to express oneself without speaking.