To aid you in your anti-racism journey, the Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren Anti-Racism Working Group has purchased some books, tools to help all ages learn and grow. Some are new titles, some are classics. Some are banned in other places, but not here. These are available to borrow and are located in the Memorial Lobby. You can now sign them out. More will be purchased as funds become available, so this list will grow. We welcome your suggestions and/or donations.

All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis

edited by Anyana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson

Provocative and illuminating writings from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward.

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We Seek Think and Do

by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

You don’t have to be racist to be biased. Unconscious bias can be at work without our realizing it. This book addresses how racial bias is not the fault of or restricted to a few “bad apples,” but is present at all levels of society, in media, education, and business. The good news is that we are not hopelessly doomed by our innate prejudices and that racial bias is a human problem—one that all people can play a role in solving.

Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People

by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald

We all carry the hidden biases from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality. This book provides a way to test our own implicit biases using the online Implicit Bias Test and invites us to understand our own minds and, in the process, be fairer to those around us.

Dear White Peacemakers: Dismantling Racism with Grit and Grace

by Osheta Moore

Rooted in the life ministry and teachings of Jesus, this book is a challenging call to transform white shame, fragility, saviorism, and privilege in order to work together to build the Beloved Community as anti-racism peacemakers.

Faithful Anti-Racism: Moving Past Talk to Systemic Change

by Christina Barland Edmondson and Chad Brennan

This book takes confidence from the truth that Christ has overcome the world, including racism, and offers clear analysis and interventions to challenge its power. It represents a comprehensive study on Christians and race and invites readers to put this data to immediate practical use, applying it to their own specific context.

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

Take an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history and ourselves.

How to be an Antiracist

by Abram X. Kendi

This book takes readers through a ​widening circle of antiracist ideas—from ​the most basic concepts to visionary ​possibilities—that will help readers see all ​forms of racism clearly, understand their ​poisonous consequences and work to ​oppose them in our systems and in ​ourselves.

How to Raise an Antiracist

by Abram X. Kendi

How do we talk to our children about racism? How are racist structures impacting children? How can we inspire our children to avoid our mistakes to be better, to make the world better? Teaching students about the myth of race and the reality of racism provides a protective education in our diverse and unequal worlds and safeguards all children from the harms of racism and preserves their innocence and joy.

Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America

by Jennifer Harvey

Families and communities committed to equity and justice will find ways to equip children to be active and able participants in our racially diverse yet tension-filled society.

Say It Out Loud: On Race, Law, History, and Culture

by Randall Kennedy

In this book of twenty-nine provocative essays by a Harvard Law School professor, explores key social justice issues of our time. The author is mindful of complexity, ambivalence, and paradox, and is always stirring and enlightening.

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and ​You

by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

Racist ideas are woven into the fabric of ​this country, and the first step to building ​an antiracist America is acknowledging ​America’s racist past and present. This ​book takes you on that journey, showing ​how racist ideas started and were spread, ​and how they can be discredited.

The 1619 Project: A New Origin ​Story

created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The ​New York Times Magazine

Nineteen essays and thirty-six poems and ​works of fiction explore the legacy of ​slavery in present-day America that ​illuminate key moments of struggle and ​resistance. It reveals long-glossed-over ​truths around our nation’s founding and ​the way that the legacy of slavery did not ​end with emancipation but continues to ​shape modern American life.

The Color of Compromise: The ​Truth about the American ​Church’s Complicity in Racism

by Jemar Tisby

This historical narrative highlights the ​obvious ways people of faith have ​actively worked against racial justice, as ​well as the complicit silence of racial ​moderates. It provides an in-depth ​diagnosis for a racially divided American ​church and suggests ways to foster a ​more equitable and inclusive environment ​among God’s people.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten ​History of How our Government ​Segregated America

by Richard Rothstein

Our cities became divided through ​federal, state, and local governments ​systematically imposing residential ​segregation. Police and prosecutors ​brutally upheld these standards, and such ​policies still influence tragedies in places ​like Ferguson and Baltimore. This book ​documents how it happened and forces ​us to face the obligation to remedy our ​unconstitutional past.

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs ​Everyone and How We Can ​Prosper Together

by Heather McGhee

Analyzing how we arrived here—divided ​and self-destroyed, materially rich but ​spiritually starved and vastly unequal—this ​book marshals economic and sociological ​research into an irrefutable story of ​racism’s costs. But, at the heart of the ​book are the humble stories of people ​yearning to be part of a better America, ​including white supremacy’s collateral ​victims: white people themselves.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The ​Epic Story of America’s Great ​Migration

by Isabel Wilkerson

This is the story of the decades-long ​migration of black citizens who fled the ​South for northern and western cities in ​search of a better life from 1915 to 1970. It ​is told through the stories of three unique ​individuals — how they made their ​exhausting cross-country trips by car and ​train and their new lives in colonies that ​grew into ghettos, as well as how they ​changed their new cities with their culture, ​discipline, drive and hard work.

Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the ​Way the Church views Racism

by Drew G. I. Hart

This challenging book places police ​brutality, mass incarceration, anti-black ​stereotypes, poverty, and everyday acts ​of racism within the larger framework of ​white supremacy and offers concrete ​practices for churches that seek solidarity ​with the oppressed and are committed to ​racial justice.

Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, ​Dehumanizing legacy of the ​Doctrine of Discovery

by March Charles and Soong-Chan Rah

In the fifteenth century, official church ​edicts gave Christian explorers the right ​to claim territories they “discovered.” It is ​called the Doctrine of Discovery. This was ​institutionalized as an implicit national ​framework that justifies American ​triumphalism, white supremacy and ​ongoing injustices. The result is that the ​dominant culture idealizes a history of ​discovery, opportunity, expansion and ​equality, while minority communities have ​been traumatized by colonization, slavery, ​segregation and dehumanization. Healing ​begins when deeply entrenched beliefs ​are unsettled.

We Bear it in Tears: Stories from ​Nigeria

Interviews by Carol Mason and ​Photographs by Donna Parcell

The Church of the Brethren in Nigeria ​(Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria) Has ​suffered untold violence from the terrorist ​attacks of Boko Haram. Thousands have ​been abducted or killed and countless ​others have been displaced. Church ​buildings have been looted, burned and ​destroyed. This book gives voice to ​women, men, and children who have ​suffered from this crisis. By hearing their ​stories, we share their burden of tears. By ​seeing their faces we witness an enduring ​faith and a commitment to nonviolence. ​These stories call us to pray and work for ​a sustainable peace in solidarity with our ​sisters and brothers in Nigeria.

White Kids: Growing Up With ​Privilege in a Racially Divided ​America

by Margaret A. Hagerman

Based on two years of research involving ​in-depth interviews—from racially ​segregated to meaningfully integrated ​and from politically progressive to ​conservative—this book documents key ​differences in the outcomes of white racial ​socialization across families and the ​extent to which white families, even those ​with anti-racist intentions, reproduce and ​reinforce the forms of inequality they say ​they reject.

Who Will Be a Witness? Igniting ​Activism for God’s Justice, Love, ​and Deliverance

by Drew G. I. Hart

This book provides incisive insights into ​scripture and history, along with ​illuminating personal stories, to help us ​identify how the witness of the church has ​become mangled by Christendom, white ​supremacy and religious nationalism and ​provides a wide range of options for ​congregations seeking to give witness to ​Jesus’ ethic of love for and solidarity with ​the vulnerable.

Past and current publications from American Civil Liberties ​Union and Southern Poverty Law Center.

FOR TEENS AND ADULTS:

The Door of No Return

by Kwame Alexander

This fictional story is an epic and ​unforgettable tale of adventure, family, ​betrayal, and bravery.