OVERVIEW
Neither the nationwide discussion of White Fragility and privilege nor the fierce anger and pain expressed by Black people can be divorced from the historical context of race in America.
This book is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand racism in our country. This book is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the origins of privilege and fragility. And this book is a must read for all of us as we see to go beyond our current state to that of active anti-racism. These are the classic texts that have inspired the current generation of Black leaders today as well as those seeking to become antiracist.
EXCERPT
"In his seminal book, The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois described what he called the "double consciousness" of being black in America. A black person," Du Bois wrote, always "ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings." This dialectic of duality, which in Du Bois' view, could never resolve to a satisfactory synthesis but rather ineluctably remained in constant tension, can be used to shed a much-needed light into the racial conflict and pain inflicting contemporary America today. For in order to talk about and understand modern discussions about racism, antiracism, black lives matter, we need to recognize that there is not a single grand narrative strands that flows though American history, but rather at, least two.
I recall growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1980's where compulsory history classes included both American history as well as Oklahoma history. I distinctly recall a single paragraph in my Oklahoma history textbook about the Tulsa race riots. Even the nomenclature was telling. "Race riots." And that is what I understood this event to be ... lawlessness and looting due to race. That was, after all, history. It was only years later during my studies at Harvard that I found myself--after attending a passionate lectures on Black American history by Cornel West--wrestling with the nature of my own world view. This Weltanschauung that I had accepted unquestioned as how the world is ... was this Truth? And if not, what about Justice, Equality, Freedom, Merit? Was blackness and whiteness simply an abstract theoretical question of difference? Or was it a relationship of dominance that was historically embedded and embodied in the consciousness of our country? "
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Twelve Years A Slave by Solomon Northup
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Narrative of Sojourner Truth
The Narrative of the Life of An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
The Negro Problem by Booker T. Washington, et al.
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
A More Perfect Union by Barack Obama
On the 50th Anniversary of "Bloody Sunday": The March from Selma by Barack Obama
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is an anthology of bestselling writings and classical texts on the subject of race in America. It contains the most important works by the leading authors and scholars on the black experience and is essential reading and companion to any discussion today on race, racism, white fragility and black lives matter.
