this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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Hi! I am a member of a race education group in my school (11 to 18) and we are creating a reading list for the library. Our library isn't very diverse right now (most books are written by white people about the West) and we need books on race education (privilege, discrimination, etc.) and on the history (precolonial, colonial and postcolonial, could be on neocolonialism too) and culture of underrepresented people.

Please keep in mind that these books should be acceptable by the school and approachable by students who would be unlikely to accept or read very progressive material, so themes that strongly (just strongly) contradict Western narratives should be avoided.

For example, a book on the colonisation of Palestine that exposes the oppressive nature of Zionism is mostly fine, but a book presenting Hamas as a liberation group would not be accepted (and actually illegal in my country).

You can reply with books or other reading lists that we could then review and add. I'll finish this post with some examples of books on the reading list (keep in mind that it was for Black History Month, so all of the examples are on black people):

African Empires by Lyndon, Dan
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation In America by Carmichael, Stokely; Hamilton, Charles V
I Heard What You Said by Boakye, Jeffrey
The Assassination of Lumumba by Witte, Ludo de.
White privilege: the myth of a post-racial society by Bhopal, Kalwant

Thanks in advance!

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[–] temp_acc@hexbear.net 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah, most of our books are on very recent topics and we could use some books from older times. Some people have the tendency to completely shun older media for aspects that have become unacceptable (eg. revolutionaries with bigoted views of LGBTQ+ people) and while those books should probably not be the main focus, they should still be included as a way to educate ourselves on history, reflect on our mistakes and learn to do better!

And being able to not only appreciate but also critique an author and their works for their outdated ways of thinking is a great way to get people to critically think about race.