African American Studies

Berkeley linguistics professor John McWhorter, born at the dawn of the post-Civil Rights era, spent years trying to make sense of this question. Now he dares to say the unsayable: racism's ugliest legacy is the disease of defeatism that has infected...

Now in paperback, Claudia Rankine's "skyscraper in the literature on racism" (Christian Science Monitor) In Just Us, Claudia Rankine invites us into a necessary conversation about Whiteness in America. What would it take for us to breach the silence,...

Mississippi, the poorest state in the U.S. with the highest percentage of Black people, a history of vicious racial terror and concurrent Black resistance is the backdrop and context for the drama captured in the collection of essays that is Jackson...

A fresh argument for rioting and looting as our most powerful tools for dismantling white supremacy.Looting -- a crowd of people publicly, openly, and directly seizing goods -- is one of the more extreme actions that can take place in the midst of social...

This authoritative debunking of racist claims that masquerade as "genetics" is a timely weapon against the misuse of science to justify bigotry--now in paperback Race is not a biological reality. Racism thrives on our not knowing this. In fact, racist...

Instant #1 New York Times bestseller Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks--those that are honest about the...

African-American women face unique challenges during pregnancy. Here is a they can turn to for medical information, health advice, and emotional support during this exhilarating, and sometimes anxious, time. Dr. Hilda Hutcherson, an esteemed Ob-Gyn,...

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here, declared Martin Luther King, Jr. He had come to that city of racist terror convinced that massive protest could topple Jim Crow. But the insurgency faltered. To revive it, King made a sacrificial act on Good...

2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award WinnerFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award From an award-winning historian comes a dazzling history of the birth of cultural anthropology and the adventurous scientists who pioneered it--a sweeping chronicle...

A People Pick!"One of the year's must-reads." -ELLE"[A] provocative, heart-breaking, and frequently hilarious collection." -GLAMOUR"Essential, vital, and urgent." -HARPER'S BAZAARIn the vein of Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist and Issa Rae's The Misadventures...

A bold and impassioned meditation on injustice in our country that punctures the illusion of a postracial America and reveals it as a place where authoritarianism looms large. Whether the issues are protest, labor, patriotism, or class division, it is...

Although blacks living within America are still haunted by the same malevolent plights their ancestors sparred with and could not elude, Jermaine Jones refuses to agree they are all grounds for blacks, today, to simply surrender. Rather than opting for...