So even though the news is deeply troubling, I am finding people like Masha Gessen, Ta-Nehis Coats, and Ibram X. Kendi helpful. Gessen’s book apparently is an expansion of an article she wrote in 2016 right after the election. She mentions that she was described by the NYT in unfavorable terms due to her understandings (which I think are spot on).

Anti-Racist Reading Lists: What Are They For?

I was disappointed in this article. I was hoping the author would address the fact that people don’t read books, when in fact I’m pretty sure he hasn’t read all the book titles he mentions. Sheesh. But despite this article I love reading lists.

Here’s a couple of reading lists that showed up in my email inbox this morning. Woohoo!

The Brew’s Black Lives Matter Syllabus

Column: 12 novels from black voices to read now in light of George Floyd Protests

I borrowed my daughter’s copy of How To Be An  Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. I gave it to her for her birthday, but it was my only copy. It was one of a few books in pristine shape that I owned that I wanted her to have. I have ordered my own copy. I know Kendi most from his excellent, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. I think it’s an important read if you are interested in American history.

FACTOID “The title …. comes from a speech that Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis gave on the US Senate on April 12, 1860. This future president of the Confederacy objected to a bill funding Black education in Washington, DC ‘This government was not founded by negroes nor for negroes,’ but ‘by white men for white men,’ Davis lectured his colleagues. The bill was based on the false notion of racial equality, he declared. The ‘inequality of the white and black races’ was ‘stamped from the beginning.’ ” p. 3

Ta-Nehisi Coates on George Floyd, police protests, and hope

I prefer the original title of this podcast: “Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is Hopeful.” I haven’t read the transcript but have listened to it.

“. People forget that day that King got stoned in Cicero. They pretend that when King was leading these movements against Jim Crow, he was somehow the most popular man in the country. He was hated. He was hated by white people all through the country. He was hated at the very highest levels of law enforcement in this country.” Ta-Nehisi Coates

I can remember that Sheryl Hayes, my Dad’s assistant minister in Flint, was reading Martin Luther King. This was probably just before King was killed. At that time, it was unpopular to be following King.

What Defund the Police Actually Means – Rolling Stone