History of race and privilege: Faculty suggest readings for a better understanding
“I can’t breathe.”
Those are the words that George Floyd uttered as a police officer pinned him down by the neck with his knee for almost nine minutes. He was pronounced dead not long thereafter. The incident was a tipping point, galvanizing citizens who filled streets to protest in cities across the United States, and around the world, calling for an end to violence against African Americans, social justice and an end to systemic racism.
Floyd’s words echoed those of Eric Garner, another African American man who was killed when a police officer held him in a chokehold in 2014. More recently Tyre Nichols, also unarmed, was beaten to death by Memphis, Tennessee, police during a traffic stop.
As we try to make sense of the violence, we’ve asked USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences faculty to share their recommendations for books and other readings that can provide insight to the roots of racism and privilege in America, and offer suggestions for creating lasting change.
“The beautiful thing about studying history is that examining the past helps us to understand the world that we live in today — a world shaped entirely by racial constructs, ideologies and hierarchies in the past as well as in the present,” explains Alaina Morgan, assistant professor of history.
To fail to investigate the moments when race — something that seems enduring, everlasting and unchangeable — came into existence and was codified into our social customs, laws and policies, is to give ourselves a disadvantage in the fight against racial inequality, she says.
Here, Morgan and other members of our faculty offer their reading suggestions. Class is in session.
Sherman Jackson, King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture and professor of religion and American studies and ethnicity, studies Islam in America. Jackson’s research looks at issues of race, immigration, liberalism, democracy, religion in the modern world, pluralism, constitutionalism, Muslim radicalism and related areas of inquiry.
The Invention of the White Race (Verso, 1994) by Theodore W. Allen
“Allen’s work is valuable for doing two things, though it does much more. First, it makes clear that white race is not some ‘natural’ category but instead was invented with socio-political and economic goals in mind. Second, it makes it clear that poor, working class whites are routinely recruited, physically and mentally, as foot soldiers in the army of white supremacy. They are the ones who learn instinctively the importance of investing in and protecting the ‘normativeness’ of the white gaze and protecting it from having to compete with any other perspective on life.”
White by Law: The Legal Construct of Race (NYU Press, 1996) by Ian Haney López
“Haney Lopez’s work is important because it shows how American law and the American state and the ‘carrot’ of whiteness they hold out as a possibility to everyone who comes to this country other than Blacks contributes to staying power of white supremacy as an instrument of domestic empire.”
Elaine Bell Kaplan, associate professor of sociology. Kaplan analyzes and researches structural conditions that restrict opportunities for racial and ethnic groups and youth.
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation Books, 2016) by Ibram X. Kendi
“In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their tremendous power throughout American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation’s racial inequities.”
“We Live in the Shadow”: Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories through Photographs (Temple University Press, 2013) by Elaine Bell Kaplan
“This book explores inner-city life from the perspectives of 54 Black and Latino kids who live in inner-city Los Angeles. Over half of these students also attend the Neighborhood Academic Initiative Program (NAI) co-sponsored by the University of Southern California. The objective of this research is to understand how inner-city youth make decisions to help them cope with family life, peer relations and academic achievement while handling the negative options that can cause poverty, gang involvement and drug abuse a life sentence. The ethnographic study of Los Angeles inner-city adolescents will deepen and enrich current theory by making explicit the complexities surrounding the lives of inner-city minority teenagers.”
Lanita Jacobs, associate professor of American studies and ethnicity and anthropology. Jacobs is a linguistic anthropologist who studies African American women’s hair care, African American humor, and race and disability.
Beloved (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987) by Toni Morrison
“When I have been treated as less than human and unworthy of love, I remember what Toni Morrison said, know that I am not alone, and that there is something beautiful indeed about my and others’ Black flesh.”
Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation (North Atlantic Books, 2016) by Lama Rod Owens
“Lama Rod’s appreciation for race as a social construct, coupled with his fierce and unapologetic celebration of Blackness, is just so damn beautiful to me.”
The Way of Transition: Embracing Life’s Most Difficult Moments (Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2001) by William Bridges
“During this time of righteous protest and civil unrest are invitations to let go of what has never served us; I appreciate Bridges’ counsel because he invites each of us to look around, and ask ourselves, what is it time to let go of? Our answers and actions can lead to substantial personal and communal transition: real transformation.”
When Breathe Becomes Air (Random House, 2016) by Paul Kalanithi
“The late Dr. Kalanithi’s memoir breathed life into me when, in times of despair, I felt I could not breathe. When I think about all of the front-line workers in hospitals, nursing homes and other care-taking facilities risking their lives to care for their patients in this pandemic, I celebrate that they know and practice — as best they can — some of what Dr. Kalanithi knew and lived.”
Oneka LaBennett, associate professor of American studies and ethnicity. LaBennett is an anthropologist whose writing and research has focused on Black youth culture, immigration, popular culture and Black feminism.
Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century (Vol. 6) (University of California Press, 2018) by Barbara Ransby
“Written by a preeminent historian and experienced activist, Making All Black Lives Matter gets beyond the common retort, “Don’t all lives matter?” to provide the history and significance of the Black Lives Matter movement. Ransby’s book provides critical insight into the network of young women of color and queer folks who founded Black Lives Matter. It helps readers understand the movement’s roots in Black feminism and its deep commitment to challenging systemic racism within and beyond police violence.”
Breathe: A Letter to My Sons (Beacon Press, 2019) by Imani Perry
“The prolific African American studies professor Imani Perry departs from academic writing in this powerful, personal meditation on what it means to be a Black mother of sons. This intimate and passionate work speaks not only to parents struggling to raise children in a society characterized by racial violence, but also to everyone who cares about envisioning a world in which all youth can be embraced in their full humanity.”
Alaina Morgan, assistant professor of history. Morgan is a historian of race and religion in the United States and the greater Americas. She teaches classes on history of Islam in the Americas; race, mass incarceration, and the carceral state; and race in America.
“The Case for Reparations“ (The Atlantic, June 2014) by Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Ta-Nehisi Coates lays out in detail a case for a recognition and a righting of the continuing legacy of the transatlantic slave trade and the echoes of inequality stemming from the persistence of structural racism. By making a powerful argument for both a moral and a financial accounting for the wrongs against the descendants of the enslaved, Coates provides readers with a way of making sense of a topic that has been gaining ground in the media and in the halls of Congress.”
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010) by Michelle Alexander
“In my “Race and the Carceral State” seminar, I make The New Jim Crow required reading, and in future years I will make sure to assign it as one of the first readings that we do in class. Why? Because of the painstaking research, reference to legal cases and statistics that Alexander provides in making her argument that the legacy of Jim Crow lives through the inequalities baked into the American criminal justice system. Alexander is the perfect overview for understanding how Blackness is criminalized, why Black people are still angry, and how our structures and systems have not worked to facilitate racial equality since the end of slavery. As my students look toward careers and toward eventually changing the world, I find that this is often described as both eye-opening and life changing.”
[Story updated Feb. 13, 2023]