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5 Must Read Books on Race & Inclusion for Teachers

5 must-read books on race & inclusion for teachers, to help support and challenge educators at the start of the school year, we asked teachers college faculty members to share their recommendations of thoughtful, anti-racist works to inspire you professionally and beyond.

Mensah recommends  The Spirit of Our Work: Black Women Teachers (Re)Member by Dr. Cynthia B. Dilliard. (Photos: TC Archives, Penguin Random House)

On the Bookshelf: The Spirit of Our Work: Black Women Teachers (Re)Member by Dr. Cynthia B. Dilliard ( Penguin Random House )

Recommended By:   Felicia Mensah , Professor of  Science and Education

Why: For Mensah, Dillard’s work embodies the “heart and spirit of Black teachers,” as well as “the spiritual center of who Black teachers are and the legacy we carry.”

“This book will open your mind to trust in the power of our resilience and the tenacity of our spirit to remember and live our practice from positions of power and strength,” says Mensah, whose scholarship  often bridges science teacher education and multicultural inclusion.

“Reading this book brings life to the amazing work of teaching and the history that upholds us,” says Mensah, co-editor of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. “The stories shared in the book give voice to my stories, and the reason for teaching that empowers and transforms the lives of our students.”

Bettina L. Love’s  We Want to do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom , recommended by Sealey-Ruiz. (Photos: Penguin Random House, TC Archives) 

On the Bookshelf: We Want to do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love ( Penguin Random House )

Recommended By:   Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz , Associate Professor of  English Education

Why: “An honest, well-researched, and carefully crafted book” in the words of Sealey-Ruiz, fellow TC faculty member Love “offers a wonderful balance between historical and present-day educational experiences of children in K-12 public schools, and the author's educational experiences.”

Sealey-Ruiz – a scholar and  poet whose work focuses on culturally relevant pedagogy, racial literacy, and identity – also praises Love’s book for it’s exploration of “implications and possibilities for policy changes that are needed to turn around our K-12 schools.”

Bettina L. Love recommends  Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework by Gholdy Muhammad (Photos: TC Archives, Scholastic) 

On the Bookshelf: Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework by Gholdy Muhammad ( Scholastic )

Recommended By:   Bettina L. Love , William F. Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education

Why: “When I first read Cultivating Genius , I was in awe of how Muhammad brings diverse texts and literacies into K-12 classrooms regardless of the content area,” explains Love, who joins TC this fall from the University of Georgia and served as the College’s annual Tisch lecturer in the spring.

“The teaching methods discussed in this book help teachers connect students' learning to their lives in ways that address racism, power, and inequities while advancing who they are as readers.”

The Young Lords: A Radical History by Johanna Fernández, recommended by Erickson. (Photos: The University of North Carolina Press, Juliana Sohn) 

On the Bookshelf: The Young Lords: A Radical History by Johanna Fernández ( The University of North Carolina Press )

Recommended By:   Ansley Erickson , Associate Professor of  History and Education Policy

Why: “Fernandez gives us a compelling portrait of the political vision and organizing power of this group of young Puerto Rican activists in the 1960s and 1970s. But she makes a special contribution for educators: she helps us see how schooling shapes students’ politics, how activists made spaces to learn together and educate each other, and how Puerto Rican youth understood – better than city officials – what children need to thrive in school,” explains Erickson, editor of Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community .

“You can’t read this book without recognizing how deeply and consistently Puerto Rican communities – like Black communities as well – have fought for the education they deserve,” says Erickson. “Every teacher needs to sit with that history as they enter the classroom this fall.”

Arora recommends  Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini (Photos: TC Archives, Penguin Random House) 

On the Bookshelf: Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini ( Penguin Random House )

Recommended By:   Prerna Arora , Assistant Professor of  School Psychology

Why: An interrogation of the disturbing persistence of “race as a biological concept in science,” Arora says author Angela Saini “does a commendable job of presenting scientific research in an approachable manner and encourages us to question what we are teaching and learning in our classrooms.”

For Arora, whose scholarship  focuses on mental health support and access for historically underserved youth and adolescents, Superior “presents a critical review of the uncomfortable reality of the study of (the assessment of) intelligence, both past and present – an area which is not sufficiently reflected upon.”

Tags: Diversity Diversity Race Teacher Preparation

Published Thursday, Aug 25, 2022

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31 Books About Racism and Race in America to Read for Black History Month

By Christine Pride

Sales of books about racism, the Black experience in America , and white supremacy exploded in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the racial reckoning of summer 2020. It seemed a bit like we were going to try to read and write ourselves out of racism. Was that realistic? Is literature a cure-all for our social ills? Well, no. It’s worth remembering that our reading choices, no matter how noble and expansive they may be, are not a substitute for anti-racism work ; which is, ultimately, not a personal, private self-improvement journey, but one that requires engagement and action. That’s the “work” part.

That said, as someone who has worked in book publishing for two decades, I agree wholeheartedly with Toni Morrison’s unequivocal assessment: “Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are a reflection. Books change your mind.” It’s therefore heartening that readers continue to turn to relevant titles to understand U.S. history, learn about allyship, experience solidarity and have their experiences affirmed, celebrate their culture and art, and be moved and guided to practical action to end oppression.

Storytelling endures as one of the most powerful tools to help us understand how the world works, as infinitely complex as it is: non-fiction that marshals research, facts, and anecdotes to crystallize abstract ideas into digestible knowledge and practical takeaways; novels that pluck at our emotions and foster empathy which, in turn, help us relate to people and experiences beyond our own world. When we laugh or cry with a character, or even when we can’t stand a character, those emotions break something open inside of us and leave us vulnerable to appreciating another’s experience—and more likely to reconsider and expand what we know or believe about certain people, cultures, ways of life, or even political issues.

In publishing my own debut novel last fall, We Are Not Like Them —which follows a friendship between a Black woman and a white woman thrown into turmoil after a police shooting hits close to home—my cowriter and I found that to be true. In interacting with legions of readers (of all ethnicities), one theme has emerged over and over (and over): How simultaneously hungry and scared people are to talk about race and to dig into their own biases and blind spots; also, how grateful they are to have books that can serve as vehicles to help spark and smooth some of these vital discussions, and to both challenge and affirm their worldviews.

Another theme that has emerged over the last few grueling years is the reminder that we’re all in this together. The protests of summer 2020 also underscored this thread: People of all backgrounds uniting in a quest to realize our country’s multicultural ideals. We all have a better grasp of the power and importance of intersectionality in that pursuit. When it comes to heartless immigration policies, the horrifying rise in Asian American hate crimes , and persistent strains of anti-Islamism and antisemitism, we see a shared struggle against oppression. It feels apt to quote Martin Luther King Jr. in honor of Black History Month , who captured this sentiment in his 1965 Oberlin College commencement address: “All mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. ”

With that idea—the collective pursuit of equality—in mind, here are 31 recommendations for books about race and racism in America, specifically when it comes to the Black experience. These offerings range from fiction to narrative non-fiction to memoir; some recent books, some perennial classics. They represent a cross-section of perspectives—from a poetry collection by a standout young talent to a National Book Award winner about a family heirloom that’s connected three generations of a Black family from slavery to the present. All offer what we’re looking for in these challenging times—connection, enlightenment, and, I hope, a strong dose of optimism.

Items 12-31 contributed by Ali Francis .

All products featured on SELF are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Call Us What We Carry: Poems, by Amanda Gorman

Gorman, a 23-year-old phenom and National Youth Poet Laureate, won our hearts with her arresting presence and rendition of her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the Inauguration of President Joe Biden. Since then, she’s published her first full-length work of poetry, Call Us What We Carry. Gorman applies her considerable lyrical finesse to explorations of feminism, oppression, resilience, hope, and healing. The result is a moving meditation on the human spirit, a perfect salve and siren call for our times. And couldn’t we all use a little more poetry in our lives?

How We Can Win, by Kimberly Jones

Amid the protests following George Floyd’s murder, Kimberly Jones delivered an impassioned and straightforward analysis of the enduring disparities Black Americans face, using a Monopoly analogy. The six-minute video featuring her history-lesson-cum-call-to-arms immediately went viral and has since been viewed more than 2 million times. Now, she’s published a manifesto that delves into the intricacies of systemic racism and calls for “Reconstruction 2.0”—her comprehensive plan for long-overdue economic and social restitution for Black Americans. She lays out the case for why and how to change the rules of the game when it comes to economic opportunity in America so that everyone has a chance to win.

My Monticello, by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

In this kaleidoscopic and wildly inventive debut collection, Johnson introduces us to a group of Charlottesville residents who seek refuge at Thomas Jefferson’s former plantation after fleeing a white militia; a Black professor who studies racism by conducting social experiments on his own son, and a southern woman who goes to great lengths to reinvent herself and escape her roots. Bound by propulsive prose, unforgettable characters, and a deep sense of humanity, these stories cohere into a timely portrait of identity, legacy, and how to survive in America.

Three Girls From Bronzeville, by Dawn Turner

In this sweeping and intimate memoir, a former Chicago Tribune columnist traces the lives of three girls (herself, her best friend, and her younger sister)—from their childhoods coming of age in historic Bronzeville through the shocking turns their respective journeys take. The piercing chronicle is fueled by a profound question: Why do our lives turn out the way they do? It’s at once a poignant celebration of sisterhood and friendship and a thought-provoking meditation on how race, class, gender, and opportunity ultimately shape our fate.

By Jenna Ryu

By Amy Marturana Winderl, C.P.T.

Punch Me Up To the Gods, by Brian Broome

Broome delivers a heart-wrenching and raw coming of age odyssey about growing up Black, poor, and gay in Ohio and struggling to find a sense of belonging. The prose leaps from the page as Broome’s chronicle effortlessly veers from laugh-out-loud funny self-deprecation to harrowing accounts of addiction, abuse, and toxic masculinity. Ultimately, this story is an affirmation of the hard-won healing and resilience required when you’re Black and queer in a world that doesn’t make either easy.

The Sum of Us, by Heather McGhee

Racism is not a zero-sum game. Though, as McGhee discovered when researching her highly insightful book, many white people view it as such, and that corrosive mentality has been the bedrock principle of social and economic opportunity (or lack thereof) in America. McGhee, who spent much of her career researching economic policy at the think tank Demos, methodically unpacks how this “what is good for ‘them’ must be bad for ‘us’” way of thinking came to be—a direct byproduct of the insidious and lasting legacy of slavery—and how it undermines prosperity for all, not just Black people. The book is unfailingly clear-eyed and comprehensive in connecting dots through history, as well as surveying the corrosive effects of this zero-sum mentality across a vast array of arenas—including health care, voting rights, housing, and public infrastructure. But perhaps this book’s biggest asset is its tone: warm, optimistic, and inclusive, despite the damning case being made about the steep moral and practical costs of racism.

Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir, by Rebecca Carroll

Carroll, a biracial child adopted into a white family in an all-white New Hampshire town, didn’t see another Black person in real life until she was six years old. In her unflinching memoir, she chronicles her journey to forge an identity as a Black woman in America against the tide of negative or complicated messages she got about Blackness—from society, her parents, and the birth mother she reconnects with in adolescence, who has a toxic inclination to undermine Carroll’s self-esteem and racial identity. This book serves as a powerful testimony about the challenges of transracial adoption and a validation of the vital work of becoming our full and authentic ourselves.

All That She Carrie d, by Tiya Mills

The winner of the 2021 National Book Award for non-fiction, this story traces a family relic—a simple cotton bag that an enslaved woman named Rose thrust into her daughter Ashley’s hands in 1850, just as she was wrenched away from her and placed for sale. Decades later, the bag ends up in the hands of Rose’s granddaughter, Ruth, who embroiders the words: “It be filled with my Love always.” Mills, a renowned historian, traces the legacy of this keepsake and uses historic records and archives to stitch together a portrait of three generations of women bound by blood and sacrifice, as well as a ferocious capacity for survival—women whose stories have all too often been overlooked and/or lost to history.

Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, by Saraciea J. Fennell

This groundbreaking anthology offers readers a vibrant tapestry that highlights and celebrates the richness and diversity of the Latinx and Afro-Latinx diaspora (a population often left out of discussions of Latinx identity). Edited by the founder of The Bronx is Reading, a non-profit organization that promotes child and adult literacy, the book features 15 prominent Latinx writers offering intimate, joyful reflections and perspectives on the Latinx experience.

Just Pursuit, by Laura Coates

Fixing the vast inequities in America’s criminal justice system remains one of the key pillars of the quest for social justice. To that end, Coates, who spent years as a federal prosecutor, lays bare the piercing contradictions, complications, and even guilt she experienced when her personal identities—as a mother, a woman, and a Black American—clashed with trying to pursue justice within a deeply flawed system. Through revelatory anecdotes and intimate personal moments, she exposes the tension between pursuing “what is right and what is just” and the fraught realities of sweeping institutional change—a must-read for anyone interested in criminal justice reform.

The 1619 Project , by Nikole Hannah-Jones

This book grew out of an historic work of journalism Hannah-Jones spearheaded at The New York Times . These 16 essays (as well as poetry and fiction) from some of the most esteemed historians and thinkers of our day reframe the institution of slavery as the foundational centerpiece of all of American history. It makes the case that rather than being the “original sin” from which we’ve distanced ourselves, the legacy of slavery and the caste system it introduced continues to tangibly shape and influence almost all aspects of American civics today. The book underscores how we must draw from and understand the past in order to have any hope of influencing the future, especially with regard to racial equity. Bonus: There’s also a children’s edition of this book, The 1619 Project: Born on the Water .

So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo

This straightforward and actionable guide addresses everything from the N-word and privilege to police brutality in America in a way that seeks to unite often disparate racial groups. Oluo uses “simple, bold (and sometimes funny) language and stories” to build “a road map for self-reflection,” and clarifies “how to have thoughtful and productive conversations about race,” explains Bunnie Hilliard, owner of Brave + Kind Bookshop in Decatur, Georgia.

Thick: And Other Essays, by Tressie McMillan Cottom, Ph.D.

In this book, McMillan Cottom uses humor, personal experience, and witty critiques to link the personal to the societal and to challenge everything you thought you knew about race, beauty, money, and whiteness. The bold, genius, and hilarious writer and professor shares her thoughts on being thick—literally and in spirit. “Every gender studies program should assign this along with its other staples,” says Elissa Bassist, editor of the Funny Women column at The Rumpus. “Plus, challenging whiteness challenges white readers, and the absolute least we can do is to be challenged.”

Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde

This collection of essays, written between 1976 and 1984, is “for anyone who is at a loss for words or is afraid of their own voice and of speaking up…about anything,” Bassist says. Within the book, Lorde explores her own intellectual development and emerging self—in regard to race, class, gender, and sexual orientation—highlighting the ways in which systems of oppression are intertwined.

All About Love: New Visions, by bell hooks

This book offers essential reading about how we think about love, culture, and one another. hooks highlights radical but straightforward considerations of the way interconnectedness manifests in both our intimate and public lives: what it means to give and receive love, rethinking the kind of self-love that will bring more compassion into our relationships, and the power of love to end communal and societal struggle. “She reminds us that life should be rooted in love,” explains D.L. Mullen, proprietor of Semicolon Bookstore & Gallery in Chicago. “It’s impossible to be racist if you’re living accordingly.”

Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence, by Derald Wing Sue

Within this five-section book, Sue uses research, vignette examples, and theoretical discussion to highlight why it’s become difficult to talk about race. This book demands reader introspection on the ways in which we can be complicit in silencing conversations about race, and it suggests social change is reliant on both the vulnerability and courage required to communicate honestly—regardless of our own racial identities. “It also contains good advice about how to encourage more race talk and how to facilitate dialogues about race,” says Candice Bocala, Ed.D., faculty director of Reimagining Integration: Diverse and Equitable Schools at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

Parenting for Liberation: A Guide for Raising Black Children, by Trina Greene Brown

Brown fills a critical gap with this guidebook for parents and guardians of Black children. Her work, which spans personal anecdote, reflective prompts, and practical exercises, encourages readers to dismantle harmful narratives about Black family life—and gives them the tools to parent with liberation rather than fear. “It’s about how Black children can have freedom and joy in their lives, within a context of trauma and violence,” says Jamia Wilson, author , speaker, and the executive director of The Feminist Press .

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson

This book chronicles three Black citizens out of almost 6 million who fled the South between 1915 and 1970 in search of better lives and opportunities. Wilkerson brilliantly captures historical details and “sets the stage for why communities of color have continued to struggle, despite efforts to remove themselves from the harsh grips of racial strife in America,” Hilliard says. “The text humanizes history with a vivid account of their lives as they navigate the search…for what they believe will set them free.”

The Racial Healing Handbook, by Anneliese A. Singh

Yep, you’ll want a pen so you can take notes and do your homework. This interactive workbook centralizes around the idea that for society to heal from racism and racial trauma, white and BIPOC communities need to come to terms with collective feelings of shame, guilt, and anxiety; unlearn the process of racism in order to heal from it; and reeducate in ways that can bridge racial divides. “Plan to take an in-depth look at your history, friendships, and experiences with racism,” Hilliard says. “This is a great guide and framework to help navigate racism, check your privilege, and make meaningful progress toward becoming a racial ally.”

Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, by Eve L. Ewing

It’s safe to say that, as a student, then teacher, and now a scholar studying Chicago’s public schools, Ewing knows them well. This book illuminates the racist politics at play that were responsible for a wave of school closures in 2013—leaving 12,000 children, 88% of them Black, without a pivotal neighborhood touchstone. “While the book speaks specifically to her city (and mine), it’s a profound examination of how systemic racism affects our institutions, and what community activists and organizers are doing to fight it,” says author and writing teacher Megan Stielstra.

Letter to My Daughter, by Maya Angelou

These essays offer a series of compassionate, honest, and absorbing lessons from one of our best-loved writers. It’s Angelou’s guide to living well, for her daughters everywhere. (“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters,” Angelou writes.) The book details her turbulent life, while “speaking truth to power,” Wilson says. “There’s so much in it that resonates related to the grief we’re feeling now, the collective outrage, and the indignities Black people experience as part of overt and covert racism.”

The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin

A searing book of essays by one of America’s favorite authors, this influential text from the emerging civil rights movement details intersectionality between race, religion, and more. Through Baldwin’s life in Harlem and two open “letters,” he urges Americans, whether or not they’re people of color, to fight the terrible racism imprinted on the soul of a nation. “This is a book that all Americans should read again and again,” says Julia Fierro, author and founder of The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop . “And Baldwin’s book should be read with The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race , an anthology edited by Jesmyn Ward.”

Heavy: An American Memoir, by Kiese Laymon

In his memoir, Laymon uses the personal to draw attention to a great American paradox: a nation obsessed with opportunity and progress, yet skilled in the avoidance of who that advancement is for. Each provocative reflection invites the reader to explore what a lifetime of deception does to a Black body, a Black family, and a country on the edge of collapse. “Laymon is a phenomenal writer who gives the reader the great privilege of access to his most intimate experiences, both physical and emotional,” Fierro says. “I felt changed after reading Heavy .”

Everyday Antiracism, edited by Mica Pollock

Within this collection of essays, various scholars and educators pose challenging questions about race in schools. Along with each prompt, experts offer a slew of effective ways that educators can analyze classroom interactions, incorporate race into curriculums, address racial categories and inequality, and close achievement gaps in their classrooms. Essays are “short enough to be read through in one sitting,” Bocala says. “Each chapter ends with three takeaway points: a ‘principle’ to summarize the big idea, a ‘strategy’ to suggest implications of the idea, and a ‘try tomorrow,’ with a concrete suggestion for action.”

How We Fight For Our Lives, by Saeed Jones

Jones’s memoir weaves together a series of vignettes about growing up as a gay Black man in the South. Each narrative pieces together a yearning to know where he belongs—in his family, in his country, and in relation to his wants and fears. “The language is breathtakingly gorgeous, with each story building toward the bigger picture of race and queerness and grief and love in America,” Stielstra says.

Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves, edited by Glory Edim

From editor Glory Edim, the founder of the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club , and a whole canon of powerful Black writers—including Jacqueline Woodson, Jesmyn Ward, and Tayari Jones—comes an anthology dedicated to the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature. Each essay offers an ultra-timely reminder of why we turn to books in times of struggle. Wilson says about reading Edim’s work: “I feel like I’m in church.”

Discourse on Colonialism, by Aimé Césaire

Published in France in 1955, this classic essay influenced a generation of scholars and activists fighting for liberation in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean—and 20 years later the civil rights movement in America. Césaire describes the brutal impacts of colonization on all parties and reminds us that a just society first requires decolonized minds. Discourse —which Rich Blint, program director of Race and Ethnicity at The New School , calls a “blistering indictment” of the “violent protocols of Western empire”—offers “necessary historical context for those new to contemporary struggles against racism, police brutality, mass incarceration, and other encroaching threats to freedom and justice,” Blint says.

Caucasia, by Danzy Senna

This book chronicles the life of a mixed-race family with two daughters: Birdie (who appears white) and Cole (who’s dark enough to fit in with the other kids at their Afrocentric school). When their parents divorce, Birdie and Cole are split up, at a loss for how to find one another. According to Wilson, it’s a “beautiful, powerful, and haunting” work on “the politics of race” in America—a must-read “for someone who might want to explore and understand the complexities of race, beyond skin tone.”

Native Son, by Richard Wright

This novel tells a powerful and unsparing tale of a young Black man who, in the grips of hopelessness, poverty, and panic, kills a young white woman. Wright highlights how the main character, Bigger Thomas, like many other Black men, had the odds of jail time stacked against him from the start. “This novel transformed my perspective more than any other novel I’ve read,” Fierro says, “shattering the ignorant preconceptions I had about race and class, and rearranging my perspective so I had the beginning of a new understanding of the immense challenges people of color experience.”

Sula, by Toni Morrison

Morrison traces the lives of two young Black girls from small-town Ohio, following them along their very different paths into womanhood—where, ultimately, they’re demanded to confront and reconcile their differences. Together, their stories offer two intimate and moving portraits of life as Black women in America. “Morrison’s complicated consideration of the contradictions of Black life in the context of white supremacy adds an accessible existential dimension to the purely sociological analyses of our ongoing racial emergency,” Blint explains.

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi

In this book, two half sisters, Effia and Esi, are born in different villages in Ghana. Effia marries a rich Englishman and lives a cushy life in Cape Coast Castle. Esi is sold, with thousands of others, into the slave trade bound for America. Gyasi’s novel follows both sisters and their parallel lives, generation after generation, showing a family shaped by two sides of history. “What [Gyasi] did here—illustrating the effect of systemic racism and colonialism on every generation of a Black family across 400 years—was so ambitious and masterfully executed,” Card explains. “While it doesn’t delve too deeply into any particular moment in time it answers the question of how America got to where we are now with such clarity and precision.”

• 23 Books to Help Kids Learn About Race
• Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors Says Social Justice Starts With Self-Care
• 21 Mental Health Books for Anyone Who’s Going Through It Right Now

SELF does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.

Exploring Equity: Race and Ethnicity

• Posted February 18, 2021
• By Gianna Cacciatore
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Inequality and Education Gaps
• Moral, Civic, and Ethical Education
• Teachers and Teaching

The history of education in the United States is rife with instances of violence and oppression along lines of race and ethnicity. For educators, leading conversations about race and racism is a challenging, but necessary, part of their work.

“Schools operate within larger contexts: systems of race, racism, and white supremacy; systems of migration and ethnic identity formation; patterns of socialization; the changing realities of capitalism and politics,” explains historian and Harvard lecturer Timothy Patrick McCarthy , co-faculty lead of Race and Ethnicity in Context, a new module offered at the Harvard Graduate School of Education this January as part of a pilot of HGSE’s Equity and Opportunity Foundations course. “How do we understand the role that racial and ethnic identity play with respect to equity and opportunity within an educational context?”

>> Learn more about Equity and Opportunity and HGSE’s other foundational learning experiences.

For educators exploring question in their own homes, schools, and communities, McCarthy and co-faculty lead Ashley Ison, an HGSE doctoral student, offer five ways to get started.

1.    Begin with the self.

Practitioners enter conversations about race and racism from different backgrounds, with different lived experiences, personal and professional perspectives, and funds of knowledge in their grasps. Given diverse contexts and realities, it is important that leaders encourage personal transformation and growth. Educators should consider how race and racism, as well as racial and ethnic identity formation, impact their lives as educational professionals, as parents, and as policymakers – whatever roles they hold in society. “This is personal work, but that personal work is also political work,” says Ison.

2.    Model vulnerability.

Entering into discussions of race and racism can be challenging, even for those with experience in this work. A key part of enabling participants to lean into the challenge is being vulnerable. “You have trust your students,” explains McCarthy. “Part of that is modeling authentic vulnerability and proximity to the work.” This can be done by modeling discussion skills, like sharing the space and engaging directly with the comments of other participants, as well as by opening up personally to participants.  

“Fear can impact how people feel talking about race and ethnicity in an inter-group space,” says Ison. Courage, openness, and trust are key to overcoming that fear and enabling listening, which ultimately allows for critical thinking and change.

3.    Be transparent.

Part of being vulnerable is being fully transparent with your students from day one. “Intentions are important,” explains McCarthy. “The gap between intention and impact is often rooted in a lack of transparency about where you’re coming from or where you are hoping to go.”

4.    Center voices of color.

Voice and story are powerful tools in this work. Leaders must consider whose voices and stories take precedence on the syllabus. “Consider highlighting authors of color, in particular, who are thinking and writing about these issues,” says Ison. Becoming familiar with a variety of perspectives can help practitioners understand the voices and ideas that exist, she explains.

“Voice and storytelling can bear witness to the various kinds of systematic injustices and inequities we are looking at, but they also function as sources of power for imagining and reimagining the world we are trying to build, all while providing a deeper knowledge of the world as it has existed historically,” adds McCarthy.

5.    Prioritize discussion and reflection.

Since this work is as much about critical thinking as it is about content, it is important for educators to make space for discussion and reflection, at the whole-class, small-group, and individual levels. Ison and McCarthy encourage educators to allow students to generate and guide the discussion of predetermined course materials. They also recommend facilitating small group reflections that may spark conversation that can extend into other spaces outside of the classroom.

Selected Resources:

• Poor, but Privileged
• NPR: "The Importance of Diversity in Teaching Staff”
• TED Talk with Clint Smith: "The Danger of Silence"

More Stories from the Series:

• Exploring Equity: Citizenship and Nationality
• Exploring Equity: Gender and Sexuality
• Exploring Equity: Dis/ability
• Exploring Equity: Class

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Several Antiracist Books Are Selling Out. Here’s What Else Black Booksellers and Publishers Say You Should Read

T he last two months have been tough for business at Eso Won Books in Los Angeles. The store, which opened in 1990 , specializes in African-American literature and has never had to close its doors to the public for such a long time before. But it was forced to do so when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March. And while its staff has been taking online orders in the meantime and re-opened for walk-in customers last week, recent days have seen another major change. “Since Friday, we’ve had close to 500 online orders for about eight to 10 different books on antiracism and race,” says Eso Won’s co-founder James Fugate. “It’s been overwhelming.”

As protests against racial injustice and police brutality have spread across the U.S. and beyond after the killings of George Floyd , Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery , the demand for books about race and antiracism internationally has soared. Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist , Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race are just a few of the titles that have sold out on Amazon in the U.S., with some third party sellers hiking up prices to more than $50 for paperback copies .

All three of those authors have pointed readers in the direction of independent booksellers, and black-owned bookstore owners in particular say they’ve noticed a difference in sales over the weekend. “We’ve seen a tremendous increase, and I think it really is stemming from white people,” says Ramunda Lark Young, co-founder of Washington-based MahoganyBooks , an independent bookstore specializing in books written for, by or about people from the African diaspora. “In light of recent events, a lot of people are now feeling a very visceral response in how they show up in this world, and how they see it from our lens.”

Other titles with new popularity include Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy and Robin DiAngelo and Michael Eric Dyson’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, as well as older books like James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow . Popular posts on social media have highlighted anti-racist reading lists , and selections compiled by Kendi gained attention over the weekend.

For black booksellers and publishers who have been promoting these titles for years, it’s encouraging that people are now turning to books to further their own knowledge, rather than expecting the black community to educate them. Ramunda Young, who co-founded MahoganyBooks with her husband, Derrick Young, says the uptick in sales has stemmed from people asking themselves, “How do I take it upon myself to go and read, go learn and go study, rather than expect those experiences to come from the mouths of black people?”

“There has been real progress with people being made aware of the state of racial issues in the country,” Fugate says. “All my life, I’ve heard and learned about these things. But the more people become aware, the more they can talk about these issues with their families, their friends and their kids.”

The spike of interest in books about race extends beyond the U.S. In Britain, it’s a similar conversation. “A lot of people now are looking in the mirror at themselves,” says Aimée Felone, co-founder of Knights Of and Round Table Books, a children’s publisher and bookshop based in London specializing in diverse stories for kids. U.K.-based publisher Sharmaine Lovegrove, says the dozen or so big-hitting titles that have been circulating on social media are a good starting point for understanding racism, but, she adds, the work of allies has to go beyond that, particularly at a traumatic time for black communities both in the U.S. and abroad. Lovegrove’s imprint Dialogue Books publishes writers from diverse backgrounds, and over the weekend, shared its own reading list via its social media accounts in response to recent events. “ Why I’m Longer Talking to White People About Race is a great primer, and Me and White Supremacy is a great toolbook, but then what happens?” she says, adding that buying diverse books from different genres is more effective than “one book that tells them what they’ve got to do and makes them think they’ve done the work.”

Beyond reading the more well-known books, Lovegrove encourages readers to seek out novels and short stories by black authors that show the diversity of experience. “Each life is unique and entirely different, and fiction is the best way to take all of that learning from those toolbooks and bring it into practice with understanding the nuance of blackness,” she says. “It’s better to read than to slide into your one black friend’s DMs and ask them how they’re feeling, because we were feeling like this last week. It’s really triggering and really upsetting.”

And for some, the increased demand for books about race and antiracism being sparked by extreme injustice and violence is bittersweet. “I hate that people have to lose a family member or a loved one to instigate other people to be proactive and understand their own biases,” says MahoganyBooks’ Derrick Young.

For Felone in London, the recent surge is a reminder that people weren’t already doing the work they should have been. “While this moment of realization is a great thing, there’s been a long time prior where people haven’t had their eyes opened,” she says. “I do wonder how that feeds into the younger generation.”

Booksellers and publishers are quick to point out that the work may start with reading a book, but it can’t end there. Supporting black-owned bookshops over a sustained period of time and having conversations about the books in question are crucial, Ramunda Young says. “Hopefully people are taking a moment to really look at how they have missed a lot of the marks in engaging with the black community. If you’re really serious about changing, contributing and impacting the larger world, pay those organizations that have been supporting and focusing on this work for years.”

TIME asked the booksellers and publishers interviewed for this article for their further reading recommendations. Here, 13 books on race and antiracism to read right now.

History and Journalism

Conversations in black: on politics, power and leadership , ed gordon (2020).

Journalist Ed Gordon brings together prominent voices in black America to discuss the future of black leadership. “This book is a great opportunity to be a fly on the wall in a conversation amongst over 40 different leaders, entertainers and entrepreneurs,” says Ramunda Young. “People can get a real holistic sense of the topics we engage with all the time.”

55, Underemployed and Faking Normal: Your Guide to a Better Retirement Life , Elizabeth White (2019)

Elizabeth White’s 2019 book is a deeply researched resource providing practical solutions with a focus on retirement and maximizing savings. “This takes a look at a lot of the things that come to black people financially, and COVID-19 has kind of peeled back that really dire state that we are in,” Ramunda Young says. “It’s a really personal story, and it’s one not just black people can relate to.”

An African American and Latinx History of the United States , Paul Ortiz (2018)

Paul Ortiz offers an intersectional history of the shared struggle for African American and Latinx civil rights, spanning two centuries. “This moment is not just about reading books on antiracism, it’s about reading books about our history,” says Derrick Young. “This book is incredible because essentially Ortiz is sending everyone back to high school history, and explaining history from the perspective not of the conquerors, but the people who were the victims of brutality, slavery and annexations, and how they fought back.”

Chokehold: Policing Black Men , Paul Butler (2017)

Former prosecutor Paul Butler examines modern American policing and how criminal justice laws and practices impact black men. “His book is really the best book I’ve read in the last 10 years about race relations in the U.S.,” James Fugate says. In it, Butler describes his own encounters with the police.

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays , Damon Young (2019)

This memoir-in-essays offers a look at what it means to be black and male in America, by the co-founder of the news and culture website VerySmartBrothas.com. “This book breaks down some of the stereotypes about black men, where the author talks about all of his vulnerabilities, self-esteem issues and how he deals with confronting what the world has told him he is,” Derrick Young says. “Black men are dealing with this mask that has been forced on us, and that’s not who we are.”

Between the World and Me , Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)

James Fugate recommends Between the World and Me , written in the form of a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son. It chronicles Coates’ life growing up as a young man in Baltimore and his journey to becoming a writer. In 2014, Coates’ article for the Atlantic , ‘ The Case for Reparations ,’ gained widespread attention and in 2019, he testified in a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the topic.

Rainbow Milk , Paul Mendez (2020)

Lovegrove recommends Mendez’s debut novel, published by her imprint Dialogue Books. The book follows 19-year-old Jesse McCarthy, a young black man in Britain as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities. “It takes really big concepts — a black, gay Jehovah’s Witness boy leaves his family and becomes a sex worker in London — and it’s written with such humility and such beauty that it’s really engaging for the reader,” Lovegrove says.

The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates (2019)

The Water Dancer is Coates’ debut novel, set in a surrealist version of the 19th-century Deep South and features a protagonist with superpowers. “It has a lot of magical realism to it, and I just loved that,” says Fugate.

Children’s and Young Adult

Recommended by Aimée Felone.

This Book is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work by Tiffany Jewell (2020)

“I felt completely powerless when I was young. I was able to identify racism and injustice, but did not have the language to talk about it and definitely did not know how to stand-up, especially against racist adults,” antiracism educator Tiffany Jewell said in an interview for World Book Day. Her debut book is designed to do just that: equip young people with the tools they need to be actively antiracist.

Anti-Racist Baby , Ibram X. Kendi (2020)

This upcoming picture book from the best-selling author of the moment, Kendi, shows kids nine steps to building a more equitable and antiracist world. It will be published June 16.

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi (2020)

An adaptation of Kendi’s Stamped From the Beginning targeted at young adults, this collaboration between the original author and celebrated children’s writer Jason Reynolds seeks to explain why young people are growing up in a world of racism, and what they can do about it.

Brown Girl Dreaming , Jacqueline Woodson (2014)

National Book Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson tells the story of her childhood through poetry, detailing her experiences as a black girl growing up in 1960s South Carolina and New York.

A is for Activist , Innosanto Nagara (2013)

Innosanto Nagara initially wrote, illustrated and self-published this board book for his own children out of a desire to see a progressive book about the alphabet for younger children. It has since become a bestseller, with over 125,000 copies in print .

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Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education

Subscribe to governance weekly, linda darling-hammond ld linda darling-hammond.

March 1, 1998

• 13 min read

W.E.B. DuBois was right about the problem of the 21st century. The color line divides us still. In recent years, the most visible evidence of this in the public policy arena has been the persistent attack on affirmative action in higher education and employment. From the perspective of many Americans who believe that the vestiges of discrimination have disappeared, affirmative action now provides an unfair advantage to minorities. From the perspective of others who daily experience the consequences of ongoing discrimination, affirmative action is needed to protect opportunities likely to evaporate if an affirmative obligation to act fairly does not exist. And for Americans of all backgrounds, the allocation of opportunity in a society that is becoming ever more dependent on knowledge and education is a source of great anxiety and concern.

At the center of these debates are interpretations of the gaps in educational achievement between white and non-Asian minority students as measured by standardized test scores. The presumption that guides much of the conversation is that equal opportunity now exists; therefore, continued low levels of achievement on the part of minority students must be a function of genes, culture, or a lack of effort and will (see, for example, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve and Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom’s America in Black and White).

The assumptions that undergird this debate miss an important reality: educational outcomes for minority children are much more a function of their unequal access to key educational resources, including skilled teachers and quality curriculum, than they are a function of race. In fact, the U.S. educational system is one of the most unequal in the industrialized world, and students routinely receive dramatically different learning opportunities based on their social status. In contrast to European and Asian nations that fund schools centrally and equally, the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. school districts spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10 percent, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states. Despite stark differences in funding, teacher quality, curriculum, and class sizes, the prevailing view is that if students do not achieve, it is their own fault. If we are ever to get beyond the problem of the color line, we must confront and address these inequalities.

The Nature of Educational Inequality

Americans often forget that as late as the 1960s most African-American, Latino, and Native American students were educated in wholly segregated schools funded at rates many times lower than those serving whites and were excluded from many higher education institutions entirely. The end of legal segregation followed by efforts to equalize spending since 1970 has made a substantial difference for student achievement. On every major national test, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gap in minority and white students’ test scores narrowed substantially between 1970 and 1990, especially for elementary school students. On the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the scores of African-American students climbed 54 points between 1976 and 1994, while those of white students remained stable.

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Even so, educational experiences for minority students have continued to be substantially separate and unequal. Two-thirds of minority students still attend schools that are predominantly minority, most of them located in central cities and funded well below those in neighboring suburban districts. Recent analyses of data prepared for school finance cases in Alabama, New Jersey, New York, Louisiana, and Texas have found that on every tangible measure—from qualified teachers to curriculum offerings—schools serving greater numbers of students of color had significantly fewer resources than schools serving mostly white students. As William L. Taylor and Dianne Piche noted in a 1991 report to Congress: Inequitable systems of school finance inflict disproportionate harm on minority and economically disadvantaged students. On an inter-state basis, such students are concentrated in states, primarily in the South, that have the lowest capacities to finance public education. On an intra-state basis, many of the states with the widest disparities in educational expenditures are large industrial states. In these states, many minorities and economically disadvantaged students are located in property-poor urban districts which fare the worst in educational expenditures (or) in rural districts which suffer from fiscal inequity.

Jonathan Kozol s 1991 Savage Inequalities described the striking differences between public schools serving students of color in urban settings and their suburban counterparts, which typically spend twice as much per student for populations with many fewer special needs. Contrast MacKenzie High School in Detroit, where word processing courses are taught without word processors because the school cannot afford them, or East St. Louis Senior High School, whose biology lab has no laboratory tables or usable dissecting kits, with nearby suburban schools where children enjoy a computer hookup to Dow Jones to study stock transactions and science laboratories that rival those in some industries. Or contrast Paterson, New Jersey, which could not afford the qualified teachers needed to offer foreign language courses to most high school students, with Princeton, where foreign languages begin in elementary school.

Even within urban school districts, schools with high concentrations of low-income and minority students receive fewer instructional resources than others. And tracking systems exacerbate these inequalities by segregating many low-income and minority students within schools. In combination, these policies leave minority students with fewer and lower-quality books, curriculum materials, laboratories, and computers; significantly larger class sizes; less qualified and experienced teachers; and less access to high-quality curriculum. Many schools serving low-income and minority students do not even offer the math and science courses needed for college, and they provide lower-quality teaching in the classes they do offer. It all adds up.

What Difference Does it Make?

Since the 1966 Coleman report, Equality of Educational Opportunity, another debate has waged as to whether money makes a difference to educational outcomes. It is certainly possible to spend money ineffectively; however, studies that have developed more sophisticated measures of schooling show how money, properly spent, makes a difference. Over the past 30 years, a large body of research has shown that four factors consistently influence student achievement: all else equal, students perform better if they are educated in smaller schools where they are well known (300 to 500 students is optimal), have smaller class sizes (especially at the elementary level), receive a challenging curriculum, and have more highly qualified teachers.

Minority students are much less likely than white children to have any of these resources. In predominantly minority schools, which most students of color attend, schools are large (on average, more than twice as large as predominantly white schools and reaching 3,000 students or more in most cities); on average, class sizes are 15 percent larger overall (80 percent larger for non-special education classes); curriculum offerings and materials are lower in quality; and teachers are much less qualified in terms of levels of education, certification, and training in the fields they teach. And in integrated schools, as UCLA professor Jeannie Oakes described in the 1980s and Harvard professor Gary Orfield’s research has recently confirmed, most minority students are segregated in lower-track classes with larger class sizes, less qualified teachers, and lower-quality curriculum.

Research shows that teachers’ preparation makes a tremendous difference to children’s learning. In an analysis of 900 Texas school districts, Harvard economist Ronald Ferguson found that teachers’ expertise—as measured by scores on a licensing examination, master’s degrees, and experienc—was the single most important determinant of student achievement, accounting for roughly 40 percent of the measured variance in students’ reading and math achievement gains in grades 1-12. After controlling for socioeconomic status, the large disparities in achievement between black and white students were almost entirely due to differences in the qualifications of their teachers. In combination, differences in teacher expertise and class sizes accounted for as much of the measured variance in achievement as did student and family background (figure 1).

Ferguson and Duke economist Helen Ladd repeated this analysis in Alabama and again found sizable influences of teacher qualifications and smaller class sizes on achievement gains in math and reading. They found that more of the difference between the high- and low-scoring districts was explained by teacher qualifications and class sizes than by poverty, race, and parent education.

Meanwhile, a Tennessee study found that elementary school students who are assigned to ineffective teachers for three years in a row score nearly 50 percentile points lower on achievement tests than those assigned to highly effective teachers over the same period. Strikingly, minority students are about half as likely to be assigned to the most effective teachers and twice as likely to be assigned to the least effective.

Minority students are put at greatest risk by the American tradition of allowing enormous variation in the qualifications of teachers. The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future found that new teachers hired without meeting certification standards (25 percent of all new teachers) are usually assigned to teach the most disadvantaged students in low-income and high-minority schools, while the most highly educated new teachers are hired largely by wealthier schools (figure 2). Students in poor or predominantly minority schools are much less likely to have teachers who are fully qualified or hold higher-level degrees. In schools with the highest minority enrollments, for example, students have less than a 50 percent chance of getting a math or science teacher with a license and a degree in the field. In 1994, fully one-third of teachers in high-poverty schools taught without a minor in their main field and nearly 70 percent taught without a minor in their secondary teaching field.

Studies of underprepared teachers consistently find that they are less effective with students and that they have difficulty with curriculum development, classroom management, student motivation, and teaching strategies. With little knowledge about how children grow, learn, and develop, or about what to do to support their learning, these teachers are less likely to understand students’ learning styles and differences, to anticipate students’ knowledge and potential difficulties, or to plan and redirect instruction to meet students’ needs. Nor are they likely to see it as their job to do so, often blaming the students if their teaching is not successful.

Teacher expertise and curriculum quality are interrelated, because a challenging curriculum requires an expert teacher. Research has found that both students and teachers are tracked: that is, the most expert teachers teach the most demanding courses to the most advantaged students, while lower-track students assigned to less able teachers receive lower-quality teaching and less demanding material. Assignment to tracks is also related to race: even when grades and test scores are comparable, black students are more likely to be assigned to lower-track, nonacademic classes.

When Opportunity Is More Equal

What happens when students of color do get access to more equal opportunities’ Studies find that curriculum quality and teacher skill make more difference to educational outcomes than the initial test scores or racial backgrounds of students. Analyses of national data from both the High School and Beyond Surveys and the National Educational Longitudinal Surveys have demonstrated that, while there are dramatic differences among students of various racial and ethnic groups in course-taking in such areas as math, science, and foreign language, for students with similar course-taking records, achievement test score differences by race or ethnicity narrow substantially.

Robert Dreeben and colleagues at the University of Chicago conducted a long line of studies documenting both the relationship between educational opportunities and student performance and minority students’ access to those opportunities. In a comparative study of 300 Chicago first graders, for example, Dreeben found that African-American and white students who had comparable instruction achieved comparable levels of reading skill. But he also found that the quality of instruction given African-American students was, on average, much lower than that given white students, thus creating a racial gap in aggregate achievement at the end of first grade. In fact, the highest-ability group in Dreeben’s sample was in a school in a low-income African-American neighborhood. These children, though, learned less during first grade than their white counterparts because their teacher was unable to provide the challenging instruction they deserved.

When schools have radically different teaching forces, the effects can be profound. For example, when Eleanor Armour-Thomas and colleagues compared a group of exceptionally effective elementary schools with a group of low-achieving schools with similar demographic characteristics in New York City, roughly 90 percent of the variance in student reading and mathematics scores at grades 3, 6, and 8 was a function of differences in teacher qualifications. The schools with highly qualified teachers serving large numbers of minority and low-income students performed as well as much more advantaged schools.

Most studies have estimated effects statistically. However, an experiment that randomly assigned seventh grade “at-risk”students to remedial, average, and honors mathematics classes found that the at-risk students who took the honors class offering a pre-algebra curriculum ultimately outperformed all other students of similar backgrounds. Another study compared African-American high school youth randomly placed in public housing in the Chicago suburbs with city-placed peers of equivalent income and initial academic attainment and found that the suburban students, who attended largely white and better-funded schools, were substantially more likely to take challenging courses, perform well academically, graduate on time, attend college, and find good jobs.

What Can Be Done?

This state of affairs is not inevitable. Last year the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future issued a blueprint for a comprehensive set of policies to ensure a “caring, competent, and qualified teacher for every child,” as well as schools organized to support student success. Twelve states are now working directly with the commission on this agenda, and others are set to join this year. Several pending bills to overhaul the federal Higher Education Act would ensure that highly qualified teachers are recruited and prepared for students in all schools. Federal policymakers can develop incentives, as they have in medicine, to guarantee well-prepared teachers in shortage fields and high-need locations. States can equalize education spending, enforce higher teaching standards, and reduce teacher shortages, as Connecticut, Kentucky, Minnesota, and North Carolina have already done. School districts can reallocate resources from administrative superstructures and special add-on programs to support better-educated teachers who offer a challenging curriculum in smaller schools and classes, as restructured schools as far apart as New York and San Diego have done. These schools, in communities where children are normally written off to lives of poverty, welfare dependency, or incarceration, already produce much higher levels of achievement for students of color, sending more than 90 percent of their students to college. Focusing on what matters most can make a real difference in what children have the opportunity to learn. This, in turn, makes a difference in what communities can accomplish.

An Entitlement to Good Teaching

The common presumption about educational inequality—that it resides primarily in those students who come to school with inadequate capacities to benefit from what the school has to offer—continues to hold wide currency because the extent of inequality in opportunities to learn is largely unknown. We do not currently operate schools on the presumption that students might be entitled to decent teaching and schooling as a matter of course. In fact, some state and local defendants have countered school finance and desegregation cases with assertions that such remedies are not required unless it can be proven that they will produce equal outcomes. Such arguments against equalizing opportunities to learn have made good on DuBois’s prediction that the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line.

But education resources do make a difference, particularly when funds are used to purchase well-qualified teachers and high-quality curriculum and to create personalized learning communities in which children are well known. In all of the current sturm und drang about affirmative action, “special treatment,” and the other high-volatility buzzwords for race and class politics in this nation, I would offer a simple starting point for the next century s efforts: no special programs, just equal educational opportunity.

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This is what the racial education gap in the US looks like right now

Racial achievement gaps in the United States has been slow and unsteady. Image:  Unsplash/Santi Vedrí

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Stay up to date:, education, gender and work.

• Racial achievement gaps in the United States are narrowing, a Stanford University data project shows.
• But progress has been slow and unsteady – and gaps are still large across much of the country.
• COVID-19 could widen existing inequalities in education.
• The World Economic Forum will be exploring the issues around growing income inequality as part of The Jobs Reset Summit .

In the United States today, the average Black and Hispanic students are about three years ahead of where their parents were in maths skills.

They’re roughly two to three years ahead of them in reading, too.

And while white students’ test scores in these subjects have also improved, they’re not rising by as much. This means racial achievement gaps – a key way of monitoring whether all students have access to a good education – in the country are narrowing, research by Stanford University shows.

But while the trend suggests progress is being made in improving racial educational disparities, it doesn’t show the full picture. Progress, the university says, has been slow and uneven.

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Standardized tests

Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Monitoring Project uses average standardized test scores for nine-, 13- and 17-year-olds to measure these achievement gaps.

It’s able to do this because the same tests have been used by the National Assessment of Educational Progress to observe maths and reading skills since the 1970s.

In the following decades, as the above chart shows, achievement gaps have significantly declined in all age groups and in both maths and reading. But it’s been something of a roller-coaster.

Substantial progress stalled at the end of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s and in some cases the gaps grew larger. Since then, they’ve been declining steadily and are now significantly smaller than they were in the 1970s.

But these gaps are still “very large”. In fact, the difference in standardized test scores between white and Black students currently amounts to roughly two years of education. And the gap between white and Hispanic students is almost as big.

Schools not to blame

This disparity exists across the US. Racial achievement gaps have narrowed in most states – although they’ve widened in a small number. In almost all of the country’s 100 largest school districts , though, there’s a big achievement gap between white and Black students.

So why is this? Stanford says its data doesn’t support the common argument that schools themselves are to blame for low average test scores, which is often made because white students tend to live in wealthier communities where schools are presumed to be better.

In fact, it says, the scores actually represent gaps in educational opportunity, which can be traced back to a child’s early experiences. These experiences are formed at home, in childcare and preschool, and in communities – and they provide opportunities to develop socioemotional and academic capacities.

Higher-income families are more likely to be able to provide these opportunities to their children, so a family’s socioeconomic resources are strongly related to educational outcomes , Stanford says. It notes that in the US, Black and Hispanic children’s parents typically have lower incomes and levels of educational attainment than those of white children.

Other factors, such as patterns of residential and school segregation and a state’s educational and social policies, could also have a role in the size of achievement gaps.

And discipline could play its part, too, according to another Stanford study. It linked the achievement gap between Black and white students to the fact that the former are punished more harshly for similar misbehaviour, for example being more likely to be suspended from school than the latter.

Long-term effects

Stanford says using data to map race and poverty could provide the insights needed to help improve educational opportunity for all children.

And this kind of insight is needed now more than ever. The school shutdowns forced by COVID-19 could have exacerbated existing achievement gaps , according to research from McKinsey. The consultancy says the resulting learning losses – predicted to be greater for low-income Black and Hispanic students – could have long-term effects on the economic well-being of the affected children.

Black and Hispanic families are less likely to have high-speed internet at home, making distance learning difficult. And students living in low-income neighbourhoods are less likely to have had decent home schooling, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Earlier in the pandemic, it said coronavirus would "explode" achievement gaps , suggesting it could expand them by the equivalent of another half a year of schooling.

The World Economic Forum’s Jobs Reset Summit brings together leaders from business, government, civil society, media and the broader public to shape a new agenda for growth, jobs, skills and equity.

The two-day virtual event, being held on 1-2 June 2021, will address the most critical areas of debate, articulate pathways for action, and mobilize the most influential leaders and organizations to work together to accelerate progress.

The Summit will develop new frameworks, shape innovative solutions and accelerate action on four thematic pillars: Economic Growth, Revival and Transformation; Work, Wages and Job Creation; Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning; and Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice.

The World Economic Forum will be exploring the issues around growing income inequality, and what to do about it, as part of The Jobs Reset Summit .

The summit will look at ways to shape more inclusive, fair and sustainable organizations, economies and societies as we emerge from the current crisis.

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67 episodes

The Nerve is a podcast produced by the English department at the South East Technological University (Ireland). Each episode brings together staff and students to discuss a range of topics, including English literature, cultural events and critical theory.

The Nerve: An English and Arts Podcast Jenny O'Connor

• APR 10, 2024

Ep. 67: Supporting Palestine with Fadi Zmorrod

This is a very important and special episode of the podcast, in which Fadi Zmorrod, the recipient of the SEVN (South East Venue Network) bursary joins Jenny in studio to talk about his work with Doulab Circus and Dance. When Fadi was younger, he left the oppressive environment of occupied Palestine and went to study computing in the United States. Yet his heart was simply not in it: he was drawn back to the arts and to his home, where he met his Irish wife, Juliet, and where Doulab Circus and Dance was born. Across Palestine, Fadi and Juliet used dance and circus movement to offer children a space in which movement and intellectual curiosity could come together, and where trust and confidence could be built. The decision to leave Palestine was extremely difficult; Fadi speaks of what it was like to leave those children behind and what it is to cope with the conflicting emotions of relief and guilt that a new life of safety presents. Doulab Circus and Dance currently works with the residents of Direct Provision centres, members of the Travelling community and children with diverse and special needs. Also in studio are Dr Kate McCarthy, who has galvanised SETU staff as part of a solidarity initiative called Gather for Palestine, and Sinead Bolger, an arts and migration facilitator who talks about meeting Fadi for the first time and offers some suggestions on readings by Palestinian authors that you can find below. Book Recommendation List: I saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti – non-fiction Award-winning account of the human aspects of the Palestinian struggle. Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco - Graphic Novel Joe Sacco’s visual journalism about the massacre of 111 Palestinian refugees by Israeli soldiers in 1956. The hundred years' war on Palestine : a history of settler colonial conquest and resistance by Rashid Khalidi– Non-fiction A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history. Palestine +100 : stories from a century after the Nakba, edited by Basma Ghalayini. – short stories What might your home city look like in the year 2048 - exactly 100 years after Nakba, the displacement of more than 700,000 people after the Israeli War of Independence? Enter ghost by Isabella Hammad - fiction An actress returns to her home city of Haifa after many years in London and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Against the loveless world by Susan Abulhawa - fiction Nahr, a resilient but exhausted woman, tells the story of her life from an Israeli solitary confinement cell. Mornings in Jenin / Susan Abulhawa – fiction A multi-generational story about a Palestinian family as they live through half a century of violent history. Qissat : short stories by Palestinian women, edited by Jo Glanville - fiction In a cross-generational compilation, editor Jo Glanville chronicles the varied lived experiences of Palestinian women, from domestic to diaspora. A woman is no man by Etaf Rum The debut novel by Palestinian-American Etaf Rum takes us inside the lives of a conservative Arab family living in America. Salt houses / Hala Alyan Salma is forced to leave Palestine and move to Kuwait City, but when Saddam Hussein invades, she must leave again. They called me a lioness: a Palestinian girl’s fight for freedom by Ahed Tamimi – non-fiction A Palestinian activist jailed at sixteen after a confrontation with Israeli soldiers illuminates the daily struggles of life under occupation in this moving, deeply personal memoir. Out of place : a memoir / Edward Said. An extraordinary story of exile and a celebration of an irrecoverable past. The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist by Emile Habibi. This award-winning novel-in-translation is clever tragicomedy that demonstrates the complex life of a Palestinian living in

• MAR 4, 2024

Ep. 66: How to talk about race with Dr Ebun Joseph

As policies on EDI are rolled out in higher education institutes, increased efforts are being made to diversify and decolonise a wide range of curricula across the sector. With thanks to SATLE funding (Strategic Alignment of Teaching and Learning Enhancement) from the National Forum, Dr Ebun Joseph joined us at SETU for two seminars (one with students and another with staff) on understanding racial diversity and talking about race in the classroom. In this episode of the podcast, Jenny chatted to Ebun about her educational journey, setting up the Institute of Antiracism and Black Studies, and how Irish universities can improve their efforts at inclusion. Also in studio was the organiser of the event, Dr Christa de Brún, who discussed the importance of Ebun’s visit, and second year student, Chika Dike, who spoke about what she learned from attending the event.

• FEB 26, 2024

Ep. 65: Caoimhe Weakliam, spoken word poet

This episode sees us welcome our very first spoken word poet to the podcast! Caoimhe Weakliam joined us to chat about the power of spoken word poetry after a talk with English students that was funded by the Strategic Alignment for Teaching and Learning Enhancement initiative from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In the past year, Caoimhe has performed as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival and Culture Night and has delivered two sets at Electric Picnic. She has also worked as a youth worker and creative practitioner, and her main aim is to create positive change in the world and to empower young people through spoken word methodologies. Also in studio is English lecturer and poet Dr Christa de Brún, and Sasha Terfous, a first year student (and herself a spoken word poet) who attended the event. You can follow Caoimhe on Instagram @caoimheweakliam

• FEB 2, 2024

Ep. 64: Daniel Mulhall, Joyce and Yeats scholar and former ambassador

This first episode of 2024 for The Nerve features Daniel Mulhall, former Irish ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United States, who recently received an honorary doctorate from SETU. Born and raised in Waterford, Daniel’s diplomacy work has taken him all over the world, and in the podcast, he highlights how literature has played an important role in his job. He also discusses the process of writing a book on Ulysses during the pandemic, his various academic roles at NYU, Cambridge and Harvard, and his latest book Pilgrim Soul: WB Yeats and the Ireland of his time.

• DEC 4, 2023

Ep 63: Christmas book and event recommendations

Ho, ho, ho, and happy Christmas! In this festive episode of the podcast, Jenny is joined by Aoife Hearne, dietician and lecturer in the Department of Health Sciences (and previous contributor to TV’s Operation Transformation), Dr John McNamara who lectures in Social Care, Social Science, and Sociology in the Departments of Social Care and Early Childhood, and the Department of Arts, and Dr David Scanlon, lecturer in Biology & Biopharmaceutical Science. Their Christmas recommendations range from books about the social change instigated by the printing press, the science behind disease and addictive behaviour, and novels about love and loss. They also discuss the events that signify Christmas to them and there’s a January recommendation to help get over the Christmas blues.

• NOV 15, 2023

Ep. 62: Alexander MacLeod

Joining Dr Jenny O’Connor in studio for this episode is the award-winning Canadian author Alexander MacLeod. A Professor of Creative Writing at St Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Alexander has been published in the prestigious New Yorker and Granta magazines and has won the Atlantic Book Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the O.Henry Award. His first collection Light Lifting was published in 2010 and his latest, Animal Person, was released in 2022. Both collections explore the fragile connections that define us, the collision of the mundane and the extraordinary and the invisible forces that drive people to behave in unexpected ways. Alexander also facilitated a creative writing masterclass at SETU thanks to support from the Canadian Embassy, the Centre for Newfoundland and Labrador Studies at SETU, and the Department of Arts at SETU, Waterford.

• © The Nerve

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Minnesota and other Democratic-led states lead pushback on censorship

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A movement to ban book bans is gaining steam in Minnesota and several other states, in contrast to the trend playing out in more conservative states where book challenges have soared to their highest levels in decades.

The move to quash book challenges is welcome to such people as Shae Ross, a queer Minnesota high school senior who has fought on the local level against bans on books dealing with sexuality, gender, and race. Ross, 18, said she is encouraged to see her governor and leaders of other states are taking the fight statewide.

“For a lot of teenagers, LGBT teenagers and teenagers who maybe just don’t feel like they have a ton of friends, or a ton of popularity in middle or high school ... literature becomes sort of an escape,” Ross said. “Especially when I was like sixth, seventh grade, I’d say reading books, especially books with gay characters ... was a way that I could feel seen and represented.”

Minnesota is one of several Democratic-leaning states where lawmakers are now pursuing bans on book bans. The Washington and Maryland legislatures have already passed them this year, while Illinois did so last year. It was a major flashpoint of Oregon’s short session, where legislation passed the Senate but died without a House vote.

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According to the American Library Association, over 4,200 works in school and public libraries were targeted in 2023, a jump from the old record of nearly 2,600 books in 2022. Many challenged books — 47 percent in 2023 — had LGBTQ+ and racial themes.

Restrictions in some states have increased so much that librarians and administrators fear crippling lawsuits, hefty fines, and even imprisonment if they provide books that others regard as inappropriate. Already this year, lawmakers in more than 15 states have introduced bills to impose harsh penalties on libraries or librarians.

Conservative parents and activists argue that the books are too sexually explicit or otherwise controversial, and are inappropriate, especially for younger readers. National groups such as Moms for Liberty say parents are entitled to more control over books available to their children.

But pushback is emerging. According to EveryLibrary, a political action committee for libraries, several states are considering varying degrees of prohibitions on book challenges. A sampling includes California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont, though some in conservative states appear unlikely to pass. One has also died in New Mexico this year.

One such bill is awaiting Democratic Governor Wes Moore’s signature in Maryland. Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed a bill last month that sets a high bar for removing challenged materials, especially those dealing with race, sexual orientation and gender identity. A version pending in New Jersey would protect librarians from civil or criminal liability.

Some proposals are labeled “Freedom to Read” acts.

“That’s what’s so critical here. The voluntary nature of reading,” said Martha Hickson, a librarian at North Hunterdon High School in New Jersey. “Students can choose to read, not read, or totally ignore everything in this library. No one is asking them to read a damn thing.”

Hickson recalled how parents first suggested her book collections contained pedophilia and pornography during a school board meeting in 2021. She watched the livestream in horror as they objected that the novel “Lawn Boy” and illustrated memoir “Gender Queer” were available to students and suggested she could be criminally liable.

“Tears welled up, shaking,” Hickson said. ”But once my body got done with that, my normal attitude, the fight side kicked in, and I picked up my cellphone while the meeting was still going on and started reaching out.”

Book bans have been a sore point for Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a former high school teacher. The Minnesota Senate passed his proposal this month. It would prohibit book bans in public and school libraries based on content or ideological objections and require that the key decisions about what books will or won’t be offered be made by library professionals.

The state House is considering an approach with more teeth, including penalties and allowing private citizens to sue to enforce it.

Minnesota Republican lawmakers have argued that instead of worrying about book restrictions, they should focus instead on performance in a state where just under half of public school students can read at grade level.

“Every book is banned for a child that doesn’t know how to read,” said GOP Representative Patricia Mueller, a teacher from Austin.

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Recent projections, delegate tracker, pennsylvania primaries 2024: lee and fitzpatrick survive, matchups set for november, minnesota and other democratic-led states lead pushback on censorship. they're banning the book ban.

At a time when book bans have soared to their highest levels in decades, a countertrend is emerging

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- A movement to ban book bans is gaining steam in Minnesota and several other states, in contrast to the trend playing out in more conservative states where book challenges have soared to their highest levels in decades.

The move to quash book bans is welcome to people like Shae Ross, a queer and out Minnesota high school senior who has fought on the local level against bans on books dealing with sexuality, gender and race. Ross, 18, said she is encouraged to see her governor and leaders of other states are taking the fight statewide.

“For a lot of teenagers, LGBT teenagers and teenagers who maybe just don’t feel like they have a ton of friends, or a ton of popularity in middle or high school ... literature becomes sort of an escape.” Ross said. “Especially when I was like sixth, seventh grade, I’d say reading books, especially books with gay characters ... was a way that I could feel seen and represented.”

Minnesota is one of several Democratic-leaning states where lawmakers are now pursuing bans on book bans. The Washington and Maryland legislatures have already passed them this year, while Illinois did so last year. It was a major flashpoint of Oregon's short session, where legislation passed the Senate but died without a House vote.

According to the American Library Association, over 4,200 works in school and public libraries were targeted in 2023, a jump from the old record of nearly 2,600 books in 2022. Many challenged books — 47% in 2023 — had LGBTQ + and racial themes.

Restrictions in some states have increased so much that librarians and administrators fear crippling lawsuits, hefty fines and even imprisonment if they provide books that others regard as inappropriate. Already this year, lawmakers in more than 15 states have introduced bills to impose harsh penalties on libraries or librarians.

Conservative parents and activists argue that the books are too sexually explicit or otherwise controversial, and are inappropriate, especially for younger readers. National groups such as Moms for Liberty say parents are entitled to more control over books available to their children.

But pushback is emerging. According to EveryLibrary, a political action committee for libraries, several states are considering varying degrees of prohibitions on book bans. A sampling includes California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont, though some in conservative states appear unlikely to pass. One has also died in New Mexico this year.

One such bill is awaiting Democratic Gov. Wes Moore’s signature in Maryland. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill last month that sets a high bar for removing challenged materials, especially those dealing with race, sexual orientation and gender identity. A version pending in New Jersey would protect librarians from civil or criminal liability.

Some proposals are labeled “Freedom to Read” acts.

“That’s what’s so critical here. The voluntary nature of reading,” said Martha Hickson, a librarian at North Hunterdon High School in New Jersey. “Students can choose to read, not read, or totally ignore everything in this library. No one is asking them to read a damn thing.”

Hickson recalled how parents first suggested her book collections contained pedophilia and pornography during a school board meeting in 2021. She watched the livestream in horror as they objected that the novel “Lawn Boy” and illustrated memoir “Gender Queer” were available to students and suggested she could be criminally liable.

“Tears welled up, shaking" Hickson said. ”But once my body got done with that, my normal attitude, the fight side kicked in, and I picked up my cellphone while the meeting was still going on and started reaching out.”

Book bans have been a sore point for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher. The Minnesota Senate passed his proposal this month. It would prohibit book bans in public and school libraries based on content or ideological objections and require that the key decisions about what books will or won't be offered be made by library professionals.

The state House is considering an approach with more teeth, including penalties and allowing private citizens to sue to enforce it.

“I’m working with stakeholders, with the Department of Education, librarians, school districts and their representatives," said Democratic Rep. Cedrick Frazier, of New Hope. "We’re working to tighten up the language, to make sure we can come to a consensus, and just kind of make sure that everybody’s on the same page.”

Ross, a student at Jefferson High School in Bloomington, was alarmed when she heard last year that conservative groups were organizing in her community to ban books based on their content. So she and her friends got organized themselves, and they helped persuade their school board to make it much harder to remove books and other materials from their libraries and classrooms.

Because of her activism, Ross was invited when Walz went to Como Park Senior High School in St. Paul last month to view a display of books banned elsewhere. The governor called book bans “the antithesis of everything we believe” and denounced what he depicted as a growing effort to bully school boards.

At a House hearing last month, speakers said books by LGBTQ+ and authors of color are among those most frequently banned. Karlton Laster, director of policy and organizing for OutFront Minnesota, who identifies as Black and queer, said reading their works helped him “communicate my hard feelings and truths to my family and friends,” and helped him come out to his family.

Kendra Redmond, a Bloomington mother with three children in public schools, testified about efforts to push back against a petition drive by conservatives to pull about 28 titles from the city’s school libraries.

Pushback from Ross, Redmond and others succeeded. The Bloomington School Board last month made it much harder to seek removals. Parents can still restrict access by their own children to material they deem objectionable.

Many challenges in the district came from the Bloomington Parents Alliance. One of its leaders, Alan Redding, recalled how his son's 9th grade class was discussing a book a few years ago when graphic passages about date rape were read aloud in class. He said his son and other kids were unprepared for something so explicit.

“They were clearly bothered by this and disgusted,” Redding said. ”My son absolutely shut down for the semester."

Minnesota Republican lawmakers have argued that instead of worrying about book bans, they should be focusing instead on performance in a state where just under half of public school students can read at grade level.

“Every book is banned for a child that doesn’t know how to read,” said GOP Rep. Patricia Mueller, a teacher from Austin.

Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey. Associated Press reporters Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed to this story.

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Minnesota and other democratic-led states lead pushback on censorship. they're banning the book ban.

Steve Karnowski And Mike Catalini

Associated Press

Bloomington Jefferson senior Shae Ross, center, joined Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, left, at an event promoting proposed legislation to prevent books bans based on ideology at Como Park High School in St. Paul, Minn., on March 21, 2024. (Chris Williams/Education Minnesota via AP)

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A movement to ban book bans is gaining steam in Minnesota and several other states, in contrast to the trend playing out in more conservative states where book challenges have soared to their highest levels in decades.

The move to quash book bans is welcome to people like Shae Ross, a queer and out Minnesota high school senior who has fought on the local level against bans on books dealing with sexuality, gender and race. Ross, 18, said she is encouraged to see her governor and leaders of other states are taking the fight statewide.

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“For a lot of teenagers, LGBT teenagers and teenagers who maybe just don’t feel like they have a ton of friends, or a ton of popularity in middle or high school ... literature becomes sort of an escape.” Ross said. “Especially when I was like sixth, seventh grade, I’d say reading books, especially books with gay characters ... was a way that I could feel seen and represented.”

Minnesota is one of several Democratic-leaning states where lawmakers are now pursuing bans on book bans. The Washington and Maryland legislatures have already passed them this year, while Illinois did so last year. It was a major flashpoint of Oregon's short session, where legislation passed the Senate but died without a House vote.

According to the American Library Association, over 4,200 works in school and public libraries were targeted in 2023, a jump from the old record of nearly 2,600 books in 2022. Many challenged books — 47% in 2023 — had LGBTQ+ and racial themes.

Restrictions in some states have increased so much that librarians and administrators fear crippling lawsuits, hefty fines and even imprisonment if they provide books that others regard as inappropriate. Already this year, lawmakers in more than 15 states have introduced bills to impose harsh penalties on libraries or librarians.

Conservative parents and activists argue that the books are too sexually explicit or otherwise controversial, and are inappropriate, especially for younger readers. National groups such as Moms for Liberty say parents are entitled to more control over books available to their children.

But pushback is emerging. According to EveryLibrary, a political action committee for libraries, several states are considering varying degrees of prohibitions on book bans. A sampling includes California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont, though some in conservative states appear unlikely to pass. One has also died in New Mexico this year.

One such bill is awaiting Democratic Gov. Wes Moore’s signature in Maryland. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill last month that sets a high bar for removing challenged materials, especially those dealing with race, sexual orientation and gender identity. A version pending in New Jersey would protect librarians from civil or criminal liability.

Some proposals are labeled “Freedom to Read” acts.

“That’s what’s so critical here. The voluntary nature of reading,” said Martha Hickson, a librarian at North Hunterdon High School in New Jersey. “Students can choose to read, not read, or totally ignore everything in this library. No one is asking them to read a damn thing.”

Hickson recalled how parents first suggested her book collections contained pedophilia and pornography during a school board meeting in 2021. She watched the livestream in horror as they objected that the novel “Lawn Boy” and illustrated memoir “Gender Queer” were available to students and suggested she could be criminally liable.

“Tears welled up, shaking" Hickson said. ”But once my body got done with that, my normal attitude, the fight side kicked in, and I picked up my cellphone while the meeting was still going on and started reaching out.”

Book bans have been a sore point for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher. The Minnesota Senate passed his proposal this month. It would prohibit book bans in public and school libraries based on content or ideological objections and require that the key decisions about what books will or won't be offered be made by library professionals.

The state House is considering an approach with more teeth, including penalties and allowing private citizens to sue to enforce it.

“I’m working with stakeholders, with the Department of Education, librarians, school districts and their representatives," said Democratic Rep. Cedrick Frazier, of New Hope. "We’re working to tighten up the language, to make sure we can come to a consensus, and just kind of make sure that everybody’s on the same page.”

Ross, a student at Jefferson High School in Bloomington, was alarmed when she heard last year that conservative groups were organizing in her community to ban books based on their content. So she and her friends got organized themselves, and they helped persuade their school board to make it much harder to remove books and other materials from their libraries and classrooms.

Because of her activism, Ross was invited when Walz went to Como Park Senior High School in St. Paul last month to view a display of books banned elsewhere. The governor called book bans “the antithesis of everything we believe” and denounced what he depicted as a growing effort to bully school boards.

At a House hearing last month, speakers said books by LGBTQ+ and authors of color are among those most frequently banned. Karlton Laster, director of policy and organizing for OutFront Minnesota, who identifies as Black and queer, said reading their works helped him “communicate my hard feelings and truths to my family and friends,” and helped him come out to his family.

Kendra Redmond, a Bloomington mother with three children in public schools, testified about efforts to push back against a petition drive by conservatives to pull about 28 titles from the city’s school libraries.

Pushback from Ross, Redmond and others succeeded. The Bloomington School Board last month made it much harder to seek removals. Parents can still restrict access by their own children to material they deem objectionable.

Many challenges in the district came from the Bloomington Parents Alliance. One of its leaders, Alan Redding, recalled how his son's 9th grade class was discussing a book a few years ago when graphic passages about date rape were read aloud in class. He said his son and other kids were unprepared for something so explicit.

“They were clearly bothered by this and disgusted,” Redding said. ”My son absolutely shut down for the semester."

Minnesota Republican lawmakers have argued that instead of worrying about book bans, they should be focusing instead on performance in a state where just under half of public school students can read at grade level.

“Every book is banned for a child that doesn’t know how to read,” said GOP Rep. Patricia Mueller, a teacher from Austin.

Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey. Associated Press reporters Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed to this story.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Last fall, Shae Ross and fellow students in Bloomington, Minnesota successfully persuaded their district not to ban certain books dealing with sexuality, gender and race. Now, legislators are pursuing a prohibition on similar bans in schools across the state. (AP video: Mark Vancleave)

Minnesota legislators propose banning book bans

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The Handbook of Race and Adult Education: A Resource for Dialogue on Racism 1st Edition

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This volume is a timely addition to the intense racial debate occurring in this country today. It is a long overdue medium through which those in higher education, as well as the general adult education field, can engage in a discussion that leads to critical understanding and moves us into meaningful change.

• ISBN-10 0470381760
• ISBN-13 978-0470381762
• Edition 1st
• Publisher Jossey-Bass
• Publication date May 24, 2010
• Language English
• Dimensions 7.2 x 1.3 x 9.1 inches
• Print length 416 pages
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Stephen D. Brookfield is Distinguished University?Professor at the University of St. Thomas in?Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has taught in England, Canada, Australia, and the United States.?The?winner of the Houle Award for Literature in Adult Education on multiple occasions,?he?is the?author of?numerous books on the subject.

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jossey-Bass; 1st edition (May 24, 2010)
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• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0470381762
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.85 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.2 x 1.3 x 9.1 inches
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