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Riot Recommendation: What’s Your Favorite Nonfiction About Racism and White Supremacy?

Vanessa Diaz

Managing Editor

Book Riot Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz is a writer and former bookseller from San Diego, CA whose Spanish is even faster than her English. When not reading or writing, she enjoys dreaming up travel itineraries and drinking entirely too much tea. She is a regular co-host on the All the Books podcast who especially loves mysteries, gothic lit, mythology/folklore, and all things witchy. Vanessa can be found on Instagram at @BuenosDiazSD or taking pictures of pretty trees in Portland, OR, where she now resides.

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This Riot Recommendation of favorite nonfiction about racism and white supremacy is sponsored by Sourcebooks.

When Layla Saad began an Instagram challenge called #meandwhitesupremacy, she never predicted it would spread as widely as it did. She encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviors, big and small. She was looking for truth, and she got it. Thousands of people participated in the challenge, and nearly 100,000 people downloaded the Me and White Supremacy Workbook.

Updated and expanded from the original workbook, Me and White Supremacy, takes the work deeper by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources.

Conversations about racism can be difficult and uncomfortable, but they’re absolutely essential in the dismantling of systems of oppression. Books are a great place to start in informing ourselves on these systems: their history in this country, how many of us benefit from and uphold them, and action plans for combatting their hold. So we want to know: what are some of your favorite nonfiction books about racism and white supremacy? Come shout them at us on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #riotrecommendations; we’ll round up your answers and be back next week to share a roundup with your fellow Riot readers. Let’s open up the conversation and learn from one another on our way to affecting real change.