Educate

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of anti-racist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.

Nice Racism: Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm by Robin DiAngelo

In Nice Racism, her follow-up work to White Fragility, DiAngelo explains how progressive white people perpetuate racial harm. Drawing on her background as a sociologist and with over 25 years working as an anti-racist educator, she picks up where White Fragility left off and moves the conversation forward.

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

The Sum of Us is a nonfiction book by public policy researcher and author Heather McGhee. McGhee draws on insights gleaned from travel across the United States, work at public policy and advocacy organization Demos, and life experience as a Black American woman to examine why racism is harmful to all Americans, not just the people who are most affected by it.

Everyday Anti-Racism: Getting Real About Race in School edited by Mica Pollock

Pathbreaking contributors—among them Beverly Daniel Tatum, Sonia Nieto, and Pedro Noguera—describe concrete ways to analyze classroom interactions that may or may not be “racial,” deal with racial inequality and “diversity,” and teach to high standards across racial lines. Topics range from using racial incidents as teachable moments and responding to the “n-word” to valuing students’ home worlds, dealing daily with achievement gaps, and helping parents fight ethnic and racial misconceptions about their children. Questions following each essay prompt readers to examine and discuss everyday issues of race and opportunity in their own classrooms and schools.

The Racial Healing Handbook: Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systemic Racism, and Engage in Collective Healing by Anneliese A. Singh

This is a practical guide to help navigate racism, challenge privilege, manage stress and trauma, and begin to heal. The Racial Healing Handbook offers practical tools to help you navigate daily and past experiences of racism, challenge internalized negative messages and privileges, and handle feelings of stress and shame.

From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education by Tia Brown McNair et al.

From Equity Talk to Equity Walk offers practical guidance on the design and application of campus change strategies for achieving equitable outcomes. Drawing from campus-based research projects sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, this invaluable resource provides real-world steps that reinforce primary elements for examining equity in student achievement, while challenging educators to specifically focus on racial equity as a critical lens for institutional and systemic change.

Creating Space: My Life and Work in Indigenous Education by Verna J. Kirkness

Verna J. Kirkness grew up on the Fisher River Indian reserve in Manitoba. Her childhood dream to be a teacher set her on a lifelong journey in education as a teacher, counsellor, consultant, and professor. Her simple quest to teach "in a Native way" revolutionized Canadian education policy and practice. Kirkness broke new ground at every turn. As the first cross-cultural consultant for the Manitoba Department of Education Curriculum Branch, she made Cree and Ojibway the languages of instruction in several Manitoba schools.

Higher Education Administration for Social Justice and Equity: Critical Perspectives for Leadership edited by Adrianna Kezar and Julie Possett

Higher Education Administration for Social Justice and Equity empowers all administrators in higher education to engage in their work—to make decisions, hire, mentor, budget, create plans, and carry out other day-to-day operations—with a clear commitment to justice, sensitivity to power and privilege, and capacity to facilitate equitable outcomes. Grounding administration for social justice as a matter of daily work, this book translates abstract concepts and theory into the work of hiring, socialization, budgeting, and decision-making.

UNBIAS: Addressing Unconscious Bias at Work by Stacey A. Gordon

This book helps you understand concepts of workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion, shows you how to identify bias, and provides you with the tools for actively removing barriers and ensuring equity throughout your organization.

Anti-Racist Education Leadership and Policy: Addressing Racism in Public Education by Sarah Diem and Anjale D. Welton

Anti-Racist Educational Leadership and Policy helps educational leaders better comprehend the racial implications and challenges of the current educational policy landscape. Each chapter unpacks a policy issue such as school choice, school closures, standardized testing, discipline, and school funding, and analyzes it through the racialized and market-driven lenses of the current leadership context. Full of real examples, this book equips aspiring school leaders with the skills to question how a policy addresses or fails to address racism, action-oriented strategies to develop anti-racist solutions, and the tools to encourage their school community to promote racial equity. This important book demystifies a complex policy context and prepares current and future teacher leaders, principals, and superintendents to lead their schools towards more equitable practice.

The Devil is in the Details: Systems Solutions for Equity Excellence, and Student Well-Being by Michael Fullan and Mary Jean Gallagher

The Devil is in the Details shows how we can re-think the education system and its three levels of leadership (local, middle, and top) so that each level can contribute to dramatic turnaround for education and society. The focus is on examining details to ensure effective actions are taken, rather than assuming large pronouncements and policies will drive change.

We Can’t Talk about That at Work! How to Talk about Race, Religion, Politics and other Polarizing Topics by Mary-Frances Winters

Instead of shutting down any mention of taboo topics, Mary-Frances Winters shows how to structure intentional conversations about them, so people can safely confront biases and stereotypes and create stronger, more inclusive organizations.

The Break by Katherena Vermette

When Stella, a young Métis mother, looks out her window one evening and spots someone in trouble on the Break—a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside her house—she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime.

In a series of shifting narratives, people who are connected, both directly and indirectly, with the victim—police, family, and friends — tell their personal stories leading up to that fateful night. Lou, a social worker, grapples with the departure of her live-in boyfriend. Cheryl, an artist, mourns the premature death of her sister Rain. Paulina, a single mother, struggles to trust her new partner. Phoenix, a homeless teenager, is released from a youth detention centre. Officer Scott, a Métis policeman, feels caught between two worlds as he patrols the city. Through their various perspectives, a larger, more comprehensive story about the lives of the residents in Winnipeg’s North End is exposed.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an Indigenous scientist and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices.

The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Powerby Desmond Cole

In his 2015 cover story for Toronto Life magazine, Desmond Cole exposed the racist actions of the Toronto police force, detailing the dozens of times he had been stopped and interrogated under the controversial practice of carding. The story quickly came to national prominence, shaking the country to its core and catapulting its author into the public sphere. Cole used his newfound profile to draw insistent, unyielding attention to the injustices faced by Black Canadians on a daily basis.