ENGR 450F: Engineers in the Community

While overt prejudice is now much less prevalent than in decades past, subtle prejudice - prejudice that is inconspicuous, indirect, and often unconscious - continues to pervade our society. Laws do not protect against subtle prejudice and, because of its covert nature, it is difficult to observe and frequently goes undetected by both perpetrator and victim. Benign Bigotry uses a fresh format to examine subtle prejudice by addressing six commonly held cultural myths based on assumptions that appear harmless but actually foster discrimination: 'those people all look alike'; 'they must be guilty of something'; 'feminists are man-haters'; 'gays flaunt their sexuality'; 'I'm not a racist, I'm color-blind' and 'affirmative action is reverse racism'. Kristin J. Anderson skillfully relates each of these myths to real world events, emphasizes how errors in individual thinking can affect society at large, and suggests strategies for reducing prejudice in daily life.

As society has experienced the recent deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner through media coverage, it has begun a dialogue regarding the treatment of young men of color and the attitude of law enforcement and lawmakers in regards to the safety and security of the urban black population. Between the World and Me is a letter Ta-Nehisi Coates writes to his teenage son, one that describes the tragedy and truth of the black experience and focuses on what it means to be a child and parent in the black community and how lives are impacted by the inherent racism and societally engrained perspective held by those in power.

Noah's path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth.

On Permanent Reserve at the Brown School Library

In almost every highly publicized case of police using deadly force and killing unarmed individuals, the person killed was an African American male. These incidents have caused dramatic erosion in public confidence in the justice system and America's promise of equal treatment under the law. Minority communities lack confidence in our judicial system. First, we must recognize our own biases. We all have them. No one is exempt. The biggest challenge, however, is to figure out what we do once we recognize them. For those working in the justice system, from police to prosecutors and judges, and yes, even public defenders, the consequences have broad, far-reaching, and sometimes even fatal consequences.

From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a "groundbreaking" (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society--and in ourselves.

Also available through the Law School Library and MOBIUS
From one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time comes an unforgettable true story about the redeeming potential of mercy. Bryan Stevenson was a gifted young attorney when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending the poor, the wrongly condemned, and those trapped in the furthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man sentenced to die for a notorious murder he didn't commit.

Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics-and their impact on people of color-are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done.But what if we only know half the story? In Locking Up Our Own, the Yale legal scholar and former public defender James Forman Jr. weighs the tragic role that some African Americans themselves played in escalating the war on crime. As Forman shows, the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges, and police chiefs took office around the country amid a surge in crime. Many came to believe that tough measures-such as stringent drug and gun laws and "pretext traffic stops" in poor African American neighborhoods-were needed to secure a stable future for black communities. Some politicians and activists saw criminals as a "cancer" that had to be cut away from the rest of black America. Others supported harsh measures more reluctantly, believing they had no other choice in the face of a public safety emergency.Drawing on his experience as a public defender and focusing on Washington, D.C., Forman writes with compassion for individuals trapped in terrible dilemmas-from the young men and women he defended to officials struggling to cope with an impossible situation. The result is an original view of our justice system as well as a moving portrait of the human beings caught in its coils.

Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly, Slate, Chronicle of Higher Education, Literary Hub, Book Riot, and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller--"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education--with a new preface by the author "It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system." --Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S." Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.

On Reserve at the Art and Architecture Library

PHYSICAL RESERVE OLIN LIBRARY

PHYSICAL RESERVES OLIN LIBRARY

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. In this "vital, necessary, and beautiful book" (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and "allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people' (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

Witnessing Whiteness invites readers to consider what it means to be white, describes and critiques strategies used to avoid race issues, and identifies the detrimental effect of avoiding race on cross-race collaborations. The author illustrates how racial discomfort leads white people toward poor relationships with people of color. Questioning the implications our history has for personal lives and social institutions, the book considers political, economic, socio-cultural, and legal histories that shaped the meanings associated with whiteness. Drawing on dialogue with well-known figures within education, race, and multicultural work, the book offers intimate, personal stories of cross-race friendships that address both how a deep understanding of whiteness supports cross-race collaboration and the long-term nature of the work of excising racism from the deep psyche. Concluding chapters offer practical information on building knowledge, skills, capacities, and communities that support anti-racism practices, a hopeful look at our collective future, and a discussion of how to create a culture of witnesses who support allies for social and racial justice. For book discussion groups and workshop plans, please visit www.witnessingwhiteness.com.