Resources for Engaging Black Experience and Black Theology After the Election

In spite of misguided and racially insensitive appeals to “get past” the election and “move on,” more than ever we need to keep talking about race.  A number of you have asked me for help knowing where to start and what to read.  Here are a few ideas.

Black experience and culture:

Ta-Nehesi Coates, Between the World and Me

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

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

Eddie Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

Cornel West, Race Matters

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Gordon Parks, A Choice of Weapons

Toni Morrison, any of her novels

Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster, and his forthcoming Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

Black Theology

Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk

James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, or The Cross and the Lynching Tree, God of the Oppressed, Black Theology and Black Power.

Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race.

Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God.

Black Biblical Scholarship

Cain Hope Felder, ed., Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation

Obery Hendricks, The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted

Podcasts – Some recent reflections on race from OnBeing.org:

John Powell, Opening the Question of Race to the Question of Belonging

Vincent Harding, Is America Possible?

Michelle Alexander, Who We Want to Become: Beyond the New Jim Crow

Ruby Sales, Where Does It Hurt?

Isabel Wilkerson, The Heart Is the Last Frontier

Black Lives Matter

“Death in Black and White,” NYT, Michael Eric Dyson

“The State of Race in America,” NYT, Charles Blow

Middle Collegiate Church/Rev. Jacqui Lewis Resources

#BLKSAPBLACKOUT Google Doc of Resources

The Black Lives Matter Reference Guide

Folks who think out loud about race on Twitter

@ebonithoughts

@oberyhendricks

@MichaelEDyson

@ShaunKing

@deray

@tanehisicoates

@BLMNYC

@BroderickGreer

@dpgushee

@afreshmind

@breyeschow

@HenryLouisGates

@esglaude

@jherbertnelson

@LaryciaHawkins

@miheekimkort

@PeterHeltzel

@RevJacquiLewis

@sojourners

@lisasharper

@NAACP

@CornelWest

@SereneJones

@JordanLRice