The week of November 9-15 is University Press Week. This year’s theme is Raise UP, which highlights the role that the university press community plays in elevating authors, subjects, and whole disciplines that bring new perspectives, ideas, and voices to readers around the globe. University Presses were asked to submit titles to a reading list in keeping with this year’s theme, and we chose Racism in America: A Reader, a free ebook we published this summer in response to events roiling the nation. To celebrate University Press Week, we asked a few of its contributors for their thoughts on how the book should be used.
Kwame Anthony Appiah
“I’m hoping teachers will use this book to help the rising generation understand how far we have come and how far we need to go in undoing the legacies of White Supremacy.”
Ned Blackhawk
“I'm glad to see that this anthology has generated such broad interests and am honored to be included with such an incredible range of scholars. From my own perspective, I read Playing in the Dark in my first year of graduate school and am extremely honored to have my own work included in its company, particularly as I open the introduction of Violence over the Land with quotes from Morrison. I would hope that interested readers continue to take interest in the centrality of race and Indigenous dispossession to the making of America and to see the interconnections between the multiplicities of American racial formation over the centuries. I tried in my work to ‘historicize colonialism’ and to assess the multiple phases of colonial disruptions that pervaded western North America, often generations prior to the arrival of Euro-Americans. I believe that within such cycles of violent colonial expansion lie some of the deepest origins of American racism.”
Adriane Lentz-Smith
“I hope complete strangers read this anthology. Family, I can talk to; students, I can teach. The anthology will prove immensely useful to enrich those conversations and lectures. But the events of this past summer revealed how little most white people know about racism in America’s past and present—and, hearteningly, how much many of them wish to learn. I want this anthology to reach them.”
Beth Lew-Williams
“I would love to see Asian Americans pick up this book. Our community would benefit from more open conversations about racism, ideally conversations informed by the history of anti-blackness in America. These essays provide an excellent starting point.”
William Sturkey
“I’d love to see students of all ages read the anthology. The most important reason to study history is not necessarily to honor those who came before us but rather to empower those who come after us.”
Augustus White
“My great hope and enthusiastic recommendation is that all my fellow humans 18 years or older will read this anthology.”
