Black authors nabbed all 10 spots on the New York Times bestseller list in June after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others sparked massive protests across the country. To educate themselves, many people turned to books to fill in their knowledge gaps about this country’s racist past. And several new anti-racist book clubs popped up.
HuffPost reporter Claire Fallon talked to several members of these groups and to educators about the utility of anti-racist book clubs and how, exactly, they can be tools in the fight against racism.
What inspired you to report this story?
After the killing of George Floyd, as protests against police brutality broke out across the country, Erin and I were both thinking about the role of books in what was happening. Publications were sharing reading lists of anti-racist titles to help white people learn more about the issues at stake for Black Americans, and bookstores were selling out of them. A lot of these books seemed both potentially instructive and influential in the conversation, but as Lauren Michele Jackson argued in Vulture, that doesn’t mean people are actually getting much from them or even reading them. But I also was hearing about people forming book clubs to read anti-racist books, and I wanted to know what was going on in clubs like this and whether there was a genuinely effective way to get into organizing and protest through reading groups.
How did you go about finding people who’d be willing to share their stories?
I found casual book clubbers through Twitter and personal networks, but I also searched for longer-standing book clubs that had been centering racial justice, like Showing Up for Racial Justice’s Bay Area reading groups, to speak to organizers who had found some success with this approach. I also reached out to experts on anti-racist education.
You talked to quite a few book clubbers for the piece. Was there anything that surprised you about how they were approaching their anti-racism work?
I was surprised by how many people I spoke to had already begun using their reading and their social ties to each other to fuel action. (Also by just how popular “White Fragility” was, despite most of these people having heard the objections to its transcendent popularity!) There is, of course, a risk that white people will feel that doing the reading and discussion counts as doing the work, and that complacency will continue to be a problem, but I think the message that the reading is not activism, but preparation for it, is coming through for a lot of readers.
What do you hope people take away from this story?
I hope that people who want to become involved in anti-racism work and aren’t sure where to begin will come away with more understanding of how to learn in community and act in community, and how to be critical and questioning of trendy solutions for white people’s guilt without simply giving up. Book clubs aren’t some sort of panacea, but if you’re really thoughtful about doing one in an ethical way, I do think doing the reading can help you be more effective in the fight. | 
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