The day after Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination, a schoolteacher in small-town Iowa scrapped her lesson plan to conduct an anti-racism experiment on her all-white third-grade class. By treating students more or less favorably based on eye color, Jane Elliott‘s now-famous Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes exercise encouraged children to experience what prejudice and discrimination feel like first-hand.
If it can be learned, it can be unlearned.
More than 50 years on, the 87-year-old activist, educator and diversity trainer continues to be a powerful voice in the fight for racial justice and equality. Often speaking on the importance of education to unlearn prejudice, her website lists a lengthy bibliography “to start your exploration of the problems of sexism, racism, and ageism.”
Find Jane Elliot’s book recommendations below, and check out other anti-racist reads on the bookshelves of Angela Davis, Ibram X. Kendi, MLK, Malcolm X, and Rage Against The Machine.
AGEISM
A Good Age by Alex Comfort
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
ANTI-SEMITISM
Playing for Time by Fania Fenelon
Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz by Isabella Leitner
Upon the Head of the Goat by Aranka Seigel
A Jew Today by Elie Weisel
Night by Elie Weisel
The Jesus Connection by Leonard C. Yaseen
Stolen Years by Sara Zyskind
HOMOPHOBIA
One Teacher in 10 by Kevin Jennings
Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism by Suzanne Pharr
RACISM
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (also rec’d by Frank Ocean, Henry Rollins & J. Cole)
The Nature of Prejudice by Gordon Allport
Never Say Nigger Again by M. Garlina Burton
Eat a Bowl of Tea by Louis Chu
Prejudice and Your Child by Kenneth Clark
Black Rage by William Grier & Price Cobbs
Martin and Malcolm and America by James H. Cone
The Rage of a Privileged Class by Ellis Cose
Custer Died for Your Sins by Vine Deloria
God is Red by Vine Deloria
We Talk, You Listen by Vine Deloria
From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman
Two Nations: Black and White. Separate, Hostile, Unequal by Andrew Hacker
The Quiet Americans by Bill Homokawa
Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Houston & James Houston
The Colors of Excellence by Pearl Rock Kane & Alfonso J. Orsini
Nigger by Randall Kennedy
Black and White Styles in Conflict by Thomas Kochman
A White Teacher Talks About Race by Julie Landsman
Race, Religions and the Continuing American Dilemma by C. Eric Lincoln
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
The Chicano Experience: An Alternative Perspective by Alfredo Mirande
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (also rec’d by Gabrielle Union, George Saunders & Ibram X. Kendi)
Yell-Oh Girls by Vickie Nam
A Class Divided: Then and Now by William Peters
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez by Richard Rodriguez
The Racial Conditioning of our Children by Nathan Rutstein
Blaming the Victim by William Ryan
Arab and Jew by David K. Shipler
Crisis in Black and White by Charles E. Silberman
Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith
The Price of Inequality by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Lynching Lynchism: It’s Time To Heal and What We Must Do by Dr. Terri Strong
The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border by Luis Alberto Urrea
The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (also rec’d by Chimamanda Adichie, Emma Watson, Gabrielle Union, Glennon Doyle, Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton & Janet Mock)
What’s the Matter with White People by Joan Walsh
Birth Dearth by Ben Wattenberg
Native Roots by Jack Weatherford
Eyes on the Prize by Juan Williams
Black Boy by Richard Wright
The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America by Samuel F. Yette
SEXISM
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (also rec’d by Emma Watson & Gloria Steinem)
The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler
In A Different Voice by Carol Gilligan
Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith
Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (also rec’d by Emma Watson)
GENERAL
The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter
The Children’s Story by James Clavell
The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman (also rec’d by Bill Nye)
The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner
Only in America by Harry Golden
For 2 Cent Plain by Harry Golden
Enjoy, Enjoy! by Harry Golden
Don’t Think of an Elephant! by George Lakoff
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
Introducing Buddhism by Chris Pauling
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz (also rec’d by Ellen DeGeneres, Jack Dorsey, Meghan Markle & Yoko Ono)
Cultural Diversity by Bob Abramms, L. Ann Hopkins, Diane J. Johnson & George F. Simons
Hate Hurts by Caryl Stern-Larosa, and Ellen H. Bettmann
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (also rec’d by Rage Against The Machine)
(via JaneElliott.com)