Diversity Cafe 2021-2022

The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities. In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.

Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer's coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.

Purnell argues that police can not be reformed and invites readers to envision new systems that work to address the root causes of violence. Becoming Abolitionists shows that abolition is not solely about getting rid of police, but a commitment to create and support different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most excitingly, an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place.

In this groundbreaking and incisive critique, the author shows that, by targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control. The old forms of discrimination--discrimination in employment, housing, education, and public benefits; denial of the right to vote; and exclusion from jury service--are suddenly legal once you're labeled a felon. The author challenges the civil rights community, and all of us, to place mass incarceration at the forefront of movements for racial justice in America. A new preface by the author discusses all that has changed and remained the same in our criminal justice system, and our democracy as a whole, since she published this book a decade ago