Reading Is Fundamental
The past 15 years have been marked by a burgeoning of non-fiction books by and about people of color, and on issues concerning their status in the nation’s complex system of education. Below is a sampling of those books that have had the broadest mainstream impact.
1) Blacks in College, Jacqueline Fleming, Jossey-Bass, 1984.
Challenging the prevailing wisdom, psychologist Jacqueline Fleming finds that historically and predominantly Black colleges are more supportive of Black students’ personal, social, and academic development than traditionally White colleges with the superior resources and facilities.
2) The Color Line and The Quality of Life in America, Reynolds Farley and Walter R. Allen, Oxford University Press, 1987.
The Journal of American History said of this book, “This study is one no scholar interested in racial or ethnic history can ignore.” University of Michigan Sociologists Farley and Allen penned a thorough study looking at statistics, history, economics, and social policy to explain the extent and causes of racial inequity in America.
3) And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice, Derrick A. Bell, Basic Books, 1989.
Harvard’s first Black tenured law professor combines fiction with fact to dramatize continuing racial injustices in the United States.
4) The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy, William Julius Wilson, Paperback Reprint edition, University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Powerful analysis of what has gone wrong in the inner city. Wilson spares no one — liberals, conservatives, or civil rights leaders for public- policy experiments.
5) Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, Stephen L. Carter, Basic Books, 1991.
Carter, a professor of law at Yale University, produced one of the first books on racial reference written from personal experience. Using his own story of success and frustration as “an affirmative action baby” as a point of departure, the author provides an incisive analysis of one of the most incendiary topics of our day.
