Books like The Wages of Whiteness by David R. Roediger

Between the World and Me is a memoir‑essay in letter form, where Ta‑Nehisi Coates addresses his teenage son about the history, violence, and ongoing reality of being Black in America.

Ibram X. Kendi’s *How to Be an Antiracist* explains racism as a powerful system that creates false hierarchies and offers a guide—drawing on ethics, history, law, and science—to help readers confront and dismantle racial injustice in society and themselves.

Carol Anderson’s nonfiction study uncovers the history of white backlash—‘white rage’—that follows gains in racial equality, tracing its roots from the Reconstruction era to today.

Iron Cages examines 19th‑century white American attitudes toward Asians, Blacks, Mexicans, and Native Americans, analyzing the foundations of race, culture, and social conditions in the United States.

Many mid 20th century American government programs created to help citizens survive and improve ended up being heavily biased against African-Americans. Katznelson documents this white affirmative action, and argues that its existence should be an important part of the argument in support of late 20th century affirmative action programs.

A historian examines the racial classifications of white people in the United States during the 18th century, revealing the tenuous nature of racial identity.

In the 1850s, as Minnesota Territory was reaching toward statehood, settlers from the eastern United States moved in, carrying rigid perceptions of race and culture into a community built by people of many backgrounds who relied on each other for survival. History professor William Green unearths the untold stories of African Americans and contrasts their experiences with those of Indians, mixed bloods, and Irish Catholics. He demonstrates how a government built on the ideals of liberty and equality denied the rights to vote, run for office, and serve on a jury to free men fully engaged in the lives of their respective communities. -- publisher description.

"Enslaved mariners, white seamstresses, Irish dockhands, free black domestic servants, and native-born street sweepers. All navigated the low-end labor market in post-revolutionary Baltimore. Seth Rockman considers this diverse workforce, exploring how race, sex, nativity, and legal status determined the economic opportunities and vulnerabilities of working families in the early republic. In the era of Frederick Douglass, Baltimore's distinctive economy featured many slaves who earned wages and white workers who performed backbreaking labor. By focusing his study on this boomtown, Rockman reassesses the roles of race and region and rewrites the history of class and capitalism in the United States during this time. Rockman describes the material experiences of low-wage workers -- how they found work, translated labor into food, fuel, and rent, and navigated underground economies and social welfare systems. He also explores what happened if they failed to find work or lost their jobs. Rockman argues that the American working class emerged from the everyday struggles of these low-wage workers. Their labor was indispensable to the early republic's market revolution, and it was central to the transformation of the United States into the wealthiest society in the Western world. Rockman's research includes construction site payrolls, employment advertisements, almshouse records, court petitions, and the nation's first "living wage" campaign. These rich accounts of day laborers and domestic servants illuminate the history of early republic capitalism and its consequences for working families." -- Publisher description.