Anti-Racist Resources for Teens
Do you want to advocate for social justice in your community and your country? We hope you’ll use our booklist to learn more about anti-racist organizing strategies and take action.
All titles listed here can be accessed via hoopla, OverDrive, or curbside book pickup, subject to availability.
Below the booklist, we’ve linked to the websites of several activist groups for young adults. Find an organization that speaks to you, get involved, and raise your voice! View the activist group list here.
Youth activism and youth-led racial justice organizations have always been an important component of efforts to expand rights and change laws, policies, and systemic responses to injustice. RacialEquityTools.org is a fantastic resource with information about youth-designed and led activist projects.
Anti-Racist Booklist
Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You
by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds | Through a gripping, fast-paced, and energizing narrative written by beloved award-winner Jason Reynolds, this book shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas--and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives. (book, Overdrive e-book, Overdrive audiobook)
This Book is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work
by Tiffani Jewell | Who are you? What is racism? Where does it come from? Why does it exist? What can you do to disrupt it? Learn how you can use your anti-racist lens and voice to move the world toward equity and liberation. (book)
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates | Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences. (book, audiobook, Overdrive e-book, Overdrive audiobook)
We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide
by Carol Anderson | When America achieves milestones of progress toward full and equal black participation in democracy, the systemic response is a consistent racist backlash that rolls back those wins. Carol Anderson examines five of these moments. (book, Overdrive e-book)
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
by Layla F. Saad | Readers will learn how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color. (book, Hoopla e-book, Overdrive e-book, Overdrive audiobook)
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism
by Robin J. DiAngelo | In this in-depth exploration, anti-racist educator Robin DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what can be done to engage more constructively. (book, audiobook, Overdrive e-book, Overdrive audiobook)
So You Want to Talk About Race
by Ijeoma Oluo | A contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the "N" word. (book, audiobook (CD), Overdrive e-book, Overdrive audiobook, Hoopla audiobook)
How to Be an Antiracist
by Ibram X. Kendi | Kendi weaves together an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science, bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. (book, Overdrive e-book, Overdrive audiobook)
Activist Groups for Young Adults: Find Your Place
Black Youth Project 100: She Safe, We Safe, our current national campaign, is a transformative movement campaign to put an end to the different forms of gender violence that Black women, girls, femmes and gender non-conforming people face every day.
CampusActivism.org: This interactive website has tools for progressive activists. You can use it to start a campaign, share activism resources, publicize events, and build networks. Or you can join an existing campaign, get resources, learn about upcoming activist events, and let people find you.
Democracy Matters: Democracy Matters, a non-partisan campus-based national student organization, works to get big private money out of politics and people back in.
Dream Defenders: We are young people fighting for the future we deserve, a future with no cages, violence or corporate greed. uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing. The use strategic non-violent direct-action, issue advocacy, civic engagement and an unlimited creativity to develop the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities.
Hip Hop Congress: Hip Hop Congress is a network of individuals and organizations that are driving the necessary transformation of the world by uplifting culture for the creative development of artists and young people through education, civic engagement, and equitable resource exchange.
Million Hoodies Movement: Million Hoodies Movement for Justice is a national network with 50,000 members founded to protect and empower young people of color from mass criminalization and gun violence. Million Hoodies empowers a network of students, artists, activists, and organizers across the U.S.
Project Mobilize: Project Mobilize is a network of leaders working to create change both within the current systems and organizations that already exist as well as investing in new ideas on the local, state and national level that will break through the stagnate and partisan rhetoric in order to create a more unified, inclusive and forward-thinking nation.
NAACP Youth and College Division: We believe strongly that future leaders must be developed today, and such development is ongoing in the Youth & College Division, created in 1936. Today there are more than 25,000 young people, under the age of 25, representing 700 Youth Councils, High School Chapters and College Chapters actively involved in the fight for civil rights.
Young People For: A strategic, long-term leadership initiative, was launched by People for the American Way Foundation to invest in the next generation of leaders and build a long-term national network for young progressives.