UC Berkeley’s Summer Reading List Recommends Books on George Floyd, Racism, and ‘Whiteness’

The University of California, Berkeley has released its 2024 summer reading list {snip}

The topics covered in the books include America’s supposed “systemic racism,” “whiteness,” and the life of George Floyd. {snip}

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One of the books, “His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice,” is a biography of George Floyd that alleges that “systemic racism impacted every aspect of Floyd’s life.”

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Another book, “Heathen: Religion and Race in American History,” reportedly “traces the trajectory of the concept of ‘heathen’ against the backdrop of whiteness, Protestantism, and American triumphalism, and captures its pervasive and pernicious effects: how it underlies so many dehumanizing impulses and rationalizes too many injustices — but all under the guise of patronization.”

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Harvard University has also released a 2024 summer reading list that featured, among other works, a book arguing that educators “must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements.”

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