Parent Education Resource
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Readings for Adults

Most of these books are available to borrow Parker’s Kovler Family Library as either physical copies or e-books, and all the books should be available through public libraries. We encourage you to make any purchases of books through your favorite independent booksellers.
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
by ANDERSON, Carol

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

A powerful survey of American history as seen in the violent white reactions to black progress, from Reconstruction to the great migration to the current political landscape.

Topics: Race, Race relations
James Baldwin: Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son/Nobody Knows My Name/The Fire Next Time/No Name in the Street/The Devil Finds Work/Others Essays
by BALDWIN, James and MORRISON, Toni 

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

James Baldwin fearlessly articulated issues of race and democracy and American identity through a series of famous essays.

Topics: Race, Racial Identity
How to Talk with Kids About Racism and Racial Violence
by BRISCO-SMITH, Allison

Article for Parents/Guardians
Parker Administration

Common Sense Media Blog

Guiding steps to consider while talking to children about racism.

Topics: Racism, Racial Violence
Tips for parents during the trial of Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd
by CHILDREN’S MINNESOTA

Article for Parents/Guardians
Parker Administration

Children's Minnesota tips from pediatricians

The Children’s ‘Minnesota Behavior Support Hub offers suggestions for talking with your children and offering ways for children to engage safely.

Topics: Racism, Racial Violence, Conversations about Race
Between the World and Me
by COATES, Ta-Nehisi

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

A nonfiction book written as a letter to the author's teenage son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States. Coates sees white supremacy as an indestructible force, one that Black Americans will never evade or erase, but will always struggle against.

Honors: National Book Awards for Nonfiction

Topics: Race, Race relations
Rethinking Gender, Sexism and Sexuality
by COSIER, Kim (editor)

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

A collection of inspiring stories about how to integrate feminist and LGBTQ content into curriculum, make it part of a vision for social justice, and create classrooms and schools that nurture all children and their families.

Topics: Gender, Identity
How to talk to your Children about the Derek Chauvin trial in George Floyd’s Death
by DELISO, Meredith

Article for Parents/Guardians
Parker Administration

Talking to Children

This article describes various approaches for parents to use to discuss with children of different ages George Floyd’s death and the trial of Chauvin.

Topics: Racism, Racial Violence, Conversations about Race
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
by DESMOND, Matthew

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

 
This important read discusses how after the enactment of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, which was intended to treat Black homebuyers equally, racist practices were actually perpetuated and continued to target Black homeowners with exploitative real estate practices.

Honors: Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, The National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Topics: Race, Civil Rights
White Fragility
by DIANGELO, Robin

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

Explores the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.

Topics: Race, Race relations
Preparing to Discuss Race and Police Violence in the Classroom
by DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS,

Article for Educators/Parents/Guardians
Parker Administration

Suggestions for discussing race and police violence in the classroom

Suggestions from the DC Public school system on how to frame classroom discussions about race.

Topics: Racism, Police Violence, Conversations with Children
Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side
by EWING, Eve

Book for parents/guardians

This book explains how the 2013 school closings in Bronzeville were the result of years of systemic racism, inequality and distrust. The author explores how public schools are an integral part of their neighborhoods and how closing those schools perpetuates racist policies.

Topics: Race, Chicago, Education, Social Justice
Homegoing: A Novel
by GYASI, Yaa

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators
 
Novel of two half-sisters are born into different villages in Ghana, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort. The other will be captured, and sold into slavery. Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations.

Honors: PEN/Hemingway Award winner

Topics: Race, Racial Identity
Raising White Kids
by HARVEY, Jennifer

Book for Parents/Guardians
Recommended by Parker Administration

Guide for families, educators and communities for talking about race in age-appropriate ways and raising children to be able and active anti-racist allies

Topics: Anti-racism, Conversations with children, Racial justice
Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
by HEUMANN, Judy

Book for parents/guardians
Recommend by SEED

Being Heumann is a candid, intimate and irreverent memoir by a remarkable woman paralyzed from polo at eighteen months who fought for equality all her life. She successfully advocated to be included in mainstream classes at a time when most students with disabilities were taught in segregated classes. She became a renowned activist whose work resulted in systemic changes in the legal protections for people with disabilities, and later she implemented those laws through leadership positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations. She is also prominently featured in the acclaimed documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution currently streaming on Netflix.

Topics: Disability, Activism, Personal stories
From the Periphery: Real Life Stories About Disability
by JUSTESEN, Pia

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED

From the Periphery is an illuminating oral history of the lived experiences of people with disabilities. It meaningfully documents the oppression people with disabilities face and the strategies they use to fight for empowerment. Numerous Chicagoans are featured, including Access Living CEO Marca Bristo, playwright Susan Nussbaum, and Francis W. Parker alum and Commissioner for the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities Rachel Arfa

Topics: Disability, Chicago, Personal stories, Oral history
How to be an Anti-Racist
by KENDI, Ibram X.

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

Helps readers to see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.

Topics: Race, Activism
Stamped from the Beginning. The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
by KENDI, Ibram X.

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

In this fact-filled narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. Very well-researched and fast paced.

Honors: National Book Awards Winner for Nonfiction

Topics: Race, Race history
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
by KING Jr., Dr. Martin Luther, HARDING, Vincent , et al.

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

Dr. King lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education.

Topics: Race, Race relations
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization and the Decline of Civil Life
by KLINENBERG, Eric

Book for Parents/Guardians
Parker Parents Association

Written by Parker alum Eric Klinenberg ‘89, critically acclaimed Palaces investigates how physical structures shape the way we interact. He believes that we can come together in this fractured time not simply with shared values but through shared spaces where crucial connections are formed, and he shows how “social infrastructure” is helping to solve some of our most pressing societal challenges.

Klinenberg discussed the ideas in his book and his thoughts on events since its publication at a Parker Parents Association Community Connect event in April 2021. Several digital copies are available to borrow through the Parker Kovler Family Library and Parker parents and guardians may also borrow a physical copy by contacting PACommConn@fwparker.org.

Topics: Inclusion, Communities, Civic life
How to talk to your children about protests and racism
by LAMOTTE, Sandee

Recommended by Counseling Department

Talking to your children
This article from June 2020 suggests age-appropriate ways to address talking to children about protests.

Topics: DEI, Racism, Conversations with children, Violence
How to Promote Racial Equity in the Workplace
by LIVINGSTON, Robert

Article for Parents/Guardians
Recommended by Parker Administration

In this article in Harvard Business Review, Livingston outlines a road map for racial equity that begins with identifying the Condition (Problem Awareness and Root-Cause Analysis), then moves to Concern (Empathy) and finally Correction (Strategy and Sacrifice).
South Side
by MOORE, Natalie

Book for parents/guardians

Chicago-native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation on the South Side of Chicago through reported essays, showing the life of these communities through the stories of people who live in them. The South Side shows the important impact of Chicago's historic segregation - and the ongoing policies that keep it that way.

Topics: Race Relations, Chicago, Segregation, Racism
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
by MCINTOSH, Peggy

Article for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

A Great Place to start. We all have privilege. This article was eye-opening for me. Will stay with you for a while.

https://nationalseedproject.org/Key-SEED-Texts/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack
So You Want to Talk About Race
by OLUO, Ijeoma

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

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. Perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between people of color and white Americans struggling with race complexities, Oluo answers the questions readers don't dare ask, and explains the concepts that continue to elude everyday Americans.

Topics: Race, Race Relations, Conversations about Race
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
by ROTHSTEIN, Richard

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

A powerful and disturbing history of racial segregation in America through meticulous research showing how governments at all levels long employed racially discriminatory policies to deny African Americans the opportunity to live in neighborhoods with jobs, good schools and upward mobility.

Topics: Race, Civil Rights
Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together and Other Conversations About Race
by TATUM, Beverly Daniel 

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides.

Topics: Race, Race relations, Racial Identity
“Talking About Race”
by Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture

Recommended by Counseling Department

The National Museum of African American History and Culture launched a new online portal "designed to help individuals, families and communities talk about racism, racial identity and the way these forces shape every aspect of society."


Topics: Race, Racism, Racial Identity
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
by STEVENSON, Bryan 

Book for Parents/Guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

Account of a decades-long career of an African American attorney who advocated for marginalized people who had been either falsely convicted or harshly sentenced. The central storyline is that of the relationship between the author and Walter McMillian, a black man wrongfully accused of murder and sentenced to death in Alabama in the late 1980’s.

Topics: Race, Civil Rights
Race for Profit. How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
by TAYLOR, Keeanga-Yamahtta

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

This important read discusses how the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, meant to treat Black homebuyers equally, actually were perpetuated and continued to target Black homeowners. As a result, by the end of the 1970s, the nation’s first programs to encourage Black homeownership ended with tens of thousands of foreclosures in Black communities across the country.

Topics: Race, Civil Rights
Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir
by TRETHEWEY, Natasha

Book for parents/guardians
The Jeanne Harris Hansell Visiting Poet 2021

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natasha Trethewey has written a memoir described in an NPR book review as "a meditation on Trethewey's own life as well as those of her mother and grandmother - an interrogation of the self and of family history haunted . .  by the abuse Trethewey and her mother both suffered at the hands of her stepfather." Beautifully written. Ms. Trethewey was appointed United States Poet Laureate twice (2012-14) and she is the Poet Laureate of Mississippi.

Topics: Race, Domestic Violence, Memoir
Monument
by TRETHEWEY, Natasha

Book for parents/guardians
The Jeanne Harris Hansell Visiting Poet 2021

Trethewey's fifth and most recent collection of poetry was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award. Poems in this collection are taught in Parker's English classes.

Topics: Poetry, Race, Family history
Native Guard
by TRETHEWEY, Natasha

Book for parents/guardians
The Jeanne Harris Hansell Visiting Poet 2021

Trethewey's third book of poems won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/natasha-trethewey. The book contains elegies to her mother and a sonnet sequence in the voice of a black soldier fighting in the civil war. Poems in this collection are taught in Parker's English classes.

Topics: Poetry, African American soldiers, Civil War, Family history
Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Courty
by VAN CLEVE, Nicole Gonzalex

Book for parents/guardians

Based on ten years of experience in the criminal courthouse of Cook County and over 1,000 hours of observation, the author explores a legal culture in which racial abuse is common and due process violations are encouraged.

Topics: Racism, Cook County, Discrimination
Caste: The Origins of our Discontents
WILKERSON, Isabel

Book for parents/guardians
Nightviews and Critical Conversation Speaker Series

Topics: Race, Race Relations
The Warmth of Other Suns
by WILKERSON, Isabel

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators
Nightviews and Critical Conversation Speaker Series

Tells the story of the Great Migration and Second Migration, the movement of six million African Americans out of the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast and West from approximately 1915 to 1970 told through the stories of three individuals.

Topics: Race, Race history
The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority
by WU, Ellen D.

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

Reviews the transformations of Asians in the United States from "yellow peril" to "model minorities" - distinct from the white majority, but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values.

Topics: Race, Racial Identity
Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Righrs
by YOSHINO, Kenji

Book for parents/guardians
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

Memoir by a gay Asian American man, now the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law, about the pressure to conform as a hidden threat to civil rights.

Topics: Race, Civil Rights
Burro Genius: A Memoir
by VILLASEÑOR, Victor 

Book for parents/guardians and Age 14+
Recommended by SEED Facilitators

A memoir of the frustration growing up with an untreated learning disability as a Latino in an English-only American school in the 1940s. Despite teachers who beat him because he could not speak English, Villaseñor clung to his dream of one day becoming a writer.

Topics: Race
330 West Webster Avenue | Chicago, Illinois 60614 | 773.353.3000
Francis W. Parker School educates students to think and act with empathy, courage and clarity as responsible citizens and leaders in a diverse democratic society and global community.