An anti-racism reading list from NCR

We are living in fraught times. 

The novel coronavirus still ravages our cities, taking over 115,000 lives in the U.S. alone. But a tanking economy and frustrated consumers, employees and businesses have convinced all 50 states to reopen in some fashion. 

In the midst of this tension, on May 25, Memorial Day, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed while in police custody. His death joins countless others, so many Black Americans who have died by a police officer's hand. 

"There is no accounting for these deaths," NCR wrote in a May 29 editorial, "or the multitude of other African Americans whose deaths by police were unfilmed or otherwise unrecorded by history."

Our duty as a news publication is to report the truth. Our duty as Catholics is to join our brothers and sisters in crying out for justice and peace. 

Below you will find NCR reporting and commentary on this singular moment, plus reporting and commentary from our sister publications, Global Sisters Report and EarthBeat. We hope these resources help our readers understand what is happening in our country and our church. Take some time to sit with these stories as well as the powerful commentaries from Catholic writers, both Black Catholics and allies. 

NCR news:

• Archbishop Wilton Gregory on racism: significant moment for real national transition​

• Catholics join solidarity efforts in Minnesota

• Kansas City unity march held to bridge divide between police, protesters

• Pandemic hinders Catholic response to Minneapolis killing

• Catholic activists protest Trump's visit to St. John Paul II Shrine

GSR news:

• Day of mourning marks lives lost to COVID-19 and recognizes inequality in US

• Reaction: US sisters acknowledge systemic racism, join call for fundamental police reform

NCR editorials: 

• What have you done? No accounting for deaths of Floyd, Taylor and Arbery

• Defund the police — or at least de-escalate their excessive use of violence

NCR commentary:

• Fr. Bryan Massingale: The assumptions of white privilege and what we can do about it

• Anne Arabome: I can't breathe because God can't breathe

• Michael Sean Winters: Will it be different this time? Will we face our racism?

• Franciscan Fr. Dan Horan: When will the US bishops address the evil of systemic racism head-on?

• Jamie Manson: We all must say 'Black Lives Matter'

• Fr. Joseph A. Brown: Black in America: I am tired

• Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese: My generation failed to deal with racism 

• Heidi Schlumpf: White people, let's do our homework

• Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister: Racism is the temptation white people have yet to overcome

• El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz: Black lives matter

• Adele McKiernan: We liberal white Catholics must get serious about racial justice

• Teresa Marie Cariño: A Catholic cry for Black Lives Matter

• Robert Alan Glover: We were born fitting the description

• Arturo J. Bañuelas, M.T. Dávila, Miguel H. Díaz, Carmen Nanko-Fernández: We breathe together

• Alex Mikulich: We need to embody a blues hope

• Shannen Dee Williams: The church must make reparation for its role in slavery, segregation

GSR commentary: 

• Franciscan Sr. Joan Brown: 'I can't breathe' — the words that haunt us

• St. Joseph Sr. Susan Francois: Lament and love — becoming anti-racist

EarthBeat news and commentary: 

• Where can I learn more about environmental racism?

• EarthBeat Weekly: Why racial and environmental justice are so linked

Spiritual resources:

• Digging Into Laudato Si': Practical relativism and racial justice

• Pencil Preaching: Holy breath

• Pencil Preaching: What have we learned?

• Francis, the comic strip: June 9, 2020

Book reviews:

• New memoir explores middle-class blackness in the post-civil rights era (June 3, 2015)

• A black man writes to his son; three-part letter pursues 'question of how one should live within a black body' (Feb 17, 2016)

• Old case, new look at systemic racism (Sept 6, 2017)

• Pauli Murray: Refusing restrictions of society and law (Oct 11, 2017)

• The Native America of today (Apr 17, 2019)

• While the mask remains, memoir serves as coda for James Cone's career (Dec 5, 2018)

• New book on Charleston massacre depicts agonizing struggle to move on (Jan 15, 2020)

• Mentors of an American Gandhi (Jan 19, 2019)

• Cuéntame invites relationship in urgent times for US Catholics (Oct 3, 2018)

• Lenny Duncan, Lutheran pastor, calls on Christianity to revolutionize (Nov 20, 2019)

• Race and sovereignty, a story of the body (May 3, 2017)

• A horrific chapter of our nation's history (Mar 23, 2016)

• A paradoxical faith: Amid deaths without reason, black people see God as Liberator (Oct 14, 2015)