For both Divided Baltimore students and community participants in our Monday forums, I have new recommendations for readings, following on my first recommendation that you read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Case for Reparations.”

In its September issue, The Atlantic published “Letter to My Son,” an essay adapted from his book, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015), which we have also mentioned previously. See: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/tanehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me/397619/

In its October issue, you can find his article, “The Black Family in the Age of Incarceration,” which revisits the 1965 Moynihan Report, in effect updating it and rehabilitating it.   See:  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/

I share these articles, because they provide an excellent background for what we will be addressing in upcoming communities forums–on housing segregation and family wealth (9/21), employment (9/28), education (10/5) and the justice and court system (10/12).  An updated schedule will be posted on Monday, September 21.

Although I recommend both articles–indeed all three by Coates–I strongly recommend for our forum on segregation and the courts Parts IV and V in the “The Black Family in the Age of Incarceration,” in which Coates reflects on the construction of blacks as criminals and as fugitives.

Please feel free to comment in order to expand the conversation.