4 books on race in America everyone should read

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas shares the books that shaped his life.

Image: Big Think.
  • These books, from authors like Toni Morrison and John F. Kennedy, open up a whole new perspective on the American landscape.
  • Read Jose Antonio Vargas' groundbreaking essay on life as an undocumented migrant in The New York Times Magazine.
  • Jose shared his list of 4 books on race in America everyone should read at a recent ScribdChat in San Francisco
  • Vargas' memoir, Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, is out now.
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Why the worst part about climate change isn't rising temperatures

The world's getting hotter, and it's getting more volatile. We need to start thinking about how climate change encourages conflict.

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  • Climate change is usually discussed in terms of how it impacts the weather, but this fails to emphasize how climate change is a "threat multiplier."
  • As a threat multiplier, climate change makes already dangerous social and political situations even worse.
  • Not only do we have to work to minimize the impact of climate change on our environment, but we also have to deal with how it affects human issues today.
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How refugees have the power to change the society they join

What history can teach us about refugees. 

An Afghan refugee girl carries her brother at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Islamabad on February 1, 2018. (Photo: AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images)

In the late 17th century, small bands of refugees began making their way into Spanish Florida. At first, they arrived in small numbers, carrying little more than the clothes on their backs, and without generating much interest. The material demands they might place on the Spanish state were at best modest. Yet these refugees and their experience in Spanish Florida would raise nettlesome political questions. Refugees have a special power to unsettle political communities, one that far outstrips their claim on practical resources.

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Fact Check: If You're a Refugee, Is It Easy to Slip into the US?

David Miliband has said that the hardest way into the US is to enter as a refugee. Is he correct?

Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

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Data Shows Logic Gap in Trump's So-Called Muslim Ban

Number of terrorist acts perpetrated in the U.S. by nationals of any of the seven countries? Zero.

Figures from CATO, a conservative think tank, show deaths caused on U.S. soil from countries Trump did not target in the Muslim ban.

The so-called Muslim Travel Ban is President Trump's most controversial measure yet. 

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