Ibram Xolani Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers) is director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University; he previously taught history and Africana Studies at several universities, and founded the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 2019 book, “I used to be racist most of the time. I am changing. I am no longer identifying with racists by claiming to be ‘not racist.' I am no longer speaking through the mask of race neutrality. I am no longer manipulated by racist ideas to see racial groups as problems. I no longer believe a Black person cannot be racist… I no longer care about how the actions of other Black individuals reflect on me, since none of us are race representatives… And I’ve come to see that the movement from racist to antiracist is always ongoing… it means standing ready to fight at racism’s intersections with other bigotries. This book is ultimately about the basic struggle we’re all in, the struggle to be fully human and to see that others are fully human… and antiracist world… can become real if we focus on power instead of people, if we focus on changing policy instead of groups of people. It’s possible if we overcome our cynicism about the permanence of racism.” (Pg. 10-11)
He explains, “What’s the problem with being ‘not racist’? It is a claim that signifies neutrality: ‘I am not a racist, but neither am I aggressively against racism.’ But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist.’ What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.’ The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism.” (Pg. 9)
He outlines, “let’s set some definitions. What is racism? Racism is a marriage of racial policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities… Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing… A racist policy is any measure that produced or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups… Focusing on ‘racial discrimination’ takes our eyes off the central agents of racism: racist policy and racist policymakers, or what I call racist power.” (Pg. 18-19) He continues, “So what is a racist idea? A racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way. Racist ideas argue that the inferiorities and superiorities of racial groups explain racial inequities in society… An antiracist idea is any idea that suggests the racial groups are equals in all their apparent differences---that there is nothing right or wrong with any racial group. Antiracist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities.” (Pg. 20)
He recalls a church program from his youth, of “Black people feeding Black people [which] embodied the gospel of Black self-reliance that the adults in my life were feeding me. Black self-reliance was a double-edged sword. On one side was an abhorrence of White supremacy and White paternalism… On the other, a love of Black rulers and saviors of Black paternalism. On one side was the antiracist belief that Black people were entirely capable of … relying on themselves. On the other, the assimilationist idea that Black people should focus on pulling themselves up … getting off crack, street corners, and government ‘handouts’…This dueling consciousness nourished Black pride by insisting that there was nothing wrong with Black people, but it also cultivated shame with its implication that there was something behaviorallly wrong with Black people... well, at least those other Black people. If the problem was in our own behavior, then Reagan revolutionaries were not keeping Black people down---we were keeping ourselves down.” (Pg. 30-31)
He suggests, “But there is a way to get free. To be antiracist is to emancipate oneself from the dueling consciousness. To be antiracist is to conquer the assimilationist consciousness and the segregationist consciousness. The White body no longer presents itself as the American body; the Black body no longer strives to be the American body, knowing there is no such thing as the American body, only American bodies, racialized by power.” (Pg. 33-34)
He argues, “But there is no such thing as racial ancestry. Ethnic ancestry does exist… People from the same ethnic groups that are native to certain geographic regions typically share the same genetic profile. Geneticists call them ‘populations.’ When geneticists compare these ethnic populations, they find there is more genetic diversity between populations within Africa that between Africa and the rest of the world. Ethnic groups in Western Africa are more genetically similar to ethnic groups in Western Europe than to ethnic groups in Eastern Africa. Race is a genetic mirage.” (Pg. 53)
He states, “To be antiracist is to view national and transnational ethnic groups as equal in all their differences. To be antiracist is to challenge the racist policies that plague racialized ethnic groups across the world. To be antiracist is to view the inequities between all racialized ethnic groups as a problem of policy.” (Pg. 64) Later, he adds, “To be an antiracist is to focus on color lines as much as racial lines, knowing that color lines are equally harmful for Dark people. When the gains of a multicolored race disproportionately flow to Dark people, inequities between the races mirror inequities within the races. But because inequities between the races overshadow inequities within the races, Dark people often fail to see colorism as they regularly experience it. Therefore, Dark people rarely protest policies that benefit Light people…” (Pg. 110)
He notes, “To be an antiracist is not to reverse the beauty standard. To be an antiracist is to eliminate any beauty standard based on skin and eye color, hair texture, facial and bodily features shared by groups. To be an antiracist is to diversify our standards of beauty like our standards of culture or intelligence, to see beauty equally in all skin colors, broad and thin noses, kinky and straight hair, light and dark eyes. To be an antiracist is to build and live in a beauty culture that accentuates instead of erases our natural beauty.” (Pg. 113-114)
He points out, “Months before being assassinated, Malcolm X faced a fact many admirers… still refuse to face: Black people can be racist toward White people… Whenever someone classifies people of European descent as biologically, culturally or behaviorally inferior, whenever someone says there is something wrong with White people as a group, someone is articulating a racist idea. The only thing wrong with White people is when they embrace racist ideas and policies and then deny their ideas and policies are racist… There’s no such thing as White genes. We must separate the warlike, greedy, bigoted, and individualist cultures of modern empire and racial capitalism… from the cultures of White people. They are not one and the same…” (Pg. 128)
He observes, “To color police racism as White on the pretext that only White people can be racist is to ignore the non-White officer’s history of profiling and killing ‘them ni-gers.’ It is to ignore that the police killer in 2012 of Brooklyn’s Shantel Davis was Black, that three of the six officers involved in the 2015 death of Freddie Gray were Black, that the police killer in 2016 of Charlotte’s Keith Lamont Scott was Black, and that one of the police killers in 2018 of Sacramento’s Stephon Clark was Black. How can the white officers involved in the deaths of Terence Crutcher, Sandra Bland, Walter L. Scott, Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, and Decynthia Clements be racist but their Black counterparts be antiracist?” (Pg. 147-148)
He recalls, “My parents were worried… when I moved into this Black neighborhood. I felt I needed to live around Black people in order to study and uplift Black people. Not just any Black people: poor Black people… I made urban poverty an entryway into the supposedly crime-riddled and impoverished house of authentic Blackness… I thought I was so real, so Black, in choosing this apartment in this neighborhood. In truth, I was being racist… I was fleeing to poor Blacks in racist assurance of the superiority conferred by their danger, their superior authenticity. I was the Black gentrifier… I believed culture filtered upward, that Black elites … needed to go to the ‘bottom’ to be civilized.” (Pg. 163-165)
He notes, “To be antiracist is to reject not only the hierarchy of races but of race-genders. To be feminist is to reject not only the hierarchy of genders but of race-genders. To truly be antiracist is to be feminist.” (Pg. 189) Later, he adds, “I am a cisgendered Black heterosexual male… To be queer antiracist is to understand the privileges of my cisgender, of my masculinity, of my heterosexuality, of their intersections. To be queer antiracist is to serve as an ally to transgender people, to intersex people, to women, to the non-gender-conforming… and being led by their equalizing policy campaigns, by their power struggle for equal opportunity.” (Pg. 197)
He summarizes “steps to be an antiracist. I stop using the ‘I’m not a racist’ … defense of denial. I admit the definition of racist (someone who is supporting racist policies or expressing racist ideas). I confess the racist policies I support and racist ideas I express… I acknowledge the definition of antiracist (someone who is supporting antiracist policies or expressing antiracist ideas). I struggle for antiracist power in my spaces… I struggle to remain at the antiracist intersections where racism is mixed with other bigotries… I struggle to think with antiracist ideas… Racist ideas fooled me nearly my whole life… I realized there is nothing wrong with any of the racial groups and everything wrong with individuals like me who think there is something wrong with any of the racial groups.” (Pg. 226-227)
He concludes, “Race and racism are power constructs of the modern world… Racism is not even six hundred years old. It’s a cancer that we’ve caught early. But racism is one of the fastest-spreading and most fatal cancers humanity has ever known… There is nothing I see in our world today… giving me hope that one day antiracists will win the fight… What gives me hope is a simple truism. Once we lose hope, we are guaranteed to lose. But if we … fight to create an antiracist world, then we give humanity a chance to one day survive, a chance to live in communion, a chance to be forever free.” (Pg. 238)
This book will be “must reading” for anyone concerned with issues affecting race, ethnicity, and social groups in modern culture.
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Popular Highlights in this book
Racist ideas make people of color think less of themselves, which makes them more vulnerable to racist ideas. Racist ideas make White people think more of themselves, which further attracts them to racist ideas.Highlighted by 32,742 Kindle readers- Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.Highlighted by 29,162 Kindle readers
- Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing.Highlighted by 25,764 Kindle readers
- Denial is the heartbeat of racism, beating across ideologies, races, and nations.Highlighted by 20,850 Kindle readers
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| Be Antiracist | Four Hundred Souls | Antiracist Baby | How To Be a (Young) Antiracist | Goodnight Racism | How to Raise an Antiracist | |
| Reflect on your understanding of race and discover ways to work toward an antiracist future with this guided journal from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning. | A "choral history" of African Americans covering 400 years of history in the voices of 90 writers, edited by the bestselling, National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi and award-winning historian Keisha N. Blain. | A #1 New York Times Bestseller! From the National Book Award-winning author How to Be an Antiracist comes a picture book that empowers parents and children to uproot racism in our society and in ourselves. | The #1 New York Times bestseller that sparked international dialogue is now a book for young adults! | National Book Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist, Antiracist Baby) returns with a new picture book that serves as a modern bedtime classic. | The book that every parent, caregiver, and teacher needs to raise the next generation of antiracist thinkers, from the author of How to Be an Antiracist |
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A Must Read—Powerful Book for Today!!!
This book was written at a very important moment in history. Antiracist movements became very prevalent globally, and Dr. Kendi’s book could not have been written at a more important moment. In many ways it gives visibility into the experiences of people who are confronted by institutional racism. The author explains racism in the context of a set of beliefs rather than some inborn genetic quality. Often, when discussions of racism occur, people shy away from them. As Dr. Kendi explained in interviews, this definition of racism is often flawed. Quite frequently, people will say things like, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” Thus, by linking racism to biology instead of to a set of beliefs and actions, no progress is made when it comes to discussing racism or making the necessary institutional changes to end it. Similar to this work, I also explore racism in my book The Real Wakandas of Africa. To add to this I include the rich history of African people before modern racism infected the world. In this era, Africans created beautiful civilizations. For example, Africans constructed the tallest building in the world. This building contains as much stone as 30 Empire State buildings. It was the tallest building in the world for more than 4000 years. To add to this, surgical procedures of African people were quite complex. African doctors conducted surgery on the eye to remove cataracts 700 years ago, and performed cesarean sections in Central Africa with antiseptics hundreds of years before they were successfully completed with antiseptics in Europe or America. When it came to metalworking, they were equally as advanced. For example, they smelted carbon steel 2000 years before Americans or Europeans were aware of this process. Likewise, in the field of astronomy, they charted star systems for hundreds of years before they were known by scientists in America. West Africans constructed the longest wall in the world for which I also wrote a book called: The Great Wall of Africa: The Empire of Benin’s 10,000 Mile Long Wall. Dr. Kendi is one of the few scholars who has a comprehensive knowledge about Africa’s precolonial contribution to history. Too frequently, this history has been ignored by books that discuss racism, and the exclusion of this leads to a misunderstanding of Black history. While Dr. Kendi’s book is not centered around these ideas, it is a genuinely important book on racism and antiracism. Pick up a copy today!
Top reviews from other countries
H. Poole
Great book - thorough, helpful and hopeful
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 11, 2024