What Does It Mean To Be “Black”?

1001 Books To Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 91
Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning: the Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

What makes a racist? Tough question to answer. Despite Americans’ persistent myth of racial progress, most of us have seen the continuing occurrence of outright bigotry at least occasionally. Smarter writers than me have commented upon how racism remains written into America’s social code, even when dressed in race-neutral language. But what if the problem runs deeper, and influences more decisions, than even most Americans realize?

Historian and African Studies professor Ibram Kendi admits, in his introduction, even he’s imbibed racist ideas, which he only recognized when he began writing this book. Racism remains as widespread in America as the air we breathe; spotting it sometimes takes a radical effort of countercultural thinking. Kendi and I hope Americans will, after reading this book, speak boldly against racism we see. Even when it doesn’t look like naked bigotry.

Racism didn’t always exist. St. Augustine explicitly rejected creating divisions among people; we’re all descended from Adam, he insisted. Aristotle and Ibn Battuta said something similar. Not until the 1460s, when Portugal conquered Ceuta, in Morocco, and brought Moors back for slave markets, did Europeans start seeing different-colored people as separate races. The Portuguese needed a moral justification to sell human beings captured in war, and racism was born.

That establishes Kendi’s theme throughout this book. American folk wisdom holds that slavery and segregation arose from widespread racist ideals, but Kendi says this reverses cause and effect. He writes explicitly on page 174, and implicitly elsewhere: “Racist ideas always seemed to arrive right on time to dress up the ugly economic and political exploitation of African people.” We could say the same about other races too.

Kendi identifies three threads in American racial thinking. (Race, for Kendi, means White and Black. He briefly acknowledges other races, but they aren’t his focus.) Segregationists believe Black and Brown people are innately inferior, and should remain separate from mainstream White society. Assimilationists believe Blacks aren’t innately inferior, but their culture and behavior are; if Blacks simply learned to comport themselves more White, inequality would wither.

Professor Ibram X. Kendi

Against these two threads, Kendi poses pure Antiracists. These people oppose all attempts to divide people, whether biologically or culturally, into constructed racial categories. This gets complicated, because many Assimilationists call themselves Antiracists, even while embracing categories.. It’s also complicated because many superficial Antiracists engage in what Kendi calls “colorism,” exemplified in the old schoolyard rhyme “If you’re black, get back.” Remaining actually Antiracist requires constant vigilance.

Racism has evolved throughout American history; it has never been only one force. Kendi observes that evolution through five figures he believes exemplify the stages of American history: Puritan preacher Cotton Mather, Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison, pioneering Black scholar W.E.B. du Bois, and activist Angela Davis. They focus threads in American history, while their own evolving opinions reflect their time, and racism’s changing demands.

Jefferson, for instance, was anti-abolitionist, but also anti-slavery, at least in his writings; he struggled with the contradictions, but never reconciled them before his death. Du Bois started out accepting Assimilationist ideas of Europe’s cultural superiority, and Black people’s obligation to “improve” themselves in White eyes. His opinions shifted as he realized Black improvement usually resulted in Whites moving goalposts, and as he had firsthand encounters with Africa.

If these important American luminaries can struggle with race and liberty, Kendi says, then our own ongoing struggles mean we’re still capable of improving. But only if we let ourselves. American race history hasn’t been a progress from improvement to improvement. We’ve seen several setbacks, some shockingly recently, when race relations have moved away from communication and freedom. And we’ve seen Black Americans struggle with how to define themselves.

Don’t undertake this book lightly. Kendi peers deeply into historical events your high school history textbook elided to maintain its optimistic tone. His investigations of the economic motivations behind American racism, and the way race relations evolve to keep labor cheap and compliant, are often harrowing. Reading this book, you will feel great regret and sadness over bad choices made, historical opportunities lost, and Americas that could have been.

Kendi’s forward to the paperback edition includes acknowledgement that Donald Trump complicates American race issues. The most outspokenly racist President since Woodrow Wilson, Trump challenges our myths about eternal improvement. Yet Kendi refuses to concede to pessimism. No, everything isn’t sunshine and eternal progress in American race relations. But, Kendi says, we’ve seen enough improvement, enough times, to believe that addressing this problem is maybe possible. Maybe now is the time.