Fighting Racism at the Root

Ibram X. Kendi, How To Be an Antiracist

If you’re browsing a book with a title like this, you probably already agree that “racism” means more than bigots using the N-word in public. It’s a network of policies and practices that keep some people structurally down from the start, a series of attitudes under which the law and the economy treat citizens born on the outside as always suspect. You likely already know this. Now you want to know what, materially, to do.

I started this book, the follow-up to Dr. Kendi’s National Book Award-winning history Stamped From the Beginning, expecting a step-by-step instruction for confronting bigotry when I encounter it, say, in the workplace. (Because I do, frequently.) This isn’t that book. Instead, I found a means of taking accounting of where I’m most likely to find racism, in myself, and what ordinary anti-racists can do with this discovery. Because being “not racist” isn’t good enough anymore.

We’ve all seen the moral trap of being “not racist.” Dr. Kendi notes extensively how we currently have a President who loudly, vocally protests that he’s not racist, mainly because he doesn’t use violent segregationist language, though he enacts policies that divide people according to race, religion, and national origin. Instead, it’s important for people who oppose racism to be “anti-racist,” which means taking firm stands against official or unofficial racism, wherever we see it.

For Kendi, this means multiple manifestations of race exclusion. He admits, early and often, that “race” isn’t an objective physiological description of different human populations, the belief most common among today’s working sociologists. However, having said that, he also insists that “race” is a powerful factor in social organization. Modern society relies heavily on distinctions between in-groups and out-groups, and skin color is one way this in-group behavior manifests itself. We need to oppose this.

Unlike his previous book, written as a more linear textbook history, Kendi generously incorporates his autobiography into this narrative. He enumerates racism’s many ugly faces not in the sequence they originated in society, but in the ways they manifested themselves in his life. He describes the forms of racism he recognized early, the ways White teachers glancingly overlooked Black students for instance, and the ways he confronted this racism, which, he admits, weren’t always productive.

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

But he also admits forms of racism which he himself practiced, and didn’t necessarily see at the time. Forms like anti-White racism, which drags its adherents into the mud, or class racism, which allows the oppressed to feel good about themselves because some people are even more oppressed. His personal struggles with gender racism and colorism describe ways most of us, at times, struggle with internalized ideas we can’t clearly see, because they’re so internalized.

Racism, for Dr. Kendi, isn’t a single monolith which the pure-hearted can slay, dragon-like. It gets entwined with other forms of bigotry, including sexism, queer-baiting, and economic exploitation. It rears its ugly head in relation to space: what makes some neighborhoods, schools, and churches “safe,” others “dangerous”? And it isn’t the exclusive domain of White bigots; Black people, including Kendi himself, often manifest internalized, self-hating racism, which they can only beat by confronting it directly.

Importantly, Kendi recognizes his audience, which mostly consists of Black and White progressives who already share his broad thesis, and need the kind of fine-tuning his scholarly expertise makes easy. He knows his readers want step-by-step instructions. Late in the book, he observes how anti-racist activists keep making progress only by increments, and often don’t learn from our failures. Kendi doesn’t offer a ready-made praxis for confronting workaday bigots, because changing individual minds doesn’t work.

Instead, he gives pointers for challenging public policy. He believes widespread attitudes tend to follow law and practice, rather than leading them; White Americans only popularly opposed naked segregation after it was made illegal. Don’t confront attitudes, Kendi writes; confront law. (I understand his reasoning, but don’t completely agree: the blue-collar racists I work with might need policy to actually implement their bigotry, but they already have the deeply instantiated beliefs, regardless of the rules.)

Briefly put, you cannot become truly anti-racist until you’re willing to confront racism, in all its ugly manifestations, within yourself. This isn’t easy or straightforward, and Dr. Kendi admits he’s maybe not done fighting that battle himself. However, unlike “not racist,” being anti-racist allows you to see your own limitations without cognitive dissonance. And it gives you the moral courage to confront hatred at the roots. Kendi means this as a manifesto for a movement.