How to Be an Antiracist

Book cover for how to be an anti racistHow to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

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SUMMARY

A comprehensive breakdown of the areas of racism as a primer for all to the avenues and methods one can be antiracist.

 Ideas

      • Revelation 3:15 – I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
        There is no neutrality. This stands out as a similar notion. It’s insufficient to “not be bad”. You must decide on being good.
      • Be vigilant and watch where experience is denied.
      • See people. See policy. Know the difference.
      • Personal responsibility is key, Black individuals however are not responsible for an entire race.
      • Watch for inequity
        • Identify
        • Describe
        • Dismantle
      • Treating people equally does NOT mean treating people the same.
      • The equity test. What result does change “X” create?
      • Wealth doesn’t insulate Black people from racism.

NOTES

I didn’t realize that to say something is wrong about a racial group is to say something is inferior about that racial group.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 120.
Denial is the heartbeat of racism, beating across ideologies, races, and nations.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 146.
But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 152.
It is descriptive, and the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it—and then dismantle it.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 158.
the color-blind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist passivity.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 163.
What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what—not who—we are.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 169.
I no longer care about how the actions of other Black individuals reflect on me, since none of us are race representatives,
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 173.
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.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 178.
RACIST: One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 190.
ANTIRACIST: One who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 191.
What is racism? Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 266.
Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 270.
A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 274.
“Racist policy” also cuts to the core of racism better than “racial discrimination,”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 282.
The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 290.
If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 290.
The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 293.
The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 294.
The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 294.
As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 295.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in 1978, “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 297.
The construct of race neutrality actually feeds White nationalist victimhood by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non-White Americans toward equity is “reverse discrimination.”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 301.
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.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 310.
We are surrounded by racial inequity, as visible as the law, as hidden as our private thoughts.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 346.
A racist is someone who is supporting a racist policy by their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 347.
An antiracist is someone who is supporting an antiracist policy by their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 348.
ANTIRACIST: One who is expressing the idea that racial groups are equals and none needs developing, and is supporting policy that reduces racial inequity.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 367.
His “stronger law enforcement” sent more Black people into the clutches of violent cops, who killed twenty-two Black people for every White person in the early 1980s.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 422.
Black youth were four times more likely to be unemployed in 1985 than in 1954. But few connected the increase in unemployment to the increase in violent crime.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 423.
We are particularly poor at seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles of people.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 426.
Assimilationist ideas and segregationist ideas are the two types of racist ideas, the duel within racist thought.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 480.
Antiracist ideas are based in the truth that racial groups are equals in all the ways they are different, assimilationist ideas are rooted in the notion that certain racial groups are culturally or behaviorally inferior, and segregationist ideas spring from a belief in genetic racial distinction and fixed hierarchy.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 486.
The White body defines the American body. The White body segregates the Black body from the American body.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 515.
But there is a way to get free. To be antiracist is to emancipate oneself from the dueling consciousness.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 520.
RACE: A power construct of collected or merged difference that lives socially.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 527.
race is fundamentally a power construct of blended difference that lives socially.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 581.
Until his death in 1460, Prince Henry sponsored Atlantic voyages to West Africa by the Portuguese, to circumvent Islamic slave traders, and in doing so created a different sort of slavery than had existed before.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 594.
BIOLOGICAL ANTIRACIST: One who is expressing the idea that the races are meaningfully the same in their biology and there are no genetic racial differences.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 667.
But the name of my White third-grade teacher is lost in my memory like the names of so many racist White people over the years who interrupted my peace with their sirens.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 670.
An antiracist treats and remembers individuals as individuals. “She acted that way,” we should say, “because she is racist.”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 676.
During the 2013–14 academic year, Black students were four times more likely than White students to be suspended from public schools, according to Department of Education data.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 683.
White people telling us that our firmness is anger or that our practiced talents are natural. Mistaking us for the only other Black person around.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 696.
I use the term “abuse” because aggression is not as exacting a term. Abuse accurately describes the action and its effects on people: distress, anger, worry, depression, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 712.
What other people call racial microaggressions I call racist abuse.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 714.
With racist teachers, misbehaving kids of color do not receive inquiry and empathy and legitimacy.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 727.
But there is no such thing as racial ancestry. Ethnic ancestry does exist.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 817.
The face of ethnic racism bares itself in the form of a persistent question: “Where are you from?”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 978.
When I add, “I am a descendant of enslaved Africans in the United States,” the questions cease.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 983.
To be antiracist is to view national and transnational ethnic groups as equal in all their differences.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 994.
An ethnic racist asks, Why are Black immigrants doing better than African Americans? An ethnic antiracist asks, Why are Black immigrants not doing as well as other immigrant groups?
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 1038.
Not all individuals migrate, but those who do, in what’s called “immigrant self-selection,” are typically individuals with an exceptional internal drive for material success and/or they possess exceptional external resources.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 1041.
Black people are apparently responsible for calming the fears of violent cops in the way women are supposedly responsible for calming the sexual desires of male rapists.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 1191.
A study that used National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data from 1976 to 1989 found that young Black males engaged in more violent crime than young White males. But when the researchers compared only employed young males of both races, the differences in violent behavior vanished.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 1229.
In other words, researchers have found a much stronger and clearer correlation between violent-crime levels and unemployment levels than between violent crime and race.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 1237.
Today, skin lighteners are used by 70 percent of women in Nigeria; 35 percent in South Africa; 59 percent in Togo; and 40 percent in China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and South Korea.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 1874.
Black people can be racist toward White people.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2007.
The only thing wrong with White people is when they embrace racist ideas and policies and then deny their ideas and policies are racist.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2009.
To be antiracist is to never conflate racist people with White people, knowing there are antiracist Whites and racist non-Whites.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2017.
We must discern the difference between racist power (racist policymakers) and White people.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2021.
Racist power, hoarding wealth and resources, has the most to lose in the building of an equitable society.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2029.
As we’ve learned, racist power produces racist policies out of self-interest and then produces racist ideas to justify those policies.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2030.
When Alicia Garza typed “Black Lives Matter” on Facebook in 2013 and when that love letter crested into a movement in 2015, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani called the movement “inherently racist.”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2042.
White racists do not want to define racial hierarchy or policies that yield racial inequities as racist. To do so would be to define their ideas and policies as racist.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2044.
Beleaguered White racists who can’t imagine their lives not being the focus of any movement respond to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter.”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2046.
“When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it.”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2227.
Black people need to do more than revoke their “Black card,” as we call it. We need to paste the racist card to their foreheads for all the world to see.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2251.
To say Black people can’t be racist is to say all Black people are being antiracist at all times. My own story tells me that is not true. History agrees.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2261.
When a policy exploits poor people, it is an elitist policy. When a policy exploits Black people, it is a racist policy.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2388.
The Black poverty rate in 2017 stood at 20 percent, nearly triple the White poverty rate. The Black unemployment rate has been at least twice as high as the White unemployment rate for the last fifty years.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2466.
Upward mobility is greater for White people, and downward mobility is greater for Black people.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2478.
Markets and market rules and competition and benefits from winning existed long before the rise of capitalism in the modern world.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2547.
To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2558.
Popular definitions of capitalism, like popular racist ideas, do not live in historical or material reality.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2561.
Customers avoid Black businesses like they are the “ghetto,” like the “White man’s ice is colder,” as antiracists have joked for years.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 2716.
Black men were still nearly six times more likely than White men, twenty-five times more likely than Black women, and fifty times more likely than White women to be incarcerated.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3004.
Black men raised in the top 1 percent by millionaires are as likely to be incarcerated as White men raised in households earning $36,000.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3005.
ACTIVIST: One who has a record of power or policy change.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3151.
To understand why racism lives is to understand the history of antiracist failure—why people have failed to create antiracist societies. To understand the racial history of failure is to understand failed solutions and strategies.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3156.
These repetitive failures exact a toll. Racial history does not repeat harmlessly.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3170.
We thought on a false continuum, from more racist to less racist to not racist.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3201.
But our generation ignores King’s words about the “problem of power, a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to the preserving of the status quo.”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3264.
To fight for mental and moral change as a prerequisite for policy change is to fight against growing fears and apathy, making it almost impossible for antiracist power to succeed.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3275.
Knowledge is only power if knowledge is put to the struggle for power.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3277.
Changing minds is not a movement. Critiquing racism is not activism.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3278.
If a person has no record of power or policy change, then that person is not an activist.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3279.
We formulate and populate and donate to cultural and behavioral and educational enrichment programs to make ourselves feel better, feeling they are helping racial groups, when they are only helping (or hurting) individuals, when only policy change helps groups.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3292.
We convince ourselves we are doing something to solve the racial problem when we are really doing something to satisfy our feelings.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3295.
What if instead of a feelings advocacy we had an outcome advocacy that put
equitable outcomes before our guilt and anguish?
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3299.
Fear is kind of like race—a mirage. “Fear is not real. It is a product of our imagination,” as a Will Smith character tells his son in one of my favorite movies, After Earth. “Do not misunderstand me, danger is very real, but fear is a choice.”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3330.
Cowardice is the inability to amass the strength to do what is right in the face of fear.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3335.
We use the terms “demonstration” and “protest” interchangeably, at our own peril, like we interchangeably use the terms “mobilizing” and “organizing.”
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3376.
A protest is organizing people for a prolonged campaign that forces racist power to change a policy.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3378.
A demonstration is mobilizing people momentarily to publicize a problem.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3378.
Speakers and placards and posts at marches, rallies, petitions, and viral hashtags demonstrate the problem.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3379.
Unless power cannot economically or politically or professionally afford bad press—as power could not during the Cold War, as power cannot during election season, as power cannot close to bankruptcy—power typically ignores demonstrations.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3381.
The most effective demonstrations (like the most effective educational efforts) provide methods for people to give their antiracist power, to give their human and financial resources, channeling attendees and their funds into organizations and protests and power-seizing campaigns.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3385.
As important as finding the antiracist power within and financial support, demonstrations can provide emotional support for ongoing protests.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3389.
The most effective protests create an environment whereby changing the racist policy becomes in power’s self-interest, like desegregating businesses because the sit-ins are driving away customers, like increasing wages to restart production, like giving teachers raises to resume schooling, like passing a law to attract a well-organized force of donors or voters.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3393.
The story of our generation will be based on what we are willing to do.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3423.
since “institutional” and “policies” are redundant: Policies are institutional.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3489.
Policymakers and policies make societies and institutions, not the other way around.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3496.
It happens for me in successive steps, these steps to be an antiracist.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3549.
The source of racist ideas was not ignorance and hate, but self-interest.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3600.
I started questioning myself. What am I doing to change policy? How can I genuinely urge people to focus on changing policy if I am not focused on changing policy?
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3612.
I had to start researching and educating to change policy.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3615.
Admit racial inequity is a problem of bad policy, not bad people. Identify racial inequity in all its intersections and manifestations. Investigate and uncover the racist policies causing racial inequity. Invent or find antiracist policy that can eliminate racial inequity. Figure out who or what group has the power to institute antiracist policy. Disseminate and educate about the uncovered racist policy and antiracist policy correctives. Work with sympathetic antiracist policymakers to institute the antiracist policy. Deploy antiracist power to compel or drive from power the unsympathetic racist policymakers in order to institute the antiracist policy. Monitor closely to ensure the antiracist policy reduces and eliminates racial inequity. When policies fail, do not blame the people. Start over and seek out new and more effective antiracist treatments until they work. Monitor closely to prevent new racist policies from being instituted.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3627.
I had a good chance to land in the 12 percent of people who survived stage-4 colon cancer.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3718.
Saturate the body politic with the chemotherapy or immunotherapy of antiracist policies that shrink the tumors of racial inequities, that kill undetectable cancer cells.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3728.
But before we can treat, we must believe.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist [Kindle Edition]. loc. 3733.