Review: How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

In modern discussions of racism, a simplification has appeared. This is an issue in many areas as people want clearly defined good and bad instead of understanding nuance is a thing. People want one side to be all good and the other all bad. They want to make a decision and then stop thinking. They want to believe that because they don’t use racial slurs and support the Klan that they aren’t racist.

“How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi does an excellent job of dismantling many of those ideas. It points out that the opposite of a racist isn’t someone who is “colorblind” but someone who works against racism. Because while it may seem that simply not acting in racist ways is good enough it simply isn’t. Or as someone else once said, “Moderation in the pursuit of Justice is no Virtue.”

What is in “How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi

One of the most important points of this important book is that of definitions. And its chief definition is that of racist and antiracist. They aren’t complicated definitions, but they differ from the common ideas. A racist is someone who supports racist policies and ideas. This is uncomfortable because it means that someone who would never use a racial slur and thinks of themselves as colorblind can be a racist. An antiracist is simply the opposite of that. Someone who supports antiracist policies and ideas. And by that he means policies that specifically address the harms caused by racism and seek to undo or repair them and not just policies that seek to ignore the harm that has already been done.

This is an important distinction for several reasons. One of the important ones is that by this definition someone can be both racist and antiracist at the same time and anyone can and is both. That’s because the world is complicated. And sometimes people don’t understand that supporting a war on drugs, no matter how good it might seem, is a racist policy because of the unequal use of the law against minorities. Meanwhile, affirmative action, which some have attempted to call racist because it doesn’t simply ignore race is explicitly antiracist because it seeks to undo the damage done by hundreds of years of racial inequality instead of pretending that the damage is gone because the laws that created it have been changed. (Assuming that’s even true)

Another important point in this book is that there are different types of racism and different people who are affected in it in different ways. And just because we may be better in one area doesn’t change the others. Among those he talks about are cultural racism, sex racism, and space racism. Each of these is important because it is easy to think of them as separate problems. For example, how women are treated is a part of the problem of how black people are treated because we treat black women and black men differently, so treating them the same is a problem.

Cultural racism is one of those that I struggle with. It’s the idea that some cultures are better than others. This is an idea that I grew up with and one that I haven’t fully addressed in my mind. But it is one that I need to look at. Because it is still easy to see people who act differently than me as someone who needs to assimilate. Some of it is at a root base level, like seeking a congresswoman in a hijab and wishing they would adjust when I don’t think the same thing when I see Mennonite women in dresses and hair coverings.

Space racism is probably the most complicated because both the problem and the solution are difficult. The issue is that there are areas where people of minorities group together. At one extreme, you have the segregation policies that are clearly wrong. But on the other end you have the idea that every space should be integrated entirely. Something that while better isn’t necessarily something that Ibram believes is correct either. As he points out if you integrate everyplace perfectly then minorities are by definition always outnumbered. In a world that had solved racism this might be fine, but that isn’t the world we are in. We need places where people can feel safe and a black college or even lower grade school can be important to help assure that people aren’t discriminated against in their education.

What did I think of “How to be an AntiRacist” by Ibram X. Kendi

There were many points in this book that I felt uncomfortable, and a few that felt as if they were written for specific groups that I’m not a part of. Neither of those are necessarily a bad thing. Being uncomfortable is one of the chief ways that you become motivated to change. And just because you’re not the primary target of a point doesn’t make in invalid or something you shouldn’t know.

There were also a few places where my instinct was to push back against what he had to say. As I mentioned before, it feels wrong to me to say that all cultures are equally valid when I’ve been taught my entire life that they aren’t. But I accept Ibram knows far more than I do about the subject and it feels wrong to me or that isn’t what I was taught isn’t a compelling enough argument to dismiss an idea that someone who knows far more than me says is true. Instead, I need to look more at the idea and try to find a complete picture which is almost certainly more complicated than how I previously saw it.

Conclusion

The biggest problem in “How to be an Antiracist” is that the people who most need to read it won’t. That doesn’t make it less important, but it means that many of the issues in this book will have to be addressed indirectly to the people who need to hear it. That said, I don’t think that there is anyone in America that couldn’t benefit from reading this. Because while the people who think they’re in a post-racial society are unlikely to read this book, those of us who admit there is a problem that needs to be fixed still need to understand both ourselves and have serious descriptions of how to deal with it. Because as Ibram explains in the conclusion of his book racism is a cancer, and it’s one that needs to be fought vigorously in we want to avoid having it kill us. And just like cancer, the worst thing you can do is give up.

Five Stars: *****

Note: I wrote this a little while ago and so none of the current round of absurd arguments about how acknowledging that racism existed in the past is brought up, nor is any discussion of Juneteenth. But the book does an excellent job of dismantling those arguments as well.