How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials)

by Ibram X. Kendi

Racist ideas make people of color think less of themselves, which makes them more vulnerable to racist ideas.

Self-perpetuating

to manipulate us into seeing people as the problem, instead of the policies that ensnare them.

Gaslighting of racist ideas

Denial is the heartbeat of racism, beating across ideologies, races, and nations.

Racism thrives on denial

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 locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist.

Neutrality isn't an option. Because we all benefit or are disadvantaged by it

I used to be racist most of the time. I

Confession Begins with himself

“The evangelical church…supported the status quo. It supported slavery; it supported segregation; it preached against any attempt of the Black man to stand on his own two feet.”

to be the type of Christians that Jesus the revolutionary inspired them to be.

Christians (should) live like Jesus the revolutionary

There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.

Race woven in to ALL policies everywhere. Is this true?

Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic.

*thought provoking *

The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity.

This! This is where affirmative action or reparations have failed or been defeated (where opponents of affirmative action shift the narrative to make their case). The key is promoting equity - which may not look 'FAIR' in the present .

racist power can call affirmative action policies that succeed in reducing racial inequities “race conscious” and standardized tests that produce racial inequities “race neutral.”

Look at the results over the inputs - SATs vs affirmative action ie

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.

Equal but different and no difference better or worse than another

Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy.

We blame people instead of policies

in 1990, my parents discovered that I had entered racial puberty. At seven years old,

Awareness of racism - a second form of puberty for POC

life-shaping power, race is a mirage, which doesn’t lessen its force.

Race is a mirage. A social contruct separate from biology - but one with immense power nonetheless

We are what people see us as, whether what they see exists or not.

Our identity doesn't belong and isn't created to/by us alone

Hailed for something he was not (and ignored for what he was)—it is fitting that Prince Henry the Navigator, the brother and then uncle of Portuguese kings, is the first character in the history of racist power.

Prince Henry the Navigator - hailed for exploration though never left Europe. A classic Trumpian figure

Premodern Islamic slave traders, like their Christian counterparts in premodern Italy, were not pursuing racist policies—they were enslaving what we now consider to be Africans, Arabs, and Europeans alike. At the dawn of the modern world, the Portuguese began to exclusively trade African bodies.

Portugal made slavery racial - and racist