How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials)

by Ibram X. Kendi

George W. Bush narrowly won reelection by taking Ohio with the crucial help of Ohio’s ambitious Black Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, who operated simultaneously as Bush’s Ohio campaign co-chair. Blackwell directed county boards to limit voters’ access to the provisional ballots that ensured that anyone improperly purged from voting rolls could cast their ballot. He ordered voter-registration forms accepted only on expensive eighty-pound stock paper, a sly technique to exclude newly registered voters (who he almost certainly knew were more likely to be Black). Under Blackwell’s supervision, county boards were falsely telling former prisoners they could not vote. County boards allocated fewer voting machines to heavily Democratic cities. Black Ohio voters on average waited fifty-two minutes to vote, thirty-four minutes longer than White voters, according to one post-election study. Long lines caused 3 percent of Ohio voters to leave before voting, meaning approximately 174,000 potential votes walked away, larger than Bush’s 118,000 margin of victory. “Blackwell made Katherine Harris look like a cupcake,” Representative John Conyers said after investigating Ohio’s voter suppression, referring to the Florida secretary of state who certified Bush as winner of the election in 2000. But according to the theory that Black people can’t be racist because they lack power, Blackwell didn’t have the power to suppress Black votes. Remember, we are all either racists or antiracists. ...