How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials)

by Ibram X. Kendi

Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.

I really wanted to discuss how racial inequities are normalized; how so many people could live in societies where let’s say Black people are disproportionately incarcerated, impoverished, dying young, unemployed, and being diseased, killed by the police, expelled from schools, and fired from jobs—and see all this inequity as normal. No there there. When people have been led to believe that Black people are more violent (racist idea), then it makes sense Black people are being incarcerated and killed by the police at the highest rates. Racist ideas cause people to believe violent cops when they claim they feared for their life; when police officials say if funds are transferred from bloated police budgets to under-funded public schools, then there will be a rash of crime; since the violent crime is perceived to be the result of the Blackness of the people not the poor conditions racist policies have created. I don’t think people understand how much common sense is based in racist ideas; how racist common sense veils racist policies; how the racist policies are criminal and the racist ideas are like articulate mob lawyers covering up the crimes against humanity—a political marriage if there ever was one.