How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials)

by Ibram X. Kendi

NOTE ON COLORISM When people of color claim they can’t be racist, I do not think they realize that they are denying and erasing colorism today, as Du Bois did a century ago. Then again, the mass erasure makes sense. If there’s one form of racism that White people and people of color most commonly ignore and deny, it is colorism. Colorism is so old and widespread that it probably seems normal to most people. I had no idea I held colorist ideas. I had no idea about this history of colorism inside the Black community. I suspect many Light people cannot see their privileges, just as many White people cannot see their privileges. They are like fish in water. Surrounded by water their whole lives, how can fish possibly see it? It isn’t until they are removed from water that they realize what they were in. It isn’t until people develop antiracist empathy and strive to put themselves in waters inhabited by a person of another complexion that they can see the privileges or even deprivations of living in their own Dark or Light skin.