How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials)

by Ibram X. Kendi

Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison did not let Black people be their imperfect selves. “Have you not acquired the esteem, confidence and patronage of the whites, in proportion to your increase in knowledge and moral improvement?” Garrison asked a Black crowd not long after founding The Liberator in 1831. Uplift suasion fit his ideology that the best way to “accomplish the great work of national redemption” from slavery was “through the agency of moral power” and truth and reason. Garrison’s belief in “moral suasion” and what we can call “educational suasion” also fit his personal upbringing by a pious Baptist mother, his professional upbringing by an editor who believed newspapers are for “instruction,” his abolitionist upbringing by moral crusader Benjamin Lundy.