How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials)

by Ibram X. Kendi

Jason Riley wrote in The Wall Street Journal on September 28, 2010. Selective HBCUs lag behind “decent state schools like the University of Texas at Austin, never mind a Stanford or Yale.” Riley had pulled out the familiar weapon safeguarding space racism and menacing Black spaces: unfairly comparing Black spaces to substantially richer White spaces. The endowment of the richest HBCU, Howard, was forty-five times less than the University of Texas at Austin’s endowment in 2020, never mind being forty-one and forty-four times less than the endowment of Stanford and Yale, respectively. The racial wealth gap produces a giving gap. For public HBCUs, the giving gap extends to state-funding gaps, as racist policies steer more funds to HWCUs, like the current “performance based” state models.

Resources define a space, resources the conjoined twins divvy up. People make spaces from resources. Comparing spaces across race-classes is like matching fighters of different weight classes, which fighting sports consider unfair. Impoverished Black neighborhoods should be compared to equally impoverished White neighborhoods, not to considerably richer White neighborhoods. Small Black businesses should be compared to equally small White businesses, not to wealthy White corporations. Indeed, when researchers compare HBCUs to HWCUs, HBCUs have equal rates of Black graduation.

I think the terminology in this chapter could have been much clearer. I changed “integrationist” to “assimilationist” as part of an overall effort to provide more clarity. I wanted to clarify that two ideological assumptions underlie integration: the assimilationist and the antiracist assumptions. Integration can be harmful if advanced from an assimilationist standpoint; I want people to advance integration from an antiracist standpoint.

Assumptions underlying integration—the placing of people of all racial backgrounds in the same spaces—can be antiracist, or assimilationist, like Greeley’s. The antiracist assumption underlying integration is that in a multiracial nation, all racial groups can live together in harmony and equity where biological and behavioral sameness is acknowledged, ethnic and cultural differences are respected, and the diversity of it all benefits all. Greeley’s assimilationist assumption underlying integration is that White people can cultivate away the barbarism of people of color while upstanding people of color can cultivate away the racist ideas of White people. In a historically racist society, integration, whether assimilationist or antiracist, expects Black bodies harmed by racism to heal in proximity to racist White people who haven’t yet stopped harming them.

Separation is not always segregation. The antiracist desire to separate from racist neighbors is different from the segregationist desire to separate from “inferior” Black people.

Whenever Black people voluntarily gather among themselves, assimilationists do not see spaces of Black solidarity created to separate Black people from racism. They see spaces of White hate. They do not see spaces of cultural solidarity, of solidarity against racism. They see spaces of segregation against White people. Assimilationists do not see these spaces as the movement of Black people toward Black people. Assimilationists think about them as a movement away from White people. They then equate that supposed movement away from White people with the White segregationist movement away from Black people. Assimilationist ideas equate spaces for the survival of Black bodies with spaces for the survival of White supremacy.

King’s nightmare is a product of the dueling Brown decision. The court rightly undermined the legitimacy of segregated White spaces that hoard public resources, exclude all people of color, and are wholly dominated by White power and cultures. But the court also reinforced the legitimacy of integrated White spaces that hoard public resources, include some people of color, and are generally, though not wholly, dominated by White power and cultures. White majorities, White power, and White culture dominate both the segregated and the integrated spaces, making both White.

Through lynching Black bodies, the segregationist approach is, in the end, more harmful to Black bodies than the assimilationist approach. Through lynching Black cultures, the assimilationist approach is, in the end, more harmful to Black bodies than the segregationist approach. And the assimilationist approach reasons, the more integration the better for people of color.

Antiracist strategy fuses desegregation with an antiracist form of integration and racial solidarity. Desegregation: eliminating all barriers to all racialized spaces. To be antiracist is to support the voluntary integration of bodies attracted by cultural solidarity, a shared humanity. Integration: resources rather than bodies. To be an antiracist is to champion resource equity by challenging the racist policies that produce resource inequity. Racial solidarity: openly identifying, supporting, and protecting integrated racial spaces. To be antiracist is to equate ethnic and cultural and color differences among racial groups.

My ideas of gender and sexual orientation reflected those of my parents. They did not actively and explicitly promote distrust of queer people (just as many parents do not actively and explicitly promote distrust of people of color). They rarely talked about queer people (just as many parents rarely talk explicitly about people of color). Ideas often dance a cappella. Their silence erased queer existence as thoroughly as assimilationist ideas erased the different cultures of peoples of color.

To be antiracist is to reject not only the hierarchy of races but of race-genders. To be feminist is to reject not only the hierarchy of genders but of race-genders. To truly be antiracist is to be feminist. To truly be feminist is to be antiracist. To be antiracist (and feminist) is to level the different race-genders, is to root the inequities between the equal race-genders in the policies of gender racism.

Sexist notions of men as more naturally dangerous than women (since women are considered naturally fragile, in need of protection) and racist notions of Black people as more dangerous than White people intersect to produce the gender racist idea of the hyperdangerous Black man, more dangerous than the White man, the Black woman, and (the pinnacle of innocence) the White woman. No defense is stronger than the tears of White womanhood, whether innocent or guilty. No prosecution is stronger than the case for inherently guilty Black manhood.

Black women first recognized their own intersectional identity. Black feminists first theorized the intersection of two forms of oppression: sexism and racism. Intersectional theory now gives all of humanity the ability to understand the intersectional oppression of their identities, from impoverished Latinx people to Black men to White women to Native lesbians to transgender Asian people. A theory from and for Black women is a theory for humanity. No wonder Black feminists have been saying from the beginning that when human beings become serious about the freedom of Black women, human beings become serious about the freedom of humanity.

I learned from them that I am not a defender of Black people if I am not sharply defending Black women, if I am not sharply defending queer Black people.

I binge-read every author they mentioned in their public exchanges and in their private exchanges with me. I gobbled up Audre Lorde, E. Patrick Johnson, bell hooks, Joan Morgan, Dwight McBride, Patricia Hill Collins, and Kimberlé Crenshaw like my life depended on it. My life did depend on it. I wanted to overcome my gender racist ideas, my queer racist ideas. But I had to be willing to do for Black women and queer Black people what I had been doing for Black men and Black cisgender heterosexuals, which meant first of all learning more—and then defending them like my heroes had.

Incorrect conceptions of race as a social construct (as opposed to a power construct), of racial history as a singular march of racial progress (as opposed to a duel of antiracist and racist progress), of racism as rooted in ignorance and hate (as opposed to powerful self-interest)—all come together to produce solutions bound to fail. Terms and sayings like “I’m not racist” and “race neutral” and “post-racial” and “color-blind” and “only one race, the human race” and “only racists speak about race” and “racism is prejudice plus power” and “Black people can’t be racist” and “White people are evil” are bound to fail in identifying and eliminating racist power and policy.

These repetitive failures exact a toll. Racial history does not repeat harmlessly. Instead, its devastation multiplies when generation after generation repeats the same failed strategies and solutions and ideologies, rather than burying past failures in the caskets of past generations.

Generations of Black bodies have been raised by the judges of “uplift suasion.” The judges strap the entire Black race on the Black body’s back, shove the burdened Black body into White spaces, order the burdened Black body to always act in an upstanding manner to persuade away White racism, and punish poor Black conduct with sentences of shame for reinforcing racism, for bringing the race down. I felt the burden my whole Black life to be perfect before both White people and the Black people judging whether I am representing the race well. The judges never let me just be, be myself, be my imperfect self.

“How would you feel if he was Black?” I asked her, and myself. “I’d be really embarrassed,” she said, speaking for me and for so many of us trapped on the plantation of uplift suasion. “Because we don’t need anyone making us look bad.” “In front of White people?” I asked her. “Yes. It makes them look down on us. Makes them more racist.” We thought on a false continuum, from more racist to less racist to not racist. We believed good Black behavior made White people “less racist,” even when our experiences told us it usually did not. But that night, we thought about it together and shared a few critiques of uplift suasion for the first time.

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.

In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. admitted, “We’ve had it wrong and mixed up in our country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power.” But our generation ignores King’s words about the “problem of power, a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to the preserving of the status quo.” The same way King’s generation ignored Du Bois’s matured warning. The same way Du Bois’s generation ignored Garrison’s matured warnings. The problem of race has always been at its core the problem of power, not the problem of immorality or ignorance.

The original problem of racism has not been solved by suasion. Knowledge is only power if knowledge is put to the struggle for power. Changing minds is not a movement. Critiquing racism is not activism. Changing minds is not activism. An activist produces power and policy change. If a person has no record of power or policy change, then that person is not an activist.

We arrive at demonstrations excited, as if our favorite musician is playing on the speakers’ stage. We convince ourselves we are doing something to solve the problem of racism, when we are really doing something to satisfy our feelings. We go home fulfilled, like we dined at our favorite restaurant. And this fulfillment is fleeting. The problems of inequity and injustice persist. They persistently make us feel bad and guilty. We persistently do something to make ourselves feel better as we convince ourselves we are making society better, as we never make society better.

When I lashed out at well-meaning people who showed the normal impulse of fear, who used the incorrect terminology, who asked the incorrect question—oh, did I think I was so radical. When my scorched-earth words sent attendees fleeing at rallies and meetings, when my scorched-earth writings sent readers fleeing, oh, did I think I was so radical. When in fact, if all my words were doing was sounding radical, then those words were not radical at all.

What if we measure the radicalism of speech by how radically it transforms open-minded people, by how the speech liberates the power within? What if we measure the conservatism of speech by how intensely it keeps people the same, keeps people enslaved by their ideas and fears, conserving their inequitable society?

We do not have to be fearless like Harriet Tubman to be antiracist. We have to be courageous to be antiracist. Courage is the strength to do what is right in the face of fear, as the anonymous philosopher tells us. I gain insight into what’s right from antiracist ideas. I gain strength from fear. While many people are fearful of what could happen if they resist, I am fearful of what could happen if I don’t resist.

Self-critique allows change. Changing shows flexibility. Antiracist power must be flexible to match the flexibility of racist power, propelled only by the craving for power to shape policy in their unjust interests. Racist power believes in by any means necessary. We, their challengers, typically do not, not even some of those inspired by Malcolm X.

We care less about bringing resources to people in dire straits, as we say we are purifying ourselves for the people in dire straits, as our purifying keeps the people in dire straits. As we critique the privilege and inaction of racist power, we show our privilege and inaction by critiquing every effective strategy, ultimately justifying our inaction on the comfortable seat of privilege. Anything but flexible, we are too often bound by ideologies that are bound by failed strategies of racial change.

What if we assessed the methods and leaders and organizations by their results of policy change and equity? What if strategies and policy solutions stemmed not from ideologies but from problems? What if antiracists were propelled only by the craving for power to shape policy in their equitable interests?

Demonstrations are, not surprisingly, a favorite of suasionists. Demonstrations annoy power in the way children crying about something they will never get annoy parents. Unless power cannot economically or politically or professionally afford bad press—as power could not during the Cold War, as power cannot during election season, as power cannot close to bankruptcy—power typically ignores demonstrations.

The most effective demonstrations (like the most effective educational efforts) provide methods for people to give their antiracist power, to give their human and financial resources, channeling attendees and their funds into organizations and protests and power-building and power-seizing campaigns.

As important as finding the antiracist power within and financial support, demonstrations can provide emotional support for ongoing protests. Nighttime rallies in the churches of Montgomery, Alabama, rocking with the courage-locking words of Martin Luther King Jr., sustained those courageous Black women who primarily boycotted the public buses and drained that revenue stream for the city throughout 1956.

The most effective protests create an environment whereby changing the racist policy becomes in power’s self-interest, like desegregating businesses because the sit-ins are driving away customers, like increasing wages to restart production, like giving teachers raises to resume schooling, like passing a law to attract a well-organized force of donors or voters.

Organizing and protesting are much harder and more impactful than mobilizing and demonstrating. Seizing power is much harder than protesting power and demonstrating its excesses.

The demonstrations alone had little chance of freeing the Jena 6. A judge denied bail for one of the Jena 6 the day after the demonstrations. The news shocked and alienated some of my BSU peers from activism. After all, when we attend or organize demonstrations thinking they are protests, thinking they can change power and policy, and see no change happening, it is hard not to become cynical. It is hard not to think the Goliath of racism can never be defeated. It is hard to think of our strategies and solutions and ideologies and feelings as the true failures. It is hard to think we actually have all the tools for success.

Neither failure nor success is written. The story of our generation will be based on what we are willing to do. Are we willing to endure the grueling fight against racist power and policy? Are we willing to transform the antiracist power we gather within us to antiracist power in our society?

“Instead of describing racism as a disease, don’t you think racism is more like an organ?” I asked the lecturer. “Isn’t racism essential for America to function? Isn’t the system of racism essential for America to live?” All my leading questions did not bait Boyce Watkins into a defense of his disease conception. Too bad. I wanted to engage him. I was not much of an intellectual. I closed myself off to new ideas that did not feel good. Meaning I shopped for conceptions of racism that fit my ideology and self-identity.

How can antiracist people ask racist people to open their minds and change when we are sometimes closed-minded and unwilling to change? I ignored my own hypocrisy, as people customarily do when it means giving up what they hold dear. Giving up my conception of racism meant giving up my view of the world and myself. I would not do that without a fight. I would lash out at anyone who “attacked” me with new ideas, unless I feared and respected them like I feared and respected Kaila and Yaba.

But this framing of White people versus Black people does not take into account that most White people would benefit more from antiracism than racism. This framing of White people versus Black people does not take into account that all White people do not benefit equally from racism.

Separating the overt individual from the covert institutional veils the specific policy choices that cause racial injustices and inequities, policies made by specific people. Covering up the specific policies and policymakers prevents us from identifying and replacing the specific policies and policymakers. We become unconscious to racist policymakers and policies as we lash out angrily at the abstract bogeyman of “the system.”

The term “institutionally racist policies” is more concrete than “institutional racism.” The term “racist policies” is more concrete than “institutionally racist policies,” since “institutional” and “policies” are redundant: Policies are institutional.

Policymakers and policies make societies and institutions, not the other way around. The United States is a racist nation because its policymakers and policies have been racist from the beginning. The conviction that racist policymakers can be overtaken, and racist policies can be changed, and the racist minds of their victims can be changed, is disputed only by those invested in preserving racist policymakers, policies, and habits of thinking. Racism has always been terminal and curable. Racism has always been recognizable and mortal.

A mission to uncover and critique America’s life of racist ideas turned into a mission to uncover and critique my life of racist ideas, which turned into a lifelong mission to be antiracist.

I define the term racist (someone who is expressing an idea of racial hierarchy, or through actions or inaction is supporting a policy that leads to racial inequity or injustice).

I define the term antiracist (someone who is expressing an idea of racial equality, or is actively supporting a policy that leads to racial equity or justice).

Racist ideas fooled me nearly my whole life. I refused to allow racist ideas to continue making a fool out of me, a chump out of me, a slave out of me. I realized there is nothing wrong with any of the racial groups and everything wrong with individuals like me who think there is something wrong with any of the racial groups. It felt so good to cleanse my mind.

Watching Sadiqa’s courage to break down her body to rebuild her body inspired me to accept the source of racist ideas I found while researching their entire history—even though it upended my previous way of thinking. My research kept pointing me to the same answer: The source of racist ideas was not ignorance and hate, but self-interest.

The history of racism is the history of powerful policymakers erecting racist policies out of self-interest, then producing racist ideas to defend and rationalize the inequitable effects of their policies, while everyday people consume those racist ideas, which in turn bleeds ignorance and hate. Treating ignorance and hate and expecting racism to shrink suddenly seemed like treating a cancer patient’s symptoms and expecting the tumors to shrink.

Educational and moral suasion is not only a failed strategy. It is a fatal strategy.

I had been privately making sense of racism through cancer since Sadiqa’s diagnosis. Except now I started making sense out of my cancer through my new conception of racism. Denying my ability to succeed in my cancer fight did not differ from those denying our ability to succeed in the antiracism fight. Denial is much easier than admission, than confession.