How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials)

by Ibram X. Kendi

EARLY WHITE ABOLITIONISTS met regularly at a national convention, thinking the antislavery solution rested in continuing “our parental care” over free Blacks, as they stated in 1805. White abolitionists lorded over Black behavior as if on good Black “conduct must, in some measure, depend the liberation of their brethren,” as their convention stated in 1804. The White judge birthed the Black judge. “The further decrease of prejudice, and the amelioration of the condition of thousands of our brethren who are yet in bondage, greatly depend on our conduct,” Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm wrote on March 16, 1827, in one of the opening editorials of Freedom’s Journal, the first African American newspaper. I grew up on this same failed strategy more than one hundred fifty years later. 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.