How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials)

by Ibram X. Kendi

Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.

Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It’s a pretty easy mistake to make: People are in our faces. Policies are distant.

Antiracist ideas are based on the notion of racial equality, assimilationist ideas are rooted in the notion that certain racial groups are culturally or behaviorally inferior, and segregationist ideas spring from a belief in genetic racial distinction and fixed hierarchy.

When geneticists compare these ethnic populations, they find there is more genetic diversity between populations within Africa than between Africa and the rest of the world. Ethnic groups in Western Africa are more genetically similar to ethnic groups in Western Europe than to ethnic groups in Eastern Africa. Race is a genetic mirage.

To be assimilationist is to believe in the post-racial myth that talking about race constitutes racism, or that if we stop identifying by race, then racism will miraculously go away. They fail to realize that if we stop using racial categories, then we will not be able to identify racial inequity. If we cannot identify racial inequity, then we will not be able to identify racist policies. If we cannot identify racist policies, then we cannot challenge racist policies. If we cannot challenge racist policies, then racist power’s final solution will be achieved: an unjust world of inequity none of us can see, let alone resist. Terminating racial categories is potentially the last, not the first, step in the antiracist struggle.

We were unarmed, but we knew that Blackness armed us even though we had no guns. Whiteness disarmed the cops—turned them into fearful potential victims—even when they were approaching a group of clearly outstrapped and anxious high school kids.

My problems with personal irresponsibility were exacerbated—or perhaps even caused—by the additional struggles that racism added to my school life, from a history of disinterested, racist teachers, to overcrowded schools, to the daily racist attacks that fell on young Black boys and girls.

The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies.

Racist ideas often lead to this silly psychological inversion, where we blame the victimized race for their own victimization.

To be antiracist is to never conflate racist individuals with White people, knowing there are antiracist White individuals and racist individuals of color.

Of course, working-class White people benefit from racist policies, though not nearly as much as wealthy White people and not nearly as much as they could from a just society.

Racist power, hoarding wealth and resources, has the most to lose in the building of a just society. As we’ve learned, racist power produces racist policies out of self-interest and then produces racist ideas to justify those policies.

Pathological people made the pathological ghetto, segregationist ideas say. The pathological ghetto made pathological people, assimilationist ideas say. To be antiracist is to say the political and economic conditions, not the people, in impoverished Black neighborhoods are pathological.

King had a nightmare that came to pass. Students of color fill most of the seats in today’s public school classrooms but are taught by a 79 percent–White teaching force, which often has, however unconsciously, lower expectations for students of color. When Black and White teachers look at the same Black student, White teachers are about 40 percent less likely to believe the student will finish high school. Low-income Black students who have at least one Black teacher in elementary school are 29 percent less likely to drop out of school, 39 percent less likely among very low-income Black boys.

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.

To be a queer antiracist is to equate all the race-sexualities, to strive to eliminate the inequities between the race-sexualities. We cannot be antiracist if we are homophobic or transphobic. We must continue to “affirm that all Black lives matter,” as the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Opal Tometi, once said. Queer people. Straight people. Asexual people. Transgender people. Intersex people. Nonbinary people. Cisgender people.

Behavioral-enrichment programs, like mentoring and educational programs, can help individuals but are bound to fail racial groups, which are held back by bad policies, not bad behavior.

Healing symptoms instead of changing policies is bound to fail in healing society.

Racist policymakers drum up fear of antiracist policies through racist ideas, knowing if the policies are implemented, the fears they circulate will not come to pass. Once the fears do not come to pass, people will let down their guards as they enjoy the benefits. Once they clearly benefit, most Americans will support and become the defenders of the antiracist policies they once feared.

What if we measure the radicalism of speech by how radically it transforms open-minded people, by how the speech liberates the power within?

We do not have to be fearless like Harriet Tubman to be antiracist. We have to be courageous to be antiracist.

The most effective protests create an environment whereby changing the racist policy becomes in power’s self-interest,

My research kept pointing me to the same answer: The source of racist ideas was not ignorance and hate, but self-interest.

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.