How to Be an Antiracist

by Ibram X. Kendi

Denial is the heartbeat of racism,10 beating across ideologies, races, and nations.

Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.

Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing.

If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.

To be antiracist is to view national and transnational ethnic groups as equal in all their differences. To be antiracist is to challenge the racist policies that plague racialized ethnic groups across the world. To be antiracist is to view the inequities between all racialized ethnic groups as a problem of policy.

With ethnic racism, no one wins, except the racist power at the top. As with all racism, that is the entire point.

Whoever creates the cultural standard usually puts themself at the top of the hierarchy.

I had antiracist intentions, unmindful that the car of racism can drive just as far with the right intentions.