Five Things I Learned From Kendi’s “How To Be An Antiracist”
[If you prefer a video version or are out of free Medium articles… you can find a video version: YouTube.com/ThatMakesSenseToMe]
This book is a bestseller for a reason. I just finished reading Ibram X Kendi’s Book and dang it is worth your time.
Now, admittedly, it says racism on the tin, so perhaps you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a lefty book with lefty values, but I lean pretty left and found myself getting schooled a bunch of times.
In fact, to be slightly too honest, I thought I could skip this book. Ever since I finished my graduate degree in applied ethics, I have spent most of my research time reading books like it. I haughtily figured I might already… “get it.” I was real wrong. I learned so much from this book that out of respect, I had to write about it.
Admitting haughtiness is an odd place to start a public video, I want to open deliberately with some humility because it is actually the first of five lessons.
#1 Humility
Dr. Kendi has more credentials than most living people, but he still consistently admits his mistakes, and openly reflects when he is wrong. The book has some academic elements, but it can be described as his coming to terms with the racism he himself has.
That might sound odd because he’s a black male college professor. How can a black person have anti-black racism? He doesn’t just explain this. He invites you into it. It’s a welcoming read because he keeps telling stories of his own failures and humbling himself even as he teaches.
Now, I’m not suggesting you tweet a confession of all the racist thoughts you’ve ever had, but all of us can learn from his earnest openness and yes his willingness to occasionally get schooled on something he thought he already had on lock.
#2 Assimilation
Theme number 2 is actually robots.
Yes. Somewhat out of left field. I study AI ethics and I make video essays about time transcending aliens, robots with utilitarian philosophy, and totalitarian technology in marvel movies. So tech coming up is to be expected. But it actually fits really well. A science fiction trope is, as they say, “You will be assimilated.” Dr. Who’s Cybermen, Star Trek’s Borg, The Matrix’s Battery Pods.
The general philosophy of these machines is assimilation. They believe they are justified because they believe they are superior. Weaker, less evolved humans need to be upgraded, fit themselves into a different form, standardize their thinking, and update their protocols. By forcing us to conform to their vision they think they are doing us a favor. They think it’s progress.
And this is what Dr. Kendi is teaching me. I have a lot of assimilationist ideals about race I need to work through. On page pg. 24 he defines it. It’s kind of nuanced, so the easiest way to understand his definition of the word is to see what it’s not. Assimilationists are neither segregationists nor anti-racists. Let’s define those.
Segregationists are the obviously bad, bad guys. They believe in permanent racial hierarchy. The only solution to what DuBois called the problem of the color line is “separate” and maybe not even equal.
Anti-racists, are the obviously good, good guys. Like it says on the tin, anti-racists reject racial hierarchy. They see races as inherently equal.
You might think that these are the two extremes and therefore the middle is where we should be shooting. You could be forgiven for thinking this. This “find the middle ground” approach goes all the way back to Aristotle and his “golden mean.” But the goal isn’t neutrality.
And he’s helping me see this because he also defines the assimilationist. Let me just quote him:
Assimilationist: one who is expressing the racist idea that a racial group is culturally or behaviorally inferior and is supporting a cultural or behavioral enrichment programs to develop that racial group.
Pause and read that again if you need, but translation: Assimilationists think the answer to systemic racism is teaching black people to be more like white people. “Professionalize” your hair. “Standardize” your speech. Code switch. Assimilate.
To be as clear as I possibly can about it. The moral problem with this way of thinking is that it might feel like it’s progressive, but it’s judgmental of blackness and black culture. It’s condescending toward different, equally valid ways of being. And, like the Cybermen and the Borg… it’s just another way of expressing the belief that whiteness and white culture are superior.
Why? Well that leads to number 3.
Number 3: Black Behavior Isn’t the Cause of White Racism
This one calls back to humility. Dr, Kendi could have taught this to us but instead he explained a story of one of his own failures.
He tells a story of how he saw someone absolutely making a fool of themselves in public and said out loud to his girlfriend: “At least he’s not black”
As if to say, this way he’s not mis-representing the race.
The mindset here, as he explains, is that he made this comment because he thought that good black behavior made white people less racist —
But I’ll say it again, Black Behavior isn’t the cause of White Racism. Thinking that systemic racism comes about because of black behavior is at best a kind of accidental victim blaming, and at worst a racial gaslighting.
Now, I have had some earnest conversations with some earnest white people. They will at this point say something like… but the crime rate? Or but the drug use? Or but the… and then they’ll insert some stereotype that they’d normally not be willing to say out loud. Or if they’re brazen and irreverent, they may start throwing out statistics to make a clandestine case for an ultimately racist (specifically segregationist) worldview.
It’s easy to point fingers and judge when people act this way. But this is WHY Dr. Kendi starts with humility. He admits he said the wrong thing. He admits getting it backwards and having to course correct. If he can learn, so can we. So, to capture this lesson in some punchy (underly nuanced) language.
Do ghettos exist? Yes.
Why do ghettos exist?
The segregationist answer is that ghettos exist because of a culture or biological inferiority that is permanent. That’s um… that’s white supremacy. That is a clearly bad, bad-guy way of viewing the world. It’s a definition-of-racism kind of answer.
The assimilationist answer is because of a temporary culture inferiority. If only we’d teach people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, if only we just tweaked they way they live a little bit, they’d evolve. This is also racist. And if that’s not clear to you, I’d encourage you to read the book or listen to the audiobook. (Here’s a non-amazon-based indie bookstore affiliate link)
But the anti-racist answer is that black behavior isn’t the cause of white racism. Why do ghettos exist? Because white people built them that way. Because we keep them that way with redlining. With digital redlining. With over policing. With voter suppression. With policy choices we continue to make.
Why is there violent crime in the ghetto? Because poverty and criminality are a toxic power couple. They are related and self-reinforcing. When white policy creates black poverty, white policy is creating black criminality.
Black behavior isn’t the cause of white racism. In the aggregate… it’s the opposite.
How can someone grab their bootstraps while you’re putting handcuffs on their wrists?
- For sitting in a Starbucks.
- For driving.
- For looking suspicious.
# 4: Post Racialism
In 2017, 92% of White police believe the post racial myth (see pg. 148)
I don’t want to spend too much time here. You’ve probably heard this term.
But if you haven’t yet, the post racial myth is the idea that while slavery and racist policies existed in the past, the civil rights movement fixed all that. This is white nonsense. We know it’s white nonsense.
Someone who has articulated this much better than I have is Bryan Stevenson. I’ve talked about him on TikTok and in my I,Robot video, but for purposes of this video, I’ll just quote from his speech from John’s Hopkins.
We’ve accepted a narrative about the civil rights movement– I’m gonna tell you– that has gotten a little too celebratory. I hear people talking about the civil rights movement and its starting to sound like a three day carnival.
On day one, Rosa Parks didn’t give up her seat on a bus. On day two, Dr. King led a march on Washington. On day three, we changed all the laws and racism was over.
And I wish that was our history, but that is not our history.
-Bryan Stevenson, Author of Just Mercy
Tragically, we know that racism didn’t end in the 1960s. Even if we ignore the last decade, we know this isn’t so because forced sterilizations en masse in the 1970s and 1980s.
Authentic reverence is a casualty of the digital age. Everything scrolls by so quick. But we need to pause for a second on this. Forced sterilization is part of our history as a country. And not just back in the old days. Really freaking recently.
Eugenics was the philosophy of the actual Nazis. And yet 30 years after the war. Decades after Dr. King we were still invading bodies violating one of the most human things about people.
Sorry 92% of 2017 white police. We do not live in a post-racial world. That is why we need — anti-racism, not mere moral neutrality.
#5 Unnatural Selection
And unfortunately, this dark chapter of the American story didn’t really end in the 1980s.
There is more to be said about the history of eugenics. I recently finished reading “Why Fish Don’t Exist” and am working on “Fatal Invention.” The reality is that population control is still prevalent, just more subtle.
Medical racism and medical sexism are entire fields of research. Medical myths that lead to deaths are a reality of today. Not just the 70s and 80s.
Kendi’s page 218, for example– Black women, even with advanced degrees, are still more likely to lose their babies in childbirth compared to white women.
Or, if you’re following the news at all you know that COVID, by proportion, has killed more people of color than white. This is not for no reason. Unjust medical disparities come about as a result of social design. They are the results of policy. Dr. Kendi goes into more details about access to medical care in his book and I’d encourage you to check it out.
We may have taken deliberate eugenics off the table, but we have built a world that accomplishes the same tragic goal on socio-cultural autopilot.
If this claim of automatic racism strikes you as extreme, I’d encourage you to read, Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt, Race after Technology by Ruha Benjamin, or Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts
Conclusion: The power of definition
So Dr. Kendi says to be an antiracist not a supremacist, not a segregationist, not even an assimilationist. So how do you know how to be an anti-racist?
I don’t have those answers. I don’t know if you were expecting me to. This is a centuries long, complex problem. It’s going to take all of us. And it’s going to take effort. And we should expect to leave conversations without a feeling of resolution. So far we’ve covered:
- Humility
- Assimilationism
- Black Behavior
- Post-Racialism
- Unnatural Selection
But these were just my five. There’s so much more in the book. Go Read it. Go Read it right now.
Or.. do what grad students do, which is carefully read the beginning, carefully read the end and take notes. Then read the rest selectively based on your research goals and intuitions. I found it so valuable I read the whole thing, and then I re-read the end. I’d recommend you do the same.
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