Review: Kendi, How To Be An Antiracist

[truepenny]

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Does what it says on the tin. Kendi, like Coates using his autobiography as a platform to build off of, goes through patiently, step by step and aspect by aspect and using himself and his own attitudes as an example, how to turn racism (or its passive twin I'm-not-a-racist) into antiracism, at every decision point reiterating that racist policies arise out of self-interest rather than ignorance, and it's the racist POLICIES that have to change, because it's policy that drives social change, not individual enlightenment

Kendi is very clear about defining his terms; racism is anything that promotes inequity between racial groups; antiracism is anything that promotes equity between racial groups. He talks about class racism and gender racism and queer racism, places where racism intersects with classism, sexism, and homophobia, and in fact, following Black feminist theory, argues that the various -isms can't be separated out one from the other: that's a divide-and-conquer strategy that works well for racist power and is disastrous for antiracist power. Everyone's identity sits at the intersection of race and class and sex and sexual orientation; you can't treat one if you don't consider the others.

This book starts from Kendi's personal journey, but his belief that change must come at the level of policy means that it is always looking outward toward social change and how social change can be achieved. Autobiography as extremely well argued polemic.



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