Title: How to Be an Antiracist
Author: Ibram X. Kendi
Genre: Current Issues/Social Justice
Trigger Warnings: Racism, colorism, homophobia, hate crimes, sexism, cancer, racial slurs (minor)
Back Cover:
Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.
Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.
Review:
This book is intense and absolutely bursting with ideas about racism and anti-racism that I’ve never heard before.
In many ways it feels like a topical memoir, as the ideas contained are illustrated and expanded through the author’s life in a mostly-chronological order. Dr. Kendi discusses his struggles with external, systemic, and internalized racism, and to a lesser degree homophobia and sexism, and now reckoning with those forces led to these ideas.
This book heavily emphasizes definitions, with each topical chapter opening with a definition of a term. At first I thought that was kind of silly, because of course I know what racism is, otherwise why would I have picked up this book? But Dr. Kendi uses these definitions – and he defines these words much differently than I would have, and for good reasons which he explains – to tackle everything from intersectionality to the idea that Black people can’t be racist. The ideas he presents are radically different from most of what I’ve heard about race and racism, and the difference is eye-opening. He makes it clear why most movements against racism today have accomplished little to nothing.
In the early hours of reading this book, I was afraid this would have to go in my “the title promised me actionable things to do but it lied to me” pile, as it was focusing more on explaining what racism and anti-racism were more than how to be an anti-racist. But it gets there. Dr. Kendi wants to make sure we’re on the same page concerning the ideas he’s presenting, but once he’s sure of that he digs into the practical, actionable stuff. And don’t think you can skip over the first sections and go straight to the practical stuff, because the actionable items won’t make half as much sense if you don’t have the context built up in the earlier parts of the book.
This book is amazingly valuable. The perspectives on racism and anti-racism are much different than mainstream ideas about race and racial activism (or at least way different from the twenty-teens Tumblr social justice ideas where I was introduced to these things). I feel like my mind has been expanded, and of course I always appreciate actionable steps. This book and the radical ideas inside are absolutely worth reading.