How To Be An Antiracist - Ibram X. Kendi

Update (26 April 2021): The more I read about race and racism, the more I find How To Be An Antiracist thoughtful and compelling as a way to share a practical approach to making a better future for everyone. Kendi's personal anecdotes are powerful and helpful for any reader to understand the mindset of a person's growing understanding of these difficult issues. He states repeatedly that he himself was not, and is not, perfect, thereby encouraging the reader to think critically and approach any proposition, policy, or pundit with healthy skepticism. So, though I agree more with the book now than I did when I originally wrote this post, I leave the post below unedited.

Also, it turns out a lot of the hyperlinks in this post got deleted when I recently changed the visual theme of this blog. I've tried to recover all the links, and hope they work!

 

Update (4 Aug 2023): See footnote.

Original post from here on:

Throughout 2020, I spent quite a few months lingering at the fringes of a book club put together by some dear friends in Michigan (the same ones who recommended Secondhand). Somehow, I never read the assigned book on time, but I get around to it eventually. The latest in my lagging approach to leisure literature is Ibram X. Kendi's "How To Be An Antiracist."

It’s easy to feel simultaneously swept along and a bit frustrated by this book. I enjoyed Kendi's confident statements on how things should be, but felt unsure of some of the book's generalizations. Ultimately, I think the book is absolutely worth reading (with a critical mind and a pen in hand).

This review has been sitting unfinished for about four months, for a few reasons. First, I want to treat the topic of racism with sensitivity and compassion, but I’m trained in writing about robots, and I don’t think people often take articles about robots so personally. But, I’m deeply interested in social challenges, and hope to tow you along with my voyage of learning. Second, talking about this topic (on a blog that I started to keep track of diversity in my sci-fi reading) feels very much like a performance, and "performativity" is at the very core of the racism debate amongst US Progressives*. Third, there is nuance in this space; individual pundits simultaneously agree and disagree vehemently. I’ve read a variety of opinions in an earnest attempt to understand the spectrum of opinions, and found it demands caution not to misrepresent one's own viewpoint.

With these caveats in mind, here's the order of business. The book alternates between anecdotes from Kendi's life, explanations of how racism and policy came to be as they are today, and prescriptions for combating racism through policy. I'll discuss each of these aspects in turn, then consider how others have criticized the book, and close with my own takeaways.

Autobiographical Anecdotes. The anecdotes of Kendi's life are the most compelling and engaging part of the book. This is because Kendi detailed his own racist upbringing, which establishes a framework to discuss how racist ideas pervade culture regardless of one's own race. It is a convincing case against the outdated notion that people of color can't be racist.

Importantly, Kendi's autobiographical passages highlight specific and unexpected places where racism appears in culture. This provides a footing from which to combat racism (i.e., to be antiracist). For example, he discusses criticism by Black people of Black people who "refuse to climb." This stems from a cultural notion that some Black people are inherently criminal and even enjoy poverty -- but, recognizing that this viewpoint exists in a cultural subconscious is precisely the first step towards changing it. To understand how we got to such viewpoints, Kendi details the history of racism.

A History of Racism. Kendi's explanations of racism's origins and entrenchment through policy are entertaining (and horrifying), but the author sometimes paints with a broad brush. That is, it sometimes feels that he would rather oversimplify to drive a point home than provide a nuanced understanding of the issues at hand. However, the historical examples of intersectionality are truly powerful and useful for understanding how racism has permeated through society.

As a specific example of how Kendi's writing can be blunt and misleading, consider his discussion of the SAT college admissions exam as a racist construct by its founder, Carl C. Brigham. Kendi leaves out how Brigham reversed his own position, instead branding him as irredeemably racist. Brigham's work did significantly inflame anti-immigrant sentiment, and did embolden eugenicists, but it is unfair to broadly paint Brigham's entire life as racist.

As an aside, I should point out one important tidbit: Kendi does not lean on socialism as a goal for economic progress, despite it being in vogue with current US Progressives (and derided by US Conservatives). He instead leaves room for some new type of economic system to grow out of current capitalism. I agree with this standpoint, and am excited to see what the future holds.

Prescriptions for Antiracism. In the final chapter, Kendi summarizes the antiracism lessons told anecdotally in previous chapters, thereby fulfilling the title’s promise. The book provides a scaffolding from which to build one's own viewpoint in the form of definitions of words such as "racism" and "color" at the beginning of each chapter. One can apply these definitions like a litmus test, squinting through them to figure out exactly how acidic someone is being. But, since the definitions are curt and open to interpretation, Kendi fills them out by autobiographically showing his own failures to understand them.

While prescriptions for the individual are useful, the point of the book is that it is not enough for some people to be antiracist. Instead, Kendi promotes sweeping policy reform as the way for society, as a whole, to be antiracist. That is, we should elect officials who support antiracist policies. In the same way that racist policies have left lingering systemic racism, antiracist policies can reshape society and culture.

Others' Criticisms. This book has faced criticism from US Conservatives and Progressives alike. The US Conservative opposition is unsurprising, so to best understand the varying perspectives, I recommend reading the reviews by John McWhorter and Terry Hartle, or listening to this discussion between McWhorter and Sam Harris. There is much to agree with, and much to disagree with.

McWhorter’s criticism is interesting because it comes from an aggressive US Progressive (which, unfortunately, becomes ammunition for US Conservatives). The crux of McWhorter's point is that Kendi's book is too simple, which he illustrates well in a discussion of Kendi's approach to education reform. Per McWhorter, Kendi's prescriptions would crush individual liberties, and thereby create backlash that only entrenches racist thinking. Indeed, we already see this backlash in, e.g., Executive Order 13950. Here, it is important to note that McWhorter is not alone in feeling Kendi's work oversimplifies major issues, as evidenced by Terry Hartle's more middle-of-the-road review.

But, McWhorter also oversimplifies his own standpoint by branding antiracism as a religion that leads to performativity of people seeking personal atonement instead of substantive societal change. I believe this point is founded more upon this aggressive paragraph by Kendi than upon the book at hand. Indeed, I think McWhorter would agree with this passage in Chapter 17 of the book: “Antiracists can be as doctrinaire in their view of racism as racists can be in their view of not-racism. How can antiracists ask racists to open their minds and change when we are closed-minded and unwilling to change? I ignored my own hypocrisy, as people customarily do when it means giving up what they hold dear.” 

To summarize, it appears the major challenge in this space -- faced by McWhorter, Kendi, and myself -- is to avoid oversimplifying and thereby misrepresenting each others' views.

My Takeaways. At an individual level, antiracism feels similar to a directive to be compassionate, and requires one to assess every situation on its own. It seems that we should have antiracism both ways: cut-and-dried and easy-to-apply, yet subtle and nuanced, needing to be teased out of every situation.

In light of this paradox, the extremes in US Progressivism on race are not so far apart. By oversimplifying each others' views into sound bites, it makes for easy-to-sell content that has little to do with substantive change. I believe McWhorter fully understands this, but he finds it useful to oversimplify Kendi. Similarly, I'm sure it is deeply satisfying to be outwardly, performatively antiracist, to the point where one would overextend and criticize McWhorter and others as promoting racism. So I'll sit in between, trying to understand both viewpoints.

The most important takeaway of this book for me is in understanding the utility of the loaded word, "racism." Basically, there's no point in calling a person racist, except to attack them and make them feel defensive. It is much more useful to consider how actions and policies can be racist. In terms of people, “racist” is not a "fixed identity," to use Kendi's words; so, the book encourages to view people as people, and treat them with basic dignity. Kendi's autobiographical passages are thus a fable to illustrate this moral.

Acknowledgements. Thanks to Rob Pfaff, Tara Mina, and Shubh Gupta for putting eyes on an early draft of this post.

* As ideologies, "US Conservatism" and "US Progressivism" are distinct from conservatism ("keep what works") and progressivism ("fix what is broken"), which are not at odds with each other. Update (4 Aug 2023): I have revised my viewpoint on these definitions! A much better definition is Conservatism is "keep the status quo (for the powerful)"  and Progressivism is "change the status quo (for the better)". Check out this video for a very good overview.