Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in How to Be an Antiracist, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism vs. Antiracism
Activism and Social Transformation
Intersectionality
The History of Racist Ideas and Policies
Summary
Analysis
Dr. Kendi lays out his definitions of racism and antiracism: someone is being racist if their actions, inaction, or expression of racist ideas supports racist policy. Someone is being antiracist if their actions or expression of antiracist ideas support antiracist policies.
Kendi opens most of his chapters by defining key terms, as he believes that people’s difficulty talking about race often stems from their inability to clearly agree on what they are actually talking about. Notably, his definitions of racist and antiracist people are entirely about the observable effects of their actions and words—not about their intentions or their inner selves. This is because racism exists in the world, not in people’s heads.
Themes
In 1970, Kendi’s mom and dad spent 24 hours on a bus to attend a conference where the band Soul Liberation was performing and the Black liberation theology preacher Tom Skinner was speaking. Thousands of students, both Black and white, danced joyously to Soul Liberation’s song “Power to the People” and then listened to Tom Skinner talk about his personal transformation. When he was young, the church taught him that Jesus was white and that salvation meant following the rules. But when Skinner grew up, he realized that Jesus was a revolutionary who dedicated himself to fighting for justice and equality, which is true Christianity. Enthralled, Kendi’s parents joined the Black Power movement and became organizers in their colleges and churches. Kendi’s father never forgot how scholar James Cone defined Christianity when they met: “striving for liberation.”
Kendi’s parents’ experience shows that antiracism is not an abstract academic exercise but rather a way of relating to others. Specifically, they saw that Christianity’s foundational values—justice, liberation, and compassion—are also the values that drive antiracist activism. Tom Skinner’s reexamination of Jesus shows how reflection and analysis can lead people to new concepts that, in turn, transform their actions. Antiracism calls for the same process—definitions and ideas are important, but only as a means to activism.
Themes
Kendi grew up with this liberation-focused definition of Christianity, and he can trace his understanding of antiracism directly back to it. While often overlooked, defining key terms is an essential first step to becoming antiracist. This is because definitions help people commit to consistent principles and goals. The most important definitions are racism; antiracism; and racist or antiracist policies, ideas, and people.
In his introduction, Kendi pointed out that people tend to assume being called “racist” is a personal insult, so they react strongly in a way that shuts down conversations about race. Here, he is returning to the same idea: until people fundamentally understand what racism is and what they can do about it, they’re unlikely to do anything at all.
Themes
Racism occurs when racist policies and racist ideas come together to create and normalize racial inequity. To understand racism, one first needs to understand racist policies, racist ideas, and especially racial inequities.
It make seem like a contradiction for Kendi to use the word “racist” in his definition of racism, but Kendi is characterizing racism as a complex societal system—not just the individual prejudices or assumptions that make someone a racist. Racism ( as a social system) isn’t racist because it includes racist ideas and policies. Rather, certain ideas and policies are part of the social system called racism, and that’s what makes them racist.
Themes
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Racial inequity means that different racial groups do not have “approximately equal” standing in some important aspect of life, while racial equity means that they do.
Equity and inequity are the basic measure of whether or not a society treats different groups of people fairly. Although different scholars distinguish equity from equality in a variety of different ways, Kendi uses equality to talk about people’s inherent value and equity to talk about people’s outcomes in life. Notably, Kendi avoids the framing of “equal opportunities” versus “equal outcomes.” He believes that equal opportunities should always yield equal outcomes, and that suggesting otherwise is tied to the racist notion that some groups are inherently better than others.
Themes
Racist policies promote or maintain inequity, while antiracist policies promote or maintain equity. Every policy does one or the other, whether it’s a formal law or an unwritten rule. The popular terms “systemic racism,” “structural racism,” and “institutional racism” are just fancy synonyms for “racist policy.”
Kendi is talking about both enforceable rules (like laws or company policies) and unwritten norms (like who is willing to rent to whom, or who is more likely to get a bank loan). Kendi isn’t saying that all inequity is caused by government policy (although much of it is)—he chooses to talk about policy because it’s easier to identify and change specific policies than trying to tackle vague systems, structures, or institutions.
Themes
Another popular term is “racial discrimination,” which just means treating people differently based on race. However, focusing on individual acts of discrimination often distracts from the real source of racial inequities: racist policies and the people who write them. Moreover, when people focus on racial discrimination, they often imply that discrimination is inherently racist. But Kendi explains that it isn’t: if discrimination creates inequity, it’s racist. But if discrimination creates equity, it’s antiracist. “Race-neutral” people who argue against all discrimination actually pose the greatest obstacle to racial equity: they oppose antiracist discrimination, which Kendi believes is the only way to remedy racist discrimination that happened in the past. Such people also tend to support racist policies (like biased standardized testing) that create inequity while not explicitly mentioning race.
Again, Kendi’s defense of racial discrimination (for the purposes of antiracism) might surprise readers who instinctively associate the word “discrimination” with segregation and oppression. But since Kendi argues that a policy is racist or antiracist depending on its outcome, not its stated intent, he believes that discrimination can be racist or antiracist, as it can either hurt or help racial minorities. For instance, affirmative action admissions policies are often accused of discriminating against white or Asian American people in favor of accepting other minorities into college. But Kendi wouldn’t characterize such discrimination as racist, because these policies were implemented to remedy past discrimination against African American and American Indian people.
Themes
Next, Kendi defines a racist idea as “any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another.” An antiracist idea insists on the opposite: that all racial groups are equal despite their differences.
Racist ideas serve to justify racial inequities by blaming them on the inferior qualities of the groups that have worse life outcomes, rather than the policies that create unequal life outcomes for otherwise equally capable and deserving groups of people. Notably, antiracists do not overlook all differences, but they believe that these differences shouldn’t make some groups more valuable or deserving of a good life than others.
Themes
Having defined racial equities and inequities, racist and antiracist policies, and racist and antiracist ideas, Kendi returns to his original definitions. Racism is a set of racist policies, justified by racist ideas, that produces racial inequity. Antiracism is a set of antiracist policies, justified by antiracist ideas, that produces racial equity.
In returning to his basic definition, Kendi points out that the different parts of racism come together in a specific order: first, policies create certain equitable or inequitable outcomes. Then, ideas emerge to blame inequities on an inherent differences in value on the basis of race, rather than blaming the policies that actually caused these differences.
Themes
Kendi demonstrates how his definitions can help us analyze racial inequities. His grandparents brought his mother from Georgia to New York in the 1950s because Georgia’s climate was getting hotter, which made picking cotton intolerable. They were fleeing climate change, which disproportionately affects people of color. Then, two of his grandparents died unexpectedly within a few days of each other, which reminds him that African American people live shorter lives, suffer more infant mortality and cancer, and disproportionately lack health insurance. Meanwhile, racist policy has always ensured that people of color are underrepresented in government. After decades of Jim Crow (segregation) laws, mass incarceration and voter-ID laws now disenfranchise them. For example, Wisconsin’s voter-ID law, which targeted people of color, prevented 200,000 people from casting ballots in 2016. (Donald Trump won the state by just 22,748 votes.)
Kendi’s point is not that climate change somehow targeted his mom, or that racism gave his grandparents cancer. Rather, he’s talking about problems that disproportionately affect certain groups due to social and economic inequality. It’s only possible to determine equity or inequity based on statistical group averages, not individual anecdotes. But Kendi uses personal anecdotes to show how racism is far more complex and wide-reaching than individual people’s prejudice against other individuals. Rather, it’s a complex system of racist ideas, reinforced by racist polices, that trickles down to affect individuals like Kendi’s family members.
Themes
These examples show that racial inequities are everywhere in contemporary America. People either reinforce them or fight them—they are either racist or antiracist. But Kendi believes that these labels are fluid: whether someone is being racist or antiracist depends on what they are saying, doing, or promoting. People can change through careful self-reflection. American culture treats many racist ideas as common sense, which makes them easy to absorb. Antiracism requires learning to accept people’s differences while refusing to put different groups into a hierarchy.
Kendi again emphasizes that antiracists have to view human nature as adaptable rather than rigid. Villainizing unwittingly racist people is useless—not only do most people hold some racist beliefs, but everyone has the capacity to change them. Earlier in the book, Kendi himself admitted to believing racist ideas, yet this does not disqualify him from being antiracist now. By treating racism and antiracism as innate qualities (rather than positions that people constantly move between), antiracists actually perpetuate racism by alienating potential allies.
Themes
