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
Kendi defines anti-white racism as thinking there is something “biologically, culturally, or behaviorally inferior” about people with European ancestry. It can also entail the belief that all white people are complicit in racist power structures.
Notably, Kendi limits his definition of anti-white racism to racist ideas, even though he thinks of racism as a marriage of policies and ideas that support them. This is because white people are the dominant racial group in virtually every society where they are present, and therefore they generally benefit from most racial inequities that exist. In other words, there certainly are anti-white racist ideas, but there are few anti-white racist policies significant enough to produce meaningful inequities on a societal scale.
Themes
In college, after watching the FAMU marching band perform, Kendi told his ever-skeptical roommate Clarence that he “figured white people out.” He was also trying to figure out other Black people, since FAMU was a unique environment full of Black excellence. Kendi remembers watching the presidential election results in 2000, which hinged on a few hundred votes in Florida, their state. Kendi blamed Black people from not voting enough, without understanding that the state government purged thousands of people from the voter rolls, invalidated 200,000 ballots, and blocked recounts—all strategies that targeted Black voters. Still, while FAMU’s student government protested the results, students like Kendi publicly shamed their nonvoting peers.
Kendi’s desire to “figure out” different groups of people reflects both his dedication to reaching the truth about racism and his misguided assumption that there is a singular, definable secret that explains all the differences between racial groups. Meanwhile, the 2000 election shows how racist policies hurt everyone, not just Black people. Out of a desire to prevent certain people from voting, the federal government undermined the nation’s faith in the entire electoral process.
Themes
After the election, Kendi decided that all white people were evil. He started reading the work of Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Elijah Muhammad, who argued that an evil Black scientist created white people through eugenics thousands of years ago, before Moses civilized the white “devil race” and they managed to conquer Europe. Kendi notes that this story is exactly like the stories white racists tell about Black people: that a certain race was savage until a superior race civilized them through colonization and slavery. It also supports that racist notion that today, there are inferior groups who are animalistic criminals (in “developed” countries) or who are violent, uncivilized, and incapable of self-government (in “developing” countries).
Although Elijah Muhammad’s ideas seem outlandish and improbable, their anti-Black counterparts are essentially common-sense beliefs in the United States. The two stories are virtually identical—which is to say that neither makes logical sense. But, whether racists openly admit it or not, many continue to think of Black people (and other non-white people around the world) as somehow culturally or behaviorally inferior. This perspective overlooks the fact that Europeans have politically and economically dominated the world for the last five centuries.
Themes
Kendi initially loved the NOI’s story because it neatly explained racism and helped him make sense of the 2000 election. Civil rights activist Malcolm X also fell for the NOI’s story while in prison and then eventually brought the organization to national fame. But later, upon traveling to Mecca and seeing Muslims of all races praying together, Malcolm X quit the NOI and disavowed Elijah Muhammad’s philosophy. He also took the remarkable step of recognizing that anti-white racism is real.
The Nation of Islam’s story is attractive because it has a clear hero and villain, and it explains hundreds of years of complex history by simply proclaiming that white people have something inherently evil in their souls. Malcolm X abandoned this biological racism when he saw that biology could not separate him from other devout Muslims of all races—including many white people.
Themes
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Antiracist people recognize that white people have killed, impoverished, and enslaved many millions of people around the world over the last several centuries. But they do not blame whiteness, whether biologically, culturally, or behaviorally. Hating white racism is antiracist, but hating white people is anti-white racist. Not all white people are racist, and racist power hurts most white people, just like it hurts people of color. So although all white people gain something from racist policy (which disadvantages other groups more than them), the vast majority of white people have more to gain by fighting for a just, equitable, antiracist world. This requires redistributing resources from racist power to the masses. Additionally, racist ideas often indirectly hurt white people too. For instance, many white people blame themselves for being poor, even though this “personal failure” idea began as a racist justification for eliminating social assistance for Black people.
Kendi admits that antiracists easily fall into the trap of blaming all white people for racism. He emphasizes that it’s crucial to hate the deed, not the doer—and certainly not the doer’s racial group. This is why Kendi takes issue with the notions that white people are inherently racist, can never be antiracist, or always benefit from perpetuating racist power rather than defeating it.
Themes
Some white people have long claimed that anti-discrimination civil rights laws are anti-white, as they view policy that does not automatically prioritize white interests as racist against them. Kendi points out that these people are defending the interests of racist power, even though it doesn’t benefit them. Similarly, many people of color adopt genuine anti-white racism, which also benefits racist power because it steers them away from focusing on the real problem: racist policies. As a result, Black people hurt themselves when they become anti-white, and white people hurt themselves when they become anti-Black. For instance, white supremacists tend to oppose programs like affirmative action, which primarily benefits white women, and Obamacare, even though 43 percent of its beneficiaries were white.
Curiously, both racist white people who protest anti-discrimination laws and people of color who antagonize white people are actually fighting against their own interests. Although racist ideas are originally created by racist policymakers to protect their self-interest, these ideas take on a life of their own once they enter the public sphere. Both anti-Black and anti-white ideas are effective tools for dividing and conquering Americans who could otherwise stand up to racist power. Racist policies might appear to be in working- and middle-class white people’s self-interest—but in reality, they’re not. In fact, many such white people trade better working and living conditions (which they’d get from antiracist policies) for a mere emotional sense of racial superiority (which they get from racist policies).
Themes
In college, Kendi started hating white people just like many Americans started hating Muslims after 9/11. He read discredited anthropological theories that claimed Europeans are more warlike and ruthless because of Europe’s climate and bogus psychiatry books suggesting that white people use violence to compensate for an unconscious fear of demographic decline. Kendi also had an epiphany of his own that he shared with Clarence: white people are “aliens.” Clarence couldn’t believe that he was serious and pointed out that Black and white people can reproduce, which means that they are obviously all human beings. Kendi started to realize that his sources might not be so reliable. But he still managed to get himself in trouble a few years later, when he published an embarrassing op-ed full of bogus theories about white people in a local newspaper.
Kendi’s anti-white racism illustrates how ideas follow rather than drive policy: he based his worldview on discredited pseudoscience that wouldn’t hold up in his college classes. His conspiracy theory about white people being aliens further illustrates how people often willfully abandon logic in order to confirm their preconceived notions about race. As with many racists, a brief reality check was all Kendis needed to look for other, more reliable historical explanations for racism.
Themes
