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
Space racism is the set of policies and supporting ideas that create inequities among different racialized spaces or eliminate protected spaces. Space antiracism is the set of policies and ideas that promotes racial equity in both integrated and protected spaces.
Kendi’s argument about racism in different spaces, whether institutional or informal, relies on the observation that certain racial groups and their cultures dominate different places. The way a space is racialized depends not only on who is present in the space, but also on who holds power in that space.
Themes
Temple University’s African American studies department, where Kendi did his PhD, is a Black space that centers Black people, ideas, histories, and cultures. In contrast, the university as a whole centers white people, ideas, histories, and cultures, which it considers “universal.” This European-centered worldview is the default in society at large, including among many Black people. But at Temple, the visionary scholar Ama Mazama taught Kendi that there is no such thing as an objective worldview—rather, what seems to be objectivity is really just “collective subjectivity.” This revolutionized Kendi’s own worldview. When he asked what scholars should try to achieve instead of objectivity, Mazama’s answer was to “tell the truth.”
Kendi argues that the education offered at most American universities isn’t “universal” because the curriculum offers a narrow perspective that only represents the experiences of Europeans—a small slice of humanity. While people might complain that African American studies is also insufficiently universal Kendi believes that universities need African American studies because the default curriculum not universal enough. Of course, he also questions whether it’s possible to be “universal” or objective at all. Kendi’s points out that objectivity and the truth are not the same thing: rather, objectivity gets in the way of seeing the truth. He believes that an objective view point is really just a subjective one that the majority agrees upon. When people claim to be objective, they are claiming to have the only valid viewpoint. This means that they immediately write off any opposing ideas instead of logically considering them, which gets in the way of finding the truth.
Themes
Temple University was a white space. People had to present identification to get in, because the administration wanted to keep out the poor Black people who lived nearby. This was based on the racist idea that poor Black neighborhoods are violent. Kendi points out that white neighborhoods are violent and dangerous, even though financial criminals (who are mostly white) steal 100 times as much money as robbers, and drunk drivers (also mostly white) kill far more people than homicide every year. Kendi isn’t saying that white neighborhoods are more violent, but instead that people decide what counts as violence based on racist assumptions.
When Kendi argues that wealthy white neighborhoods are violent, he is not denying that there is plenty of violence in poor Black neighborhoods. Rather, he’s saying that the way Americans define violence is specific to the crimes that are more common in poor and Black communities, while excluding the crimes that wealthy and white people commit. This is another example of how “objectivity” is really just a way of disguising a particular subjective view of the world as the only acceptable one. It’s also another compelling reason to pay special attention to definitions, as this is often where racist assumptions lie.
Themes
When a certain group has power or an obvious population majority in a space, this space becomes “racialized.” Space racism is term for how racist policies redistribute resources from non-white spaces toward white spaces. Space racist ideas establish “a racial hierarchy of space” to justify these inequities.
Like all forms of racism, space racism relies on policies that produce inequities and are supported by ideas. One way that space racism redistributes resources toward white spaces is by changing the power dynamics and racial composition of spaces in the first place. (For instance, through the gentrification of poor, predominantly non-white neighborhoods).
Themes
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Most of Kendi’s fellow PhD students were proud of their historically Black colleges and universities—except one, who also attended FAMU. She was angry that someone at the school messed up her transcript, and she blamed the whole institution for this mistake.
This student’s animosity toward FAMU follows the same pattern as behavioral racism: she judges an entire group (or institution) based on the actions of a single individual. In any other context, her anecdotal evidence would set off red flags in a university setting. But behavioral racism is so common when it comes to race that even a PhD student in Black studies does not recognize it.
Themes
People commonly find similar justifications for denigrating historically Black institutions. Kendi’s uncle argued that Black students should go to historically white schools in order to learn how to white spaces. But Kendi points out that this isn’t a useful life skill for most Black Americans, who spend their whole lives in majority-Black neighborhoods, jobs, churches, and so on. Like many Americans, Kendi’s uncle wrongly assumed that only white spaces counted as “the real world.” But antiracists know that there are multiple real worlds.
Kendi’s uncle’s idea is assimilationist and space racist because he assumes that Black people are only successful if they work in majority-white spaces. In other words, Kendi’s uncle is thinking just like Kendi did when he moved to Philadelphia: he assumes that wealth and success are inherently white, while poverty and failure are inherently Black.
Themes
Other critics insist that historically Black institutions provide an inferior education—but comparing Black and white spaces, or rich and poor spaces, is impossible without also accounting for inequities in their access to resources. Without looking at resources, comparisons are often biased. For instance, people complain that historically Black institutions have lower graduation rates overall, yet Black students at these institutions actually have higher graduation rates. These critics hold racialized spaces to a racist double standard, just like Kendi used to: in white spaces, he blamed individuals for their errors. But in Black spaces, he blamed the space itself, while conveniently forgetting resource disparities.
Kendi isn’t saying that people should never compare Black and white spaces or institutions—rather, he’s saying that comparisons should specifically look at how those spaces and institutions utilize the resources available to them. It’s misleading to simply compare outputs (like graduation rates) without recognizing inputs (like funding or staffing).
Themes
In the United States, space racism began with debates about sending Black people back to Africa in the 1800s. Later, during the Civil War, Black leaders asked for a region of their own, so General Sherman destroyed much of Georgia and South Carolina, then promised emancipated people 40 acres and a mule (which few ever received). Assimilationists like editor Horace Greeley advocated integration as a way to improve Black people and fight white racism.
There’s a big difference between white people trying to send Black people back to Africa and Black people asking for a region in which to live. The first is forcible segregation based on a dominant racial group’s desire to separate themselves from a subordinate group and refuse to share resources with them. The second is a subordinate racial group’s request for a protected space, so that they can shield themselves from racism.
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Now, integrationist ideas are common, and people who hold them assume that creating separate racialized spaces means imposing segregation. This is wrong: protected all-Black spaces can create cultural solidarity and provide a refuge from racism. Integrationists are still responding to the idea of “separate but equal,” which segregationists used to justify separate and unequal spaces. Although the civil rights movement focused on fighting “separate” rather than “equal” for political reasons, it’s totally possible to create “separate but equal” spaces that aren’t segregated. Enduring racial power imbalances just make this very difficult in practice.
Kendi is not defending the segregationist version of separate but equal, because 20th-century segregationists separated spaces by force and ensured that they weren’t actually equal. Rather, he is arguing that all racial groups should receive an equitable amount of public resources and have specific spaces that center their own histories, cultures, and experiences.
Themes
The American solution to school segregation was to bus Black students to white schools. This reinforced racism by suggesting that white spaces are superior, and that Black people have to enter them to be successful. This is exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. feared. Today, 80 percent of public school teachers are white, but most of their students are not. White teachers have lower expectations of their non-white students, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: poor Black students perform much worse in school if they don’t have any Black teachers.
Again, Kendi believes that Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy has been distorted. Many assume that his vision has been achieved, when in reality, the United States remains highly unequal. Like most antiracist activists, King’s fundamental goal was equality, not integration. The fact that students perform better with teachers of their same race reflects the importance of creating protected spaces: by insulating people from the effects of racism, protected spaces help them perform to their fullest potential.
Themes
With school desegregation, the Supreme Court banned segregated white spaces that hoarded resources while allowing integrated white spaces that hoarded resources. Now, politicians frequently suggest that Black students go to integrated, white-dominated schools in order to improve. Integration did improved outcomes for Black students, but only because it gave these students the same resources and funding as their white peers. In other words, the solution is an equitable distribution of resources, not integration for integration’s sake.
The Supreme Court’s decision shows how the focus on integration versus segregation is actually a racist idea: it centers the conversation around diversity, not power. In other words, it is based on the assumption that a space is better or worse depending on the race of the people who are present in it. In reality, improving schools for students of color is mainly about where and how the government apportions funding for schools.
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In fact, Kendi points out that a perfectly integrated space representative of the American population would still be majority-white. If integrationists want every space to be integrated this way, they would make every space a white space. In contrast, antiracists think everyone should have “open and equal access” to different spaces, but that all groups should have spaces that prioritize them. Most importantly, resources must be distributed equitably among these spaces.
Kendi again emphasizes that antiracism’s goal isn’t diversity but rather an equitable distribution of power and resources. Integration, diversity, and “color-blind” policies are often assimilationism in disguise—they assume that people of color need to imitate white people and join white spaces in order to improve. Meanwhile, segregationism forces subordinate groups out of dominant spaces in order to preserve the dominant group’s advantages, creating a system of separate and unequal spaces. In contrast, antiracism asks for protected and equitable spaces. Such spaces help different cultures coexist and learn from one another, without pressuring any of them to change.
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