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 queer racism as the policies and supporting ideas that cause inequity among race-sexualities (groups defined by both race and sexuality, like homosexual Black men). Queer antiracism creates equity among race-sexualities—which, like race-genders or race-classes, are defined by the intersection of two identities. Queer racism leads to worse outcomes for same-sex Black couples, compared to both same-sex white couples and opposite-sex Black couples.
Just like gender racism, queer racism involves the intersection of two different forms of inequity that can’t be fully separated for the people who experience them. It would be incorrect to say that queer Black people face the sum of the inequities that heterosexual Black people or queer white people face. Rather, racism and homophobia or transphobia intertwine in non-heterosexual or gender-nonconforming Black people’s experiences.
Themes
Kendi explains that in the late 19th century, scholars theorized homosexuality and Blackness in the same way: by viewing both as physiological disorders. For instance, they argued that white women’s sex organs were superior to Black women’s and suggested that Black people and homosexual people were both hypersexual by nature. This led to the powerful queer racist myth that non-heterosexual Black people were hypersexual.
Prejudiced pseudoscience is not only an issue when it comes to racism. It also helped justify homophobia and sexism, setting the stage for these forces to combine and produce more severe inequities among race-gender and race-sexuality groups.
Themes
Kendi’s best friend at Temple University was a fellow graduate student named Weckea. Initially, Kendi didn’t know that Weckea was gay, and when he found out, he was surprised: Weckea did not fit his stereotypes about gay people (hypersexuality and effeminacy). Although Kendi eventually learned that people inhabit their genders in many different ways, he always wondered why Weckea didn’t come out to him directly. He realized that it was because of his own homophobic streak. To save his friendship with Weckea, Kendi committed to unlearning homophobia.
Kendi’s friendship with Weckea showed him how little he truly understood about queer people’s experiences in the United States, and in the Black community in particular. Weckea’s reluctance to come out shows how, unless antiracist spaces and communities specifically commit to fighting homophobia as well, they often end up being exclusionary and unaccommodating to queer people.
Themes
Queer antiracists refuse to believe in a hierarchy of race-sexualities and try to undo inequities among them. Genuine antiracists can’t be homophobic or transphobic. It’s important to recognize that Black trans women have some of the most difficult lives of any group in the United States: their life expectancy is only 35 years. Kendi explains that antiracism requires him to understand the privileges of being cisgender and heterosexual, while working to advance the struggles of his peers who don’t have those privileges.
Kendi emphasizes the importance of highlighting trans people’s struggles for legal recognition, social equality in their communities and workplaces, and protection from the disproportionate violence they often face. In particular, Black trans women are often excluded from both queer and antiracist movements, which end up ignoring their needs as a result. By recognizing his own privileges, Kendi is not denying that he, too, faces other forms of inequity or prejudice. Rather, he is making the point that cisgender and heterosexual people need to recognize the differences between their experiences and queer people’s experiences in order to make space for queer people in social justice movements.
Themes
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Kendi reflects on how Yaba and Kaila influenced him. They taught him that antiracism is impossible without defending women and queer people of color, and they showed him how to eloquently point out sexism and homophobia. They also recommended excellent books that helped Kendi overcome his own gender and queer racism. Although Kendi was afraid of Yaba and Kaila at first, expecting them to be dogmatic and hypersexual, this was rooted in his own sexism and homophobia. They were perfectly normal and didn’t want female supremacy over men—they just wanted equity and freedom. Yaba and Kaila especially critiqued women who defended white male power. This showed Kendi that the problem is patriarchy, not men, and homophobia, not heterosexual people.
Kendi emphasizes the importance of carefully one’s his own beliefs and assumptions, reading extensively, and learning to treat people respectfully through trial and error. However, when people from dominant groups ask those from marginalized groups to educate them (as Yaba and Kaila educated Kendi), this often creates an undue burden that replicates the inequities they’re trying to undo.
Themes
