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
A bodily racist sees certain racialized bodies as animalistic and violent, while a bodily antiracist insists on “humanizing, deracializing, and individualizing” people’s behavior.
In this chapter, Kendi talks about the racist ideas that spring to many people’s minds when they see certain racialized others. He contrasts racist thinking, which views individuals in terms of the groups or types they embody, with antiracist thinking, which rejects any link between race and individual behavior. This also means that there should also be no link between seeing certain racialized people and feeling scared or threatened—and antiracists actively work to overcome this prejudice.
Themes
As a kid, Kendi was excited to switch from his private middle school to a public high school, where he wouldn’t have to wear a uniform. But it wasn’t all for the better: he also remembers when a kid nicknamed Smurf pulled out a gun on the school bus and stuck it in Kendi’s face.
Smurf’s behavior closely resembles the worst racist stereotypes about young Black men, which portray them as unempathetic, violent criminals. However, as Kendi already outlined, antiracists learn to blame individual behaviors on individuals, not on entire races of people.
Themes
In 1995, Bill Clinton said that white people see violence as having “a Black face,” something that racists have consistently thought since the 1600s. This association between Blackness and violence is one of the reasons that American society has controlled, lynched, segregated, and incarcerated Black people over the centuries.
The problem with bodily racism isn’t just that it is illogical and unfair—it’s also that racist people and institutions act on the false sense of threat they perceive when they see Black people. As a result, policymakers create institutions designed to imprison and control people of color.
Themes
Growing up, Kendi’s mom and dad even tried to dissuade him from playing basketball, because they thought the neighbors were too dangerous. This taught Kendi to fear other Black people—including Smurf, who frightened him with the gun. Kendi was constantly scared at his new school: he thought accidentally bumping into or making eye contact with the wrong person would get him attacked. (It never did.) There was no real danger: rather, he was just afraid of the racist ideas in his head.
Kendi clarifies that Black people also fear other Black people and view them as inherently threatening. As he emphasizes throughout the book, it’s a mistake to assume that only white people are racist. Kendi’s fear in high school attests to the power of racist ideas and stereotypes: even though Kendi himself (a Black teenager) was their target, he continued to believe in them.
Themes
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Kendi’s friends got in a fight with some other guys once, but it only lasted a few minutes—as soon as they heard sirens, they started running. They knew that the police were the real danger: Kendi knew that they might kill him and would get away with it if they did. The police continue to kill unarmed Black people far more often than unarmed white people. In retrospect, Kendi realizes that his unreasonable fear of Black people stopped him from intervening, like when Smurf attacked an Indian kid for taking his seat.
Although Kendi only got into one fight in four years of high school, he still risked being seen as a vicious criminal or being killed by the police. Whereas a white teenager might get a second chance, Black teenagers tend to be automatically stereotyped and criminalized. In other words, white teenagers get to be seen as individuals, but Black teenagers are only seen through the lens of their race.
Themes
In 1993, with the Congressional Black Caucus’s support, Congress dramatically increased funding for police and prisons, while lengthening prison sentences and expanding categories for crime. This was intended to target Black people. Specifically, a Princeton professor popularized the now-debunked idea of “super-predators”: psychopathic, remorseless Black teenagers who were natural criminals. Of course, crime was rapidly declining, but Kendi believes that anti-crime laws are not about stopping crime—they are about managing white people’s fears of non-white people.
The Congressional Black Caucus’s support for these racist policies is a reminder that actual effects matter more than intentions when it comes to racism. It’s also a reminder that Black people can also participate in anti-Black racism. The racist idea of the “super-predator” followed and justified the crime bill, sustaining the fears that the crime bill was designed to manage. Again, this racist idea was a given legitimacy because it was backed by scientists—even though there was no actual science behind it.
Themes
On the school bus, Kendi and his peers were too terrified to intervene. Many Americans—including armed police officers—are similarly afraid when they see Black people. Smurf attacked the Indian kid and ran off, and Kendi used to think that all Black people would be as violent as him. He therefore focused on staying out of trouble rather than doing what he knew was right. But Kendi believes that the idea of urban Black neighborhoods being overwhelmingly violent or dangerous is just a racist stereotype—Kendi’s own childhood was mostly peaceful. He knew which blocks were dangerous, but it had nothing to do with the race of the people who lived there.
In retrospect, Kendi isn’t denying that Smurf was a dangerous person—rather, he’s saying that he was wrong to exaggerate this danger and associate it with all Black people. Similarly, many Americans assume that, because certain urban Black neighborhoods have higher crime rates, it is inherently dangerous to go there. But this is a leap in reasoning based on a misunderstanding of how much crime actually happens and whom it targets. Kendi points out that media narratives tend to highlight the most extreme examples of this violence, which gives many Americans a one-sided picture of such neighborhoods and leads them to immediately associate them with violence.
Themes
In fact, reliable federal statistics show that young white and Black men commit crime at the same rate in the United States if those men are employed. Unemployment accounts for the entire variation in crime. Kendi doesn’t believe that Segregationist calls for expanded policing and incarceration will improve the situation, nor will assimilationist “tough love” policies that seek to “civilize” people whom they consider inferior. Antiracists fight the true cause of higher crime rates in certain Black urban areas: a lack of accessible, dignified, well-paying jobs for young people. Antiracists do not deny that individuals like Smurf are dangerous, but they refuse to fear entire racial groups.
Kendi explains that, although it’s true that many urban Black neighborhoods are more violent than suburban white neighborhoods, there is a racist explanation and an antiracist explanation for this data. The racist explanation is that the neighborhoods have more crime because their residents are Black, and the antiracist explanation is that there is more crime because these neighborhoods have higher unemployment. Kendi implies that the antiracist explanation is correct not simply because it is more ethical to blame people over policy, but also because it is empirically proven.
Themes
