Kendi portrays his father as a wise, supportive parent, who was committed to building a more racially equitable world for his children but nevertheless made some mistakes along the way. He and Kendi’s mother met through church and became involved in Black liberation theology and the Black Power movement in the 1970s. But they grew more conservative or assimilationist in the 1980s and 1990s, which reflects broader political trends in the United States as a whole. During this later period, they took comfortable corporate jobs rather than pursue the careers they really wanted in the Christian ministry and the arts. Kendi also portrays his father as supporting gender equity and the feminist movement, even if he was not fully committed to transforming traditional gender roles: Kendi’s father stopped short of joining the Black Panthers and Nation of Islam because he saw misogyny in their ranks, and he supported his wife’s involvement in Black feminist activism. Just like his mother’s, Kendi’s father’s political thinking followed broader trends in Black America over the latter half of the 20th century and represents a dueling consciousness between antiracist and assimilationist ideas.
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Kendi’s Father Character Timeline in How to Be an Antiracist
The timeline below shows where the character Kendi’s Father appears in How to Be an Antiracist. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Racist Introduction
...fact, he was surprised to get into college at all. A few weeks earlier, his father had visited the school basketball court with an envelope: it was his offer of admission...
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Chapter 1: Definitions
In 1970, Kendi’s mom and dad spent 24 hours on a bus to attend a conference where the band Soul Liberation...
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Chapter 2: Dueling Consciousness
...they called for harsher policing and decried “Black on Black crime.” Even Kendi’s mom and dad blamed racial inequity on Black people’s laziness and “ghetto culture.” In reality, Reagan’s policies accelerated...
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Kendi admits that his mom and dad chose “civilizer theology” over liberation theology. Despite wanting to be missionaries or poets, they took...
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Chapter 3: Power
...school in the suburbs when he was seven. Like many American parents, his mom and dad didn’t want him to attend his neighborhood elementary school, where the students were mainly poor...
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...the school hadn’t hired any, and she didn’t know why. Kendi was confused, but his dad changed the subject. Kendi ended up in a different school.
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Chapter 6: Body
Growing up, Kendi’s mom and dad even tried to dissuade him from playing basketball, because they thought the neighbors were too...
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Chapter 7: Culture
...offered his only hope of making any, so he broke down and cried to his father when he didn’t make the JV team. Kendi admits that he looked down on rural...
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Chapter 8: Behavior
...up, Black adults saw Kendi’s failures as failures for the whole race. His mom and dad pushed him to try harder in school, but when he struggled in International Baccalaureate (IB)...
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Chapter 9: Color
...and lightening their skin. It took until the Black Power movement for people (like Kendi’s father) to start taking pride in darkness. Of course, some overdid it and inverted the color...
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Chapter 12: Class
While Kendi’s mom and dad were nervous about him moving to the poor Black neighborhood, Kendi considered urban poverty the...
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Chapter 14: Gender
...about “broken” Black families headed by single mothers, Black community leaders tried to make Black fathers dominant in their families. In the process, they disempowered and controlled Black women—all the while...
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...rehearsal, his mother refused to repeat the vow, “wives [should] obey your husbands,” and his father proposed the more equal vow that they would “submit one to another.” His mom attended...
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Chapter 18: Survival
...and he learned that he had late-stage colon cancer. When Sadiqa, Kendi’s mom, and Kendi’s dad fought cancer, Kendi always wondered why they had to, not him. Now, he had an...
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