Ronald Reagan was the 40th president of the United States, who served from 1981 to 1989. Kendi argues that Reagan’s administration dramatically redistributed wealth and power towards the people who were already the wealthiest and most powerful in American society. Reagan implemented the most significant wave “tough on crime” policies that painted Black and Latinx people as criminals and began disproportionately incarcerating them for drug crimes, even though they use and sell drugs at the same rate as white people.
Get the entire How to Be an Antiracist LitChart as a printable PDF.
Ronald Reagan Character Timeline in How to Be an Antiracist
The timeline below shows where the character Ronald Reagan appears in How to Be an Antiracist. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: Dueling Consciousness
Kendi was born in 1982, just after President Ronald Reagan announced his war on drug crime. Over the next two decades, the American prison population...
(full context)
Chapter 11: Black
...sought to imprison Black criminals to suggest that they were addressing the problem. And when Ronald Reagan directed funds away from social programs that benefited Black Americans, he hired Black officials to...
(full context)
