In How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi combines history, theory, and memoir in order to explain how people can actively become antiracist. Although defining key terms might seem boring or unglamorous, Kendi argues that they’re actually the single most important—and most overlooked—way to improve our ideas, policies, and conversations about racism. In particular, Kendi argues that the meaning of the word “racist” has in many ways been distorted: many people view it as a hateful slur, a political buzzword, or an accusation of irredeemable evil. But in reality, racism has a precise definition: it is “a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.” Specifically, the policies produce racial inequities, while the ideas normalize those inequities and policies. Based on this definition, Kendi argues that the words “racist” and “antiracist” are “like peelable name tags” that apply to our beliefs and actions, as opposed to “permanent tattoos” that define who we are. But while there are degrees of racism and antiracism, there is no middle ground between them. Kendi argues that every political idea assumes that racial groups are either unequal or equal, and every policy either reinforces racial inequities or takes steps to solve them.
To understand racism, first it’s necessary to understand race, which isn’t actually based in biology. There’s no gene that determines race, nor is there a scientific test to measure it. On the other hand, ethnicity—a person’s heritage as part of a specific cultural or national group—does usually relate to their ancestry. Even though ethnicity is defined by culture and not by science, it does often correlate with genetics (unlike race). People often think of race as just a large grouping of genetically similar ethnicities, but this isn’t true: for instance, West African ethnic groups are genetically closer to Western European groups than to East African groups. In short, race isn’t a meaningful biological concept. Rather, it’s a social concept that arbitrarily merges many different groups of people (like all West Africans and East Africans) into one broad racial category. And specifically, race is a social construct that’s used to maintain power: racial categories are created by powerful people, under specific circumstances, in order to serve self-interested goals. As an example, Kendi cites what he found to be the earliest recorded racist idea: the Portuguese writer Gomes de Zurara declared that all people from Africa were subhuman animals who lacked reason and morality. He did this specifically to justify the profitable new slave-trading policy that his boss, Prince Henry the Navigator, was developing. In other words, to advance his own interests, he created a category of people and then declared that category inferior to his own people.
The other basic concept that Kendi uses to define racism is “inequity.” Inequity simply means that different groups do not have “approximately equal” standing in certain important aspects of social life—like wealth, health outcomes, educational attainment, or representation in government. When races are the groups that differ in this way, it’s defined as racial inequity. And because there’s no scientific basis for racial categories or hierarchies, racial inequities never result from inherent differences among different racial groups. Rather, they always come from governmental or institutional policies.
Based on these foundational concepts, Kendi builds a clear definition of how racism works in society: certain policies create inequities among racial groups, and then people invent ideas to justify those policies and normalize those inequities. Usually, powerful people create these policies and ideas for their own benefit, but then they take on a life of their own and circulate in society at large. Accordingly, individuals do not have to be powerful to be racist—the crux of racism lies in expressing racist ideas or supporting racist policies. Concretely, this means that racism equates to directly implementing racist policies (whether official or informal), suggesting that any racial group is inherently superior to any other, or blaming observable racial inequities on racial group differences rather than on policy.
While racists support policies that create inequity and ideas that justify it, antiracists support policies that create equity, then justify those policies with antiracist ideas. Crucially, antiracist policies that promote racial equity are not the same as color-blind policies that treat all racial groups in exactly the same way. Rather, antiracist policies have to discriminate by race in order to create equity. For example, in college admissions, affirmative action is an antiracist education policy designed to counteract the disparities in high school achievement produced by racist education policies (like inequitable school funding, government-mandated residential segregation, and unequal access to test-prep classes). While some people explain these disparities by claiming that certain groups are inherently less intelligent, it wouldn’t make sense for race to impact intelligence, since it’s not a biological category. Rather, all available evidence shows that policy causes these disparities. This illustrates the difference between racist ideas, which blame the groups who suffer from racial inequities for those inequities, and antiracist ideas, which blame policies for racial inequities.
Accordingly, Kendi suggests that being a racist or an antiracist is as simple as supporting racist or antiracist policies and expressing racist or antiracist ideas. Racism already exists—it’s up to us to choose whether to perpetuate it or fight against it. Kendi defines someone who advances racist policies and ideas, pretends they don’t exist, or chooses not to do anything about them as racist. By contrast, someone who fights racist policies and ideas is antiracist. Anyone can overcome their racism and become antiracist, but devoted antiracists can also fall back into racism. Finally, Kendi asserts that it’s impossible to be “not racist.” The policies and ideas that people support push society in one of two directions: toward racial equity or toward greater racial inequity.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Racism vs. Antiracism ThemeTracker
Racism vs. Antiracism Quotes in How to Be an Antiracist
What's the problem with being “not racist”? It is a claim that signifies neutrality: “I am not a racist, but neither am I aggressively against racism.” But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of “racist” isn't “not racist.” It is “antiracist.” What's the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist.
Definitions anchor us in principles. This is not a light point: If we don't do the basic work of defining the kind of people we want to be in language that is stable and consistent, we can't work toward stable, consistent goals. Some of my most consequential steps toward being an antiracist have been the moments when I arrived at basic definitions. To be an antiracist is to set lucid definitions of racism/antiracism, racist/antiracist policies, racist/antiracist ideas, racist/antiracist people. To be a racist is to constantly redefine racist in a way that exonerates one's changing policies, ideas, and personhood.
“Racist” and “antiracist” are like peelable name tags that are placed and replaced based on what someone is doing or not doing, supporting or expressing in each moment. These are not permanent tattoos. No one becomes a racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be one or the other. We can unknowingly strive to be a racist. We can knowingly strive to be an antiracist. Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.
I do not pity my seven-year-old self for identifying racially as Black. I still identify as Black. Not because I believe Blackness, or race, is a meaningful scientific category but because our societies, our policies, our ideas, our histories, and our cultures have rendered race and made it matter. I am among those who have been degraded by racist ideas, suffered under racist policies, and who have nevertheless endured and built movements and cultures to resist or at least persist through this madness.
Prince Henry's racist policy of slave trading came first—a cunning invention for the practical purpose of bypassing Muslim traders. After nearly two decades of slave trading, King Afonso asked Gomes de Zurara to defend the lucrative commerce in human lives, which he did through the construction of a Black race, an invented group upon which he hung racist ideas. This cause and effect—a racist power creates racist policies out of raw self-interest; the racist policies necessitate racist ideas to justify them—lingers over the life of racism.
There is no such thing as racial ancestry. Ethnic ancestry does exist. Camara Jones, a prominent medical researcher of health disparities, explained it this way to bioethics scholar Dorothy Roberts: “People are born with ancestry that comes from their parents but are assigned a race.” People from the same ethnic groups that are native to certain geographic regions typically share the same genetic profile. Geneticists call them “populations.” When geneticists compare these ethnic populations, they find there is more genetic diversity between populations within Africa than between Africa and the rest of the world. Ethnic groups in Western Africa are more genetically similar to ethnic groups in Western Europe than to ethnic groups in Eastern Africa. Race is a genetic mirage.
Terminating racial categories is potentially the last, not the first, step in the antiracist struggle. […] To be antiracist is to also recognize the living, breathing reality of this racial mirage, which makes our skin colors more meaningful than our individuality. To be antiracist is to focus on ending the racism that shapes the mirages, not to ignore the mirages that shape people’s lives.
Enslaved Africans formulated new languages in nearly every European colony in the Americas […] In every one of these countries, racist power—those in control of government, academia, education, and media—has demeaned these African languages as dialects, as “broken” or “improper” or “nonstandard” French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, or English. Assimilationists have always urged Africans in the Americas to forget the “broken” languages of our ancestors and master the apparently “fixed” languages of Europeans—to speak “properly.” […] The idea that Black languages outside Africa are broken is as culturally racist as the idea that languages inside Europe are fixed.
To be an antiracist is to recognize there is no such thing as racial behavior. To be an antiracist is to recognize there is no such thing as Black behavior, let alone irresponsible Black behavior. Black behavior is as fictitious as Black genes. There is no “Black gene.” No one has ever scientifically established a single “Black behavioral trait.” No evidence has ever been produced, for instance, to prove that Black people are louder, angrier, nicer, funnier, lazier, less punctual, more immoral, religious, or dependent; that Asians are more subservient; that Whites are greedier. All we have are stories of individual behavior. But individual stories are only proof of the behavior of individuals. Just as race doesn’t exist biologically, race doesn’t exist behaviorally.
The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies. We degrade Black minds every time we speak of an “academic-achievement gap” based on these numbers. The acceptance of an academic-achievement gap is just the latest method of reinforcing the oldest racist idea: Black intellectual inferiority. The idea of an achievement gap means there is a disparity in academic performance between groups of students; implicit in this idea is that academic achievement as measured by statistical instruments like test scores and dropout rates is the only form of academic “achievement.” There is an even more sinister implication in achievement-gap talk—that disparities in academic achievement accurately reflect disparities in intelligence among racial groups. Intellect is the linchpin of behavior, and the racist idea of the achievement gap is the linchpin of behavioral racism.
Whenever someone classifies people of European descent as biologically, culturally, or behaviorally inferior, whenever someone says there is something wrong with White people as a group, someone is articulating a racist idea.
The only thing wrong with White people is when they embrace racist ideas and policies and then deny their ideas and policies are racist. This is not to ignore that White people have massacred and enslaved millions of indigenous and African peoples, colonized and impoverished millions of people of color around the globe as their nations grew rich, all the while producing racist ideas that blame the victims. This is to say their history of pillaging is not the result of the evil genes or cultures of White people. There’s no such thing as White genes. We must separate the warlike, greedy, bigoted, and individualist cultures of modern empire and racial capitalism (more on that later) from the cultures of White people.
Racist ideas are constantly produced to cage the power of people to resist. Racist ideas make Black people believe White people have all the power, elevating them to gods. And so Black segregationists lash out at these all-powerful gods as fallen devils, as I did in college, while Black assimilationists worship their all-powerful White angels, strive to become them, to curry their favor, reproducing their racist ideas and defending their racist policies.
To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism. The conjoined twins are two sides of the same destructive body. The idea that capitalism is merely free markets, competition, free trade, supplying and demanding, and private ownership of the means of production operating for a profit is as whimsical and ahistorical as the White-supremacist idea that calling something racist is the primary form of racism. Popular definitions of capitalism, like popular racist ideas, do not live in historical or material reality. Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist. They were birthed together from the same unnatural causes, and they shall one day die together from unnatural causes. Or racial capitalism will live into another epoch of theft and rapacious inequity, especially if activists naïvely fight the conjoined twins independently, as if they are not the same.
King’s nightmare is a product of the dueling Brown decision. The court rightly undermined the legitimacy of segregated White spaces that hoard public resources, exclude all non-Whites, and are wholly dominated by White peoples and cultures. But the court also reinforced the legitimacy of integrated White spaces that hoard public resources, include some non-Whites, and are generally, though not wholly, dominated by White peoples and cultures. White majorities, White power, and White culture dominate both the segregated and the integrated, making both White. But the unspoken veil claims there is no such thing as integrated White spaces, or for that matter integrated Black spaces that are underresourced, include some non-Blacks, and are generally, though not wholly, dominated by Black peoples and cultures. The court ruled Black spaces, segregated or integrated, inherently unequal and inferior.
The logical conclusion of antiracist strategy is open and equal access to all public accommodations, open access to all integrated White spaces, integrated Middle Eastern spaces, integrated Black spaces, integrated Latinx spaces, integrated Native spaces, and integrated Asian spaces that are as equally resourced as they are culturally different. All these spaces adjoin civic spaces of political and economic and cultural power, from a House of Representatives to a school board to a newspaper editorial board where no race predominates, where shared antiracist power predominates. This is diversity, something integrationists value only in name.
To understand why racism lives is to understand the history of antiracist failure—why people have failed to create antiracist societies. To understand the racial history of failure is to understand failed solutions and strategies. To understand failed solutions and strategies is to understand their cradles: failed racial ideologies.
The problem of race has always been at its core the problem of power, not the problem of immorality or ignorance.
Over time, the source of racist ideas became obvious, but I had trouble acknowledging it. The source did not fit my conception of racism, my racial ideology, my racial identity. I became a college professor to educate away racist ideas, seeing ignorance as the source of racist ideas, seeing racist ideas as the source of racist policies, seeing mental change as the principal solution, seeing myself, an educator, as the primary solver.
Racism is one of the fastest-spreading and most fatal cancers humanity has ever known. It is hard to find a place where its cancer cells are not dividing and multiplying. There is nothing I see in our world today, in our history giving me hope that one day antiracists will win the fight, that one day the flag of antiracism will fly over a world of equity. What gives me hope is a simple truism. Once we lose hope, we are guaranteed to lose. But if we ignore the odds and fight to create an antiracist world, then we give humanity a chance to one day survive, a chance to live in communion, a chance to be forever free.
