"As long as the mind is racist, the mind can never be free. To be antiracist is to think nothing is behaviorally wrong or right—inferior or superior—with any of the racial groups. Whenever the antiracist sees individuals behaving positively or negatively, the antiracist sees exactly that: individuals behaving positively or negatively, not representatives of whole races. To be antiracist is to deracialize behavior, to remove the tattooed stereotype from every racialized body. Behavior is something humans do, not races do."
In Ibram Kendi's Book How to be an Antiracist, Kendi details and gives words and examples to what it truly means to be an antiracist. The power of his work comes from the way he defines racism, racists, racist systems and racist policies in a clear undeniable way.
Kendi has a PhD in African American Studies, so going into this book, I had the expectation that it would be pretty academic. It definitely was in some ways but the thing that took me by surprise, was the way Kendi shared so much of his life with the reader. This vulnerable sharing created a incomparable blend of personal memoir and academic non-fiction. The gift of Kendi's honesty felt profound to me as a reader. Kendi asks readers to do a very difficult thing in How to be an Antiracist. He asks us to scrutinize ourselves for racist ideas we hold consciously and unconsciously and investigate how those racist ideas have led to our personal support and uplifting of racist policies. Kendi has not asked us to self-reflect so intensely without first scrutinizing himself, his upbringing, and his own community. I cannot imagine opening myself up in that personal of a way in a book that would be out there for all to see. I assume that the cost was high and that should not be taken lightly by anyone reading this book. In paying that cost, he showed readers that you cannot pursue antiracist work without losses or taxing of some kind. Kendi did not have to be this vulnerable to prove his points valid and true but I am so grateful for the gift of his rawness.
I have been reading this book since December 2019. I am embarrassed to admit that as someone who usually reads through most books at an average reading speed, this book took me so long to complete. I listened to half of How to be an Antiracist on audiobook and read the other parts on hard copy. Kendi's book was hard for me to grasp. I would like to blame my difficulty in grasping it on the fact that I was pregnant, gave birth to a baby, and worked through the new reality of life with three kids. I don't think my lack of grasp had much to do with my life circumstances! The thing that took me a long time to absorb are his ideas and my own discomfort with learning all of this for the first time. I had not heard of most of the terms he breaks down in the chapters of this book and in order for me to give the content of Kendi's book the full weight and understanding it deserves, I had to take my sweet time. I navigated this book by reading three chapters at a time. I had to sit with and process through those three chapters and then move on once they had soaked in. At first I struggled with the guilt of "how on earth am I not reading and understanding this book at a normal human speed?" and then I realized that it would have been a great disservice to myself to speed through this while only understanding 20% of it just to mark it as "read." This was an incredibly weighty and powerful read and I am grateful that I went at my own pace.
My advice when diving into this book is to give it the time and space it needs to absorb. if that is over the course of a weekend for you, great! If that looks more like 7 months of reading like it did for me, I think - in my very biased and self-justified opinion- that too is also okay!? After listening to this half on audiobook and half hardcopy I would definitely recommend purchasing a copy for your personal library. I have gone back and re-read chapters and looked through my highlighted notes several times and this was crucial in my coming to understand these ideas fully. With that in mind, the audiobook is absolute FIRE. Kendi reads his work to readers and reveals a poetic cadence in his writing that I might have missed out on if I had only read the book. SO basically what I am saying is both have merit do what works for you... but probably still plan on purchasing a copy 😂
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars
While reading How to be an Antiracist, I also listened to the following podcasts and I feel that listening to these podcasts greatly enriched my reading experience!
Brene Brown With Ibram X. Kendi on How to be an Antiracist
The Stacks Podcast episode 22: Ibram X Kendi How to be an Antiracist
Comments