In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests that have jolted the nation, important questions regarding what racism is, how to root it out, and what an anti-racist future would look like have come to the forefront of mainstream political and cultural discourse.
A wave of scholars, activists, and pundits with the explicit intention of expanding the concept of racism have gained footing in mainstream society across the West. To alter a phrase from the late sociologist and politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the aim is to “define racism up” to meet the increasing demand for racial justice.
Among these figures is the celebrated author and historian Ibram X. Kendi, whose two major books—How To Be An Anti-Racist and Stamped From The Beginning: A History Of Racist Ideas—have recently skyrocketed to the top of The New York Times best-sellers list and quickly become a staple of the American conversation about race. Kendi, the youngest writer to ever win the national book award, has been rewarded for his efforts with glowing profiles in both liberal and conservative outlets alike, and his work has been foundational to changing how racial inequality and racism are framed in popular culture.
Kendi’s central intellectual contribution has been a redefinition of “racism” and how it works. As he argues in his most recent book How To Be An Anti-Racist, there is no such thing as being a “not-racist”—there is only anti-racism and racism. Indeed, simply claiming to not be racist is a form of denial, the very “heartbeat of racism.” For Kendi, “anti-racism” means supporting and instituting policies and ideas that level racial disparities of socio-economic outcome, while “racism” consists of any policy or idea that results in racial inequity.
For instance, if black Americans have less wealth than whites en masse, that disparity is prima facie evidence of racism under Kendi’s articulation—whether past or present, overt or subtle, conscious or unconscious, intentional or inadvertent—and the goal of “anti-racism” is to eliminate the gap. To argue that wealth disparities are rooted in cultural holding patterns or internal group factors, rather than descrimination per se, is ultimately to express a “racist” idea.
Moreover, while most Americans proceed from the assumption that racism is a form of prejudice that derives from either hatred or ignorance, Kendi posits that we have it totally backwards: in his view racist policy derives from majoritarian socioeconomic self-interest from which comes racist ideas to justify the unequal outcomes created by those policies, while ignorance and hatred are just the interpersonal fallout of racist policies and ideas.
In his own words,
The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not-racist.” It is “anti-racist.” What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist. 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 anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in between safe space of “not racist.” The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism.
He then applies this framework to policy,
A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.
It is this definitional shift of racism upwards—from a belief or an attitude that projects antipathy towards an identifiable Other to any explanation of a racial disparity that doesn’t explicitly name and blame “racist” policies and ideas—that is significant about his writing. This shift flows naturally from the underlying assumptions that disparities are always a consequence of racism. The principle of colorblindness is therefore not just wrong in Kendi’s and similar thought, but it is actually racist in this telling. Kendian logic insists that it is impossible to look beyond race, and the effort to do so can only be a guise for maintaining the “racist” status quo.
Moreover, discrimination by itself is not necessarily racist in this view, so long as it is used to create racial equity. Kendi explains thusly: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Although it may be off-putting to some, Kendi’s weird style of painting in broad strokes of morally binary black-and-whites before scrambling them around and repeating them backwards as though it somehow further qualifies his argument is clearly getting him somewhere. This framework represents the latest stage in the conceptual expansion of “racism” that has been gradually unfolding since the late 1960s.
It wasn’t until after the victories of the early civil rights movement that notions of systemic or structural racism were first introduced into the cultural lexicon. In their 1968 book Black Power: The Politics Of Liberation, Kwame Toure (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) and Charles Hamilton make a distinction between individual racism and institutional racism, the former as an overt expression of bigotry and the latter as a more covert form of oppression without a clear locus. This has since been extended into cultural racism, as institutional racism has waned in influence since the 1960s.
But the concept of systemic racism has been hazy since its inception. Racism in America had always been systemic and its individual manifestations were always largely unconscious, so the shift from overt to covert is suspect. Systemic racism is now generally understood as racism once or twice-removed. For example, the fact that police officers are more likely to act aggressively towards black suspects is interpreted as “racist” in a structural sense because, even if the officer is making judgements based on their own experiences and expertise in a given situation, the fact that blacks have more encounters with police is an indirect consequence of historical racism and is therefore an injustice.
But this idea precludes individual responsibility for direct instances of racism and erases an important category distinction between bias and disparity. For instance, there happens to be significant evidence of overt racial bias in certain aspects of policing (though its origins are more complex than assumed), particularly in the case of low-level uses of force. But this is different from looking at the racial disparity in policing outcomes such as arrests and simply asserting, without evidence, that it is indicative of racism. We can’t ignore the complicated tangle of socio-economic, geographic, and cultural forces that incline certain groups to have more interactions with the police than others. Bias is not necessarily the primary source of these disparities. The imprecision and overapplication of the term reveals how it is often less about descriptive accuracy than it is about summoning moral and historical gravitas.
Racist attitudes have been in drastic and measurable decline for 60 years while the definition of racism continues to grow, as though every step forward in the fight against racism is met with an expanded idea of its scope. When conservative or liberal commentators point to evidence of racial progress, the anti-racist rejoinder is to assert that racism is more subtle but just as pernicious as it once was. Yet if individual racist attitudes matter less than its ongoing structural impacts, it’s reasonable to assume the stigma of racist will be used less to describe individuals and more to describe policies, institutions, and systems. But, of course, that hasn’t happened at all. Nuanced attempts to redefine the term haven’t resulted in extracting the sting from the “racist” epithet. It is now thrown around more casually than ever and yet can still easily cost someone their job.
Kendi barrels through this speed bump with a “both/and” line of reasoning: “The construct of covert institutional racism opens Americans eyes to racism and, ironically, closes them too. Separating the overt individual from the covert institutional veils the specific policy choices that cause racial inequities, policies made by specific people.”
It’s normal to be asking oneself at this point whether a simple question—what is racism?—should really be this complicated. We are meant to believe racism is both interpersonal and structural, arising both from the bottom-up and from the top-down, emanating from individuals as well as systems, is everywhere and nowhere at once. This completely strangles any common sense idea of what racism is or how to fight against it. To Kendi, “racist policy” says all there is to say, but his definition of racist policy is really just anything that results in unequal racial outcomes. The fact that virtually no two ethnic groups have ever had equal outcomes on all socioeconomic measures anywhere should leave us wondering what the hell he’s talking about.
So long as racial disparities exist, anti-racists can reflexively ascribe them to racism and justify any and every measure deemed necessary to eliminate them while anyone who questions this approach can be labeled racist and swiftly thrown out of polite society, and this occurs as we gradually veer towards an increasingly dystopian culture of fear. It doesn’t take an ethnic studies major to recognize the danger of this approach. Even Kendi acknowledges that his “secular strivings to be an anti-racist” are inseparable from his “parents religious strivings to be Christian.” The difference is that one is an inward journey of the spirit and the other is an outward project meant explicitly to attain power. Anti-racism is a totalizing religion disguised as politics.
But even if the better angels of our collective nature can prevent Kendi’s borderline totalitarian vision from becoming reality, all sorts of short-term damage can be done to our social fabric in the meanwhile. The more immediate issue with the anti-racist framework is that it never questions the moral logic of racial blame and intergenerational guilt/innocence. In his view, we can only ever place blame on white racism or black deficiency for persistent racial inequality; we can either be an anti-racist or a racist. This is a false dichotomy.
In an increasingly multi-ethnic society, does it really make sense to view the multitude of inequalities we see across the board through a binary lens of white racism and black victimization? In my own view, we’d go further by taking racial blame out of the equation altogether in exchange for universal and individual responsibility. In the bleak anti-racist view of humankind, such an effort is futile. What matters is power. We are left to battle it out in an ever-fracturing landscape of racial and political polarization.
It’s wholly possible to continue the fight against racism and inequality in America without accepting Kendi’s weird definition. Racism, historical racism, and racial inequality are all real and must be addressed, but it is the seamless weaving together of these things into a grand narrative that places white supremacy at the center of the story of Western civilization that goes too far. The traditional notion of racism as an interpersonal force of irrational discrimination with historical and structural implications doesn’t require expansion, and those who attempt to should be met with skepticism instead of mindless adoration.
12 comments
Kendi is a proven fraud and race grifter publicly exposed by his own patrons to have bamboozled millions from BU and other institutions. His academic record is embarrassing, he doesn’t speak in public because he clearly sounds like a sub 100 IQ raising the question of whether he even wrote his shitty books. To hear pseudo intellectuals try to provide ground cover is to watch them expose their own fraudulence.
It’s supply and demand. Actual racism in the USA is in such short supply and the demand for it, (by grifters who make a living off it), is so high, that they have to manufacture it by redefining it.
I have read Kendi’s book, and my view differs so far from yours as to wonder whether you actually read the book or merely scanned it to develop talking points. In either case, it seems you have misunderstood important elements of Kendi’s message.
Early in the review you veer off track into a four paragraph discourse on structural racism. Kendi discusses structural racism as a segue into his definitions for racism and anti-racism, but it is not the centerpiece of the book. You hide within this discourse the old dog whistle that blacks deserve the extra police attention they get, when you say, “We can’t ignore the complicated tangle of socio-economic, geographic, and cultural forces that incline certain groups to have more interactions with the police than others.” In fact we have very specific information about why blacks get more attention from the police, at least in the past 30 years: think only of the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, Broken Windows, and Stop and Frisk. These are just a few of the household name programs. There are others, such as driving while black, jogging in a white neighborhood while black, playing in a park with a toy gun while black, looking at a toy gun in Walmart while black, selling cigarettes on the sidewalk while black, sleeping in your apartment while black; you see what I mean.
Kendi has provided a thoughtful, though at times hyperbolically passionate, argument for his new definitions of racism and anti-racism. He encourages us not to think of white people as inherently racist, but to take important issues one by one, and consider individually whether a person’s views (in particular your own views) on the topic are racist or anti-racist. For example, I have many friends who would be outraged to be called racist; after all, they don’t use the N-word, and they have black friends. But these same people oppose SNAP and other welfare programs, and do not see why white people should pay taxes to support public schools in impoverished neighborhoods. Kendi sees these as racist positions, whereas he would consider support for SNAP and support for increased funding to poor school districts to be anti-racist. Racist policies tend to increase the disparity between white and black to the disadvantage of blacks; anti-racist policies tend to improve the situation for blacks. For a person to support a racist policy is for that person to be, not a racist person, but racist on that policy. The reverse holds true for persons holing anti-racist positions. A person may well be both racist and anti-racist, depending on the topic. Kendi also makes clear that many poor whites are the victims (as in the case of my two examples above) of the same racist policies that harm blacks, and often in larger numbers than blacks.
Throughout the book Kendi develops the idea that racism is not merely a white attribute. Blacks can be racist against whites by blaming whites as a group; elite blacks can be racist against poorer blacks; light-skinned blacks against darker-skinned blacks; darker-skinned blacks against light-skinned blacks; etc. Throughout the book he uses his own personal evolution on racism as an effective exemplar to help explain his arguments. Always, he brings the discussion back to racist policies and the importance of whether a person holds racist or anti-racist views. He takes a moment at one point to give a nod to personal racism, which undeniably exists, but his focus is on policy, because that offers the best potential for solutions.
It should be clear by now that I disagree with your characterization of Kendi’s book in general, and I specifically reject your calling his ideas totalitarian and dystopian. Take for example your statement “So long as racial disparities exist, anti-racists can reflexively ascribe them to racism and justify any and every measure deemed necessary to eliminate them while anyone who questions this approach can be labeled racist and swiftly thrown out of polite society, and this occurs as we gradually veer towards an increasingly dystopian culture of fear.” This is blatant nonsense. First, it is simple fear-mongering; second, it reveals that you don’t understand in the least what Kendi is saying. Kendi offers a framework for intelligent discussion of racist policies without indicting protagonists as being personally, inherently, incurably racist. Whether his theory is taken up and used to good effect remains to be seen. Your review indicates that you are not interested in the discussion.
Hi Fred,
I’m not the author of the article, but I wanted to respond to you and maybe explain where I think you might have missed some of the points the author was making, specifically about (1) the characterization of structural racism (the author’s 4-paragraph “digression”), (2) the definitions of “racism” and “anti-racism”
(1) Agree that the definition of “structural racism” isn’t the core of the book, but what IS at the core is something common to both his characterization of “structural racism” and his proposed (re)definition of “racism” (and along with it, the definition of “anti-racism”): the idea of defining racism based strictly on equality/inequality of outcomes. This is the core of the book, is to look at just about anything in the world, whether at the level of the individual, the level of the institution, public policy, whole society itself, and the interactions therein (e.g. individuals’ opinions on public policies), and separate it into the “racist” or “anti-racist” bucket depending on whether it results in equality of outcome (based on some unspecified measure of “outcome”).
This is not “off track”, because it leads directly to point (2), which is the problem that the word “racism”/”racist” has a clear and well-understood meaning that invokes individual prejudice/hate/malice (whatever word you want to use) in their thoughts/actions/behaviours, and therefore using the word “racist” to describe a situation where individuals are unprejudiced, but the “system” produces disparate outcomes, produces the immediate problem of tainting the individuals involved with being prejudicial/hateful/malicious. The result is exactly the problem the author mentions, which you dismiss as being overblown or “fear-mongering”, of using the strong epithet of “racist”. It is a severe theoretical problem that needs to be addressed; if your only defense is that it is “fear-mongering”, then are conceding that it is a problem in theory but just doesn’t appear in the “real world”? I don’t know what to tell you if you believe this is fear-mongering, but it happens all the time.
“Always, he brings the discussion back to racist policies and the importance of whether a person holds racist or anti-racist views. He takes a moment at one point to give a nod to personal racism, which undeniably exists, but his focus is on policy, because that offers the best potential for solutions.”
I disagree that the reason to focus on policy (and give little more than a “nod” to personal racism) is because of his belief in the efficacy of policy solutions. If there is somewhere in the book where this case is made, then please correct me. Rather, the reason to focus on policy is because he has just asserted the following axiom as truth: that there is no difference between blacks and whites, on any of the axes in which people can vary, and therefore there would be equity between blacks and whites, on every axis of variability, but for the actions of one or more arms of “the system”.
It is of no surprise then that he “brings the discussion back to racist policies”, because what he is doing not arriving at any conclusion, rather repeatedly reasserting the above axiom.
The first Kendi quote from the author shows this explicitly: “…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 anti-racist…”
“For a person to support a racist policy is for that person to be, not a racist person, but racist on that policy.”
If we adopt the Kendi re-definition of “racist”/”racism”, is there a really a difference there in the two labels you just described? In your first statement (“not a racist person”), you seem to be clearly referring to the traditional, well-understood definition of racist that invokes the idea of the individual being/acting in a way that is prejudicial/hateful/malicious, whereas in your second statement (“racist on that policy”), you seem to be referring to the Kendi re-definition (“this person is racist because he doesn’t support SNAP, which would result in more black people being hungry than white people”).
In the Kendi universe, what is the difference there? I suspect that there isn’t one, but rather you (and perhaps Kendi) would lack the courage of conviction to call your friend a racist, because deep down we all know the definition we all subscribe to, which would require you to accuse your friend of having prejudicial/hateful/malicious beliefs.
“the old dog whistle that blacks deserve the extra police attention they get”
(stopped reading shortly after this because your response devolves into a freeform jazz session of word association posing as rhetoric).
That’s not a dog whistle., either in concept or in colloquial definition. Brush up on your basic slang to at least get your attempted uses correct.
Police attention is a product of higher Black crime rates. That’s not a hidden reason and therefore not a dog whistle. Its overt reality that everyone is aware of and will publicly state. Because its undeniable.
To which you will respond “higher Black crime rates are a result of racism as well as more police attention, hence the dog whistle”.
To which I will respond: “The bodies tell the story, and can’t be hidden”
At which point you will be forced to blame White people every time a Black person murders someone, and you will have lost the debate due to intellectually and morally ridiculous depravity.
This society operates via racial detente. It accepts certain overt lies and secret truths as well as, at times, horrific burdens and sacrifices of life so that this experiment can continue.
What Kendi wants to do is to eliminate the detente in favor of a single lie, for the last 10% of gain that he thinks will happen. He is betting that accusations of racism can get him anything and everything. Which is what he has been taught to believe, ironically, by his targets (a fact that should be his primary red flag). I wonder every day if this is lost on people like him.
What is more likely to happen is that the “racism” red line is likely to become less of one as the detente is forcefully eradicated by CRT bullies, which means things get worse and not better. A red line that he thinks is religion, but exists only because of the detente that the rest of society on both sides can only agree to given overt lies and hidden truths that shape how it is managed.
The fact is, Blacks recieve more attention because they produce more bodies per capita. Nothing will change that equation. If it is changed, Eden Falls.
This is a case of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent offering that last bit of knowledge. For all of its imperfections, this is Eden: a carefully crafted, surviveable World. Take the Apple, and the Bible tells the rest.
lol someone who has literally proposed a constitutional amendment making him emperor isn’t totalitarian 😀😂😂
I have to admit, though it is unbecoming, a degree of schadenfreude watching educated idiots; useful idiots and just plain ignorant idiots pummel each other while at the same time dashing themselves against a wall that does not exist…race. Try to imagine God without religion; an ineffable intellect and power that set mankind on a journey to ascendance; providing instruction, Torah, directly three times.
Sinai to create a highly disciplined nation to act as guardians of the instruction; Yeshua to provide an opportunity for mankind to be adopted into the family born at Sinai and finally the founding documents of the United States as governance for all mankind. From the beginning the issue has never been one of race, but rather greater and lesser peoples and cultures with an obligation for the greater to elevate, not rule over, the lesser…but never should the greater become less with contact.
The ineffable intellect and power that chose the title God when setting mankind on the journey has nothing to do with religion as a construct of man, but everything to do with insuring His plan concludes without unnecessary suffering…and as such has chosen to empirically evidence His existence.
Stop arguing amongst yourselves and find solutions before a loving Father warning his children ‘Don’t make me come down there” does so.
This false dichotomy is nothing more than a shell game with a moral insult. “Anti-racists” try to hide the fact that they are stilling looking down on you, judging you morally deficient for not agreeing with them, and insulting you by claiming “it’s the system” and therefore it’s not your fault your racist. The sleight of hand they pull is to never acknowledge what a system actually is in the cultural or political sense. Systems are made of individual people. That is their basic unit and that is who ultimately controls them. If people refuse to engage in a system anymore, it collapses and ceases to exist (which is likely the point of railing against the “system” in this context). Hence nobody worships the Norse or Greek pantheons anymore or believes in the divine right of kings, by way of example. Those systems lost their basic building blocks (individual people who believes in them) and ceased to be.
Those examples illustrate another trait of cultural and political systems. If the individual is the building block of them, then it’s the individuals in the system who operates them and determines their functions in society. Societies just have different individuals who make those choice (i.e. communists have the individuals at the top of the government making economic decisions for everyone else vs. free markets let either everyone make their own economic decisions or go oligarchic and let those with the most wealth but not necessarily in government do it). The bottom line is that it is some group of individuals who are responsible for making the choices about what a human cultural or political system is and therefore what it does. Therefore blaming racism on “systems” is still blaming individuals. It’s blaming the individuals who buy into and support the system and thus determine what it is and does for racism (in American society that’s anyone who believes in capitalism, republican form of government, individual rights and responsibility, and equality as opposed to equity under the law). It’s still calling those who believe in the system individually racist and morally deficient as a result. It’s just doing so in an emotionally manipulative and dishonest fashion.
They’re “anti-racist” racists.
Or racist “anti-racists”.
An activist philosophy claims everything in the world can only be properly understood as one thing, and that one thing just so happens to be the one thing the activists demand action on … *yawn*
This is why it’s handy to learn history, the snake oil hucksters are always up to their same old tricks.
Thx for addressing Kendi’s ideas. I’ve felt people are more apt to criticize DiAngelo bc they fear criticizing Kendi will lead to their being called “racist.”
I found a website saying the racism vs. antiracism binary had been proved true by research. That called to my mind the public health researchers I used to work for, with their multi-center surveys and trials using meticulous selection of hypotheses, variables and methods, careful collection of data, and well-thought-out conclusions. I think those researchers would say the racist/antiracist thing can’t be proven by research. How could you test for such a nebulous, ever-expanding concept?
I’m going to read “How to be…” so I understand the current climate. For now, what I’ve read about it makes me feel like, “Yes? And? And?” I feel frustrated with all the talk of theories, and keep wondering what specifically he’d like us to do (maybe the book says this). Quibbling over theories and wokeness keeps us from doing the more difficult things, like implementing measures to improve policing and education/job opportunities, seeing how those measures work, and fine-tuning them as necessary.
Great article. I would take this a step further by juxtaposing Kendi’s totalitarian/utopianist solution to racism through anti-racism with the enlightenment philosophy that was central to the formation of the United States as a constitutional republic and is (or should continue to be) at the root of our civil society. The philosophy of individuals such as John Locke, Charles de Montesquieu, and Alexis de Tocqueville, and the liberty-centric form of government in the United States that was birthed from their ideas, has brought about the most human flourishing and equality of opportunity in human history. This, juxtaposed with political structures based on social engineering (i.e., communism) as Kendi posits, albeit under the label of “anti-racism”, would show that Kendi’s and others’ utopian ideas, even if well-intentioned, inevitably result in greater disparities among social classes and ethnic groups, less individual liberty and consequent successes, and less overall human flourishing in society.