How to Be an Antiracist

Key Concepts

Antiracist, defined

“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. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.”’ The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism.” (p. 9)

“ANTIRACIST: One who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.” (p. 13)

“What is racism? Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.” (p. 17)

“We all have the power to discriminate. Only an exclusive few have the power to make policy. Focusing on ‘racial discrimination’ takes our eyes off the central agents of racism: racist policy and racist policymakers, or what I call racist power.” (p. 18)

Race was created to exercise power

“Gomes de Zurara grouped all those peoples from Africa into a single race for that very reason: to create hierarchy, the first racist idea. Race making is an essential ingredient in the making of racist ideas, the crust that holds the pie.” (p. 40)

“But that gets the chain of events exactly wrong. The root problem—from Prince Henry to President Trump—has always been the self-interest of racist power. Powerful economic, political, and cultural self-interest—the primitive accumulation of capital in the case of royal Portugal and subsequent slave traders—has been behind racist policies.” (p. 42)

Racism is tied up in power and policies, but everyone is implicated, even if they don’t have formal power

“As we’ve learned, racist power produces racist policies out of self-interest and then produces racist ideas to justify those policies. But racist ideas also suppress the resistance to policies that are detrimental to White people, by convincing average White people that inequity is rooted in ‘personal failure’ and is unrelated to policies.” (p. 129)

“This powerless defense, as I call it, emerged in the wake of racist Whites dismissing antiracist policies and ideas as racist in the late 1960s. In subsequent decades, Black voices critical of White racism defended themselves from these charges by saying, ‘Black people can’t be racist, because Black people don’t have power.’” (p. 140)

“Quietly, though, this defense shields people of color in positions of power from doing the work of antiracism, since they are apparently powerless, since White people have all the power. This means that people of color are powerless to roll back racist policies and close racial inequities even in their own spheres of influence, the places where they actually do have some power to effect change.”  (p. 140)

“Every single person actually has the power to protest racist and antiracist policies, to advance them, or, in some small way, to stall them.” (p. 140)

“When we stop denying the duality of racist and antiracist, we can take an accurate accounting of the racial ideas and policies we support. For the better part of my life I held both racist and antiracist ideas, supported both racist and antiracist policies; I’ve been antiracist one moment, racist in many more moments. To say Black people can’t be racist is to say all Black people are being antiracist at all times. My own story tells me that is not true. History agrees.” (p. 144)

Capitalism and racism are intertwined

“But it is impossible to know racism without understanding its intersection with capitalism.” (p. 156)

“Capitalism emerged during what world-systems theorists term the “long sixteenth century,” a cradling period that begins around 1450 with Portugal (and Spain) sailing into the unknown Atlantic. Prince Henry’s Portugal birthed conjoined twins—capitalism and racism—when it initiated the transatlantic slave trade of African people.” (p. 156)

“Racial capitalism makes countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo one of the richest countries in the world belowground and one of the poorest countries in the world aboveground.” (p. 162)

We should seek integration into diverse spaces, not just people of color integrating into White spaces

“Americans have seen the logical conclusion of segregationist strategy, from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration and border walls. 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.” (p. 180)

Change comes through the exercise of power, not through convincing people to drop racist ideas

“Moral and educational suasion focus on persuading White people, on appealing to their moral conscience through horror and their logical mind through education. But what if racist ideas make people illogical? What if persuading everyday White people is not persuading racist policymakers? What if racist policymakers know about the harmful outcomes of their policies? What if racist policymakers have neither morals nor conscience, let alone moral conscience, to paraphrase Malcolm X? What if no group in history has gained their freedom through appealing to the moral conscience of their oppressors, to paraphrase Assata Shakur? What if economic, political, or cultural self-interest drives racist policymakers, not hateful immorality, not ignorance?” (p. 205)

“Once they clearly benefit, most Americans will support and become the defenders of the antiracist policies they once feared.” (p. 208)

“To fight for mental and moral changes after policy is changed means fighting alongside growing benefits and the dissipation of fears, making it possible for antiracist power to succeed. To fight for mental and moral change as a prerequisite for policy change is to fight against growing fears and apathy, making it almost impossible for antiracist power to succeed.” (p. 208)

Quotables

“Denial is the heartbeat of racism, beating across ideologies, races, and nations. It is beating within us. Many of us who strongly call out Trump’s racist ideas will strongly deny our own.” (p. 9)

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” (p. 19)

“There may be no more consequential White privilege than life itself. White lives matter to the tune of 3.5 additional years over Black lives in the United States, which is just the most glaring of a host of health disparities, starting from infancy, where Black infants die at twice the rate of White infants.” (p. 21)

“While segregationist ideas suggest a racial group is permanently inferior, assimilationist ideas suggest a racial group is temporarily inferior. ‘It would be hazardous to affirm that, equally cultivated for a few generations,’ the Negro “would not become” equal, Jefferson once wrote, in assimilationist fashion.” (p. 32)

“I do not use ‘microaggression’ anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts—“micro” and “aggression.” A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term “abuse” because aggression is not as exacting a term.” (p. 47)

“The segregationist sees six biologically distinct races. The assimilationist sees one biological human race. But there is another way of looking, through the lens of biological antiracism. To be antiracist is to recognize the reality of biological equality, that skin color is as meaningless to our underlying humanity as the clothes we wear over that skin. To be antiracist is to recognize there is no such thing as White blood or Black diseases or natural Latinx athleticism. 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 peoples’ lives.” (p. 54)

“That is the central double standard in ethnic racism: loving one’s position on the ladder above other ethnic groups and hating one’s position below that of other ethnic groups. It is angrily trashing the racist ideas about one’s own group but happily consuming the racist ideas about other ethnic groups. It is failing to recognize that racist ideas we consume about others came from the same restaurant and the same cook who used the same ingredients to make different degrading dishes for us all.” (p. 65)

“But crime bills have never correlated to crime any more than fear has correlated to actual violence.” (p. 76)

“A study that used National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data from 1976 to 1989 found that young Black males engaged in more violent crime than young White males. But when the researchers compared only employed young males of both races, the differences in violent behavior vanished. Or, as the Urban Institute stated in a more recent report on long-term unemployment, ‘Communities with a higher share of long-term unemployed workers also tend to have higher rates of crime and violence.’ ...In other words, researchers have found a much stronger and clearer correlation between violent-crime levels and unemployment levels than between violent crime and race.”  (p. 79)

“But what was the difference between Ebonics and so-called “standard” English? Ebonics had grown from the roots of African languages and modern English just as modern English had grown from Latin, Greek, and Germanic roots. Why is Ebonics broken English but English is not broken German? Why is Ebonics a dialect of English if English is not a dialect of Latin? The idea that Black languages outside Africa are broken is as culturally racist as the idea that languages inside Europe are fixed.” (p. 83)

“One of racism’s harms is the way it falls on the unexceptional Black person who is asked to be extraordinary just to survive—and, even worse, the Black screwup who faces the abyss after one error, while the White screwup is handed second chances and empathy. This shouldn’t be surprising: One of the fundamental values of racism to White people is that it makes success attainable for even unexceptional Whites, while success, even moderate success, is usually reserved for extraordinary Black people.” (p. 93)

“Every time someone racializes behavior—describes something as ‘Black behavior’—they are expressing a racist idea. 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.’” (p. 95)

“Remember, to believe in a racial hierarchy is to believe in a racist idea. The idea of an achievement gap between the races—with Whites and Asians at the top and Blacks and Latinx at the bottom—creates a racial hierarchy, with its implication that the racial gap in test scores means something is wrong with the Black and Latinx test takers and not the tests.” (p. 101)

“To be an antiracist is to eliminate any beauty standard based on skin and eye color, hair texture, facial and bodily features shared by groups. To be an antiracist is to diversify our standards of beauty like our standards of culture or intelligence, to see beauty equally in all skin colors, broad and thin noses, kinky and straight hair, light and dark eyes. To be an antiracist is to build and live in a beauty culture that accentuates instead of erases our natural beauty.” (p. 113)

“With Black poverty dense and White poverty scattered, Black poverty is visible and surrounds its victims; White poverty blends in.” (p. 158)

“To be antiracist is to reject not only the hierarchy of races but of race-genders. To be feminist is to reject not only the hierarchy of genders but of race-genders. To truly be antiracist is to be feminist. To truly be feminist is to be antiracist. To be antiracist (and feminist) is to level the different race-genders, is to root the inequities between the equal race-genders in the policies of gender racism.” (p. 189)

“An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change. If a person has no record of power or policy change, then that person is not an activist.” (p. 209)

“We use the terms ‘demonstration’ and ‘protest’ interchangeably, at our own peril, like we interchangeably use the terms ‘mobilizing’ and ‘organizing.’ A protest is organizing people for a prolonged campaign that forces racist power to change a policy. A demonstration is mobilizing people momentarily to publicize a problem.” (p. 215)

“The most effective protests create an environment whereby changing the racist policy becomes in power’s self-interest, like desegregating businesses because the sit-ins are driving away customers, like increasing wages to restart production, like giving teachers raises to resume schooling, like passing a law to attract a well-organized force of donors or voters.” (p. 216)

“Racism has always been terminal and curable. Racism has always been recognizable and mortal.” (p. 223)