How To Be An Antiracist Chapter Summary

As part of the Stronger Together initiative, the Role of Customs Engagement is hosting book discussions this summer based on Ibram X. Kendi'due south book How to Be an Antiracist. These small groups discussions are now airtight for summer 2020. New groups volition open upwards in fall 2020.

For those who are reading along, here are some reflections questions from Chapters 1-ix to guide usa in disquisitional cocky-reflection every bit we do the important work of becoming antiracist. Part 2, with questions for Chapters 10-18, is also now available.

Introduction

The book'southward central bulletin is that the reverse of "racist" isn't "not racist." The true opposite of "racist" is antiracist. "The skilful news," Kendi writes, "is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be racist one minute and an antiracist the next." What does information technology hateful to have to constantly reaffirm your identity as an antiracist? Is there any benefit to the fact that you lot can't just decide you are "not racist" or an antiracist and exist done with it?

"'Racist' is not- as Richard Spencer argues- a pejorative. It is not the worst give-and-take in the English language; it is not the equivalent of a slur. It is descriptive, and the but style to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it- and then dismantle it. The attempt to turn this usefully descriptive term into an about unusable slur is, of course, designed to do the contrary: to freeze us into inaction."

Chapter i – Definitions

"What is racism? Racism is a wedlock of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities."

"No one becomes a racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be ane or the other. Nosotros tin unknowingly strive to be a racist. We tin knowingly strive to be an anti-racist. Like fighting an addiction, beingness an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular cocky-test."

Chapter ii – Dueling Consciousness

Kendi explores assimilation, segregationist, and anti-racist mindsets. What are some examples you've seen of each of these?

What is your reaction to the "State of war on Drugs" – the stiffer sentencing policies for drug crimes and the mass incarceration of non-tearing offenders? How does this fit within our electric current tensions around racial disparities in police enforcement and law brutality toward Black individuals?

Chapter 3 – Power

Kendi recounts the history of race equally constructs. Accept you lot heard this history earlier? What is your response to hearing the story of Prince Henry enslaving Africans? And Linnaeus' racial hierarchy? How do these mesh with stories you have heard about race growing upwardly?

"This crusade and effect – a racist ability creates racist policies out of raw self-interest; the racist policies necessitate racist ideas to justify them – lingers over the life of racism." (p42)

Chapter 4 – Biology

Microaggressions, i.e. racial corruption – When have you lot witnessed or been a perpetrator of microaggressions? "brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their grouping membership?" (p46)

What is the bear upon of this persistent daily hum of racist corruption? Kendi lists distress, acrimony, worry, depression, anxiety, hurting, fatigue, and suicide. (p46)

Disparities in punishment and teaching – "I wonder if her racist ideas chalked up my resistance to my Blackness and therefore characterized it every bit misbehavior, not distress. With racist teachers, misbehaving kids of color do not receive enquiry and empathy and legitimacy. We receive orders and punishments and 'no excuses,' as if nosotros were adults. The Black child is ill-treated like an adult, and the Blackness adult is ill-treated like a child." (p47)

Racial categories – Kendi argues that as long as racial inequities exist, that racial categories are essential in identifying those inequities and addressing racist policies. (p54) This is why a color-blind organisation doesn't work. Information technology neglects to acknowledge the racial inequities and maintains the existing racial hierarchies and power structures. How practice yous respond to those who say they do not "encounter colour?" How might we answer?

Chapter 5 – Ethnicity

"…The key double standard in indigenous racism: loving one's position on the ladder higher up over ethnic groups and hating one's position below that of other indigenous groups." (p65) Have yous experienced this tension earlier? Why exercise we consume racist/sexist/classist ideas about other groups and reject racist/sexist/classist ideas about our own?

Chapter half-dozen – Trunk

Kendi quotes President Bill Clinton saying – "By experience or at least what people see on the news at nighttime, violence for those White people too often has a Black face." (p70) He then goes on to annotate, "Americans today see the Black trunk equally larger, more threatening, more potentially harmful, and more likely to require strength to control than a similarly sized White body, according to researchers." What have you observed about media portrayals of violence? What kinds of antiracist strategies can challenge these racialized depictions of violence?

"We were unarmed, but we knew that Blackness armed us fifty-fifty though we had no guns. Whiteness disarmed the cops – turned them into fearful potential victims – even when they were approaching a group of clearly outstrapped and anxious high schoolhouse kids… Unarmed black bodies – which apparently look armed to fearful officers – are about twice as probable to be killed as unarmed White bodies." How practice these views of the Black torso equally inherently dangerous play into the contempo tragic and deadly police force encounters, e.g. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Eric Gardner?

What is your response to Kendi's description of the Violent Criminal offense Command and Law Enforcement Act (p 74)? How did this act perpetuate the correlation of Blackness with violence? What were some of the unintended consequences?

What nigh the correlation of violence with poverty and unemployment? (p79) Advocates for defunding the police argue investment in jobs programs and other services are more constructive in reducing violence and crime in low income communities. What are the possibilities and challenges of moving in this direction?

On page 75-76, Kendi addresses the depictions of the inner city equally perpetuating and breeding violence. "We, the immature Blackness super-predators, were apparently existence raised with an unprecedented inclination toward violence – in a nation that presumably did not raise White slaveholders, lynchers, officials, venture capitalists, financiers, drunk drivers, and war hawks to exist violent." What is your reaction to this tendency to overlook White violence? What do y'all know about the violence of lynching, racial terrorism, and the handling of slaves? In what ways have we acknowledged and made restitution for those tearing acts?

Chapter 7 – Culture

"The act of making a cultural standard and hierarchy is what creates cultural racism." (p 83) What are some of the cultural standards nosotros concord? Kendi says to be antiracist is to refuse cultural standards and level cultural differences. How might nosotros do that?

"The cultural African survived in the Americans, created a strong and complex culture with Western 'outward' forms 'while retaining inner [African] values'…The same cultural African breathed life into the African American culture that raised me." (p 86) Discuss some of the aspects of culture Kendi talks well-nigh, e.g. fresh manner, Black church, soul food, Hip Hop. Does whatever of Kendi's descriptions challenge racialized images and stereotypes for y'all? How might we, equally cultural antiracists, turn down cultural standards in these areas and equalize cultural differences amid racial groups (p81)?

Affiliate eight – Beliefs

Kendi says that Blackness private mistakes are generalized to the mistakes of the race, while White individual mistakes are seen as individual mistakes and often met with second chances and empathy. How have you seen this play out in your experience?

The achievement gap and standardized tests – "The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the nearly effective racist policies e'er devised to degrade Blackness minds and legally exclude Black bodies." (p 101) What is your response to the context and history that Kendi brings to tests like the Sabbatum and GRE? Why do we continue to utilise these tests? What would changing educational structures and admissions look like?

Looking at the racial disparities in funding for education and resourcing of schools and teachers, Kendi says "The racial problem is the opportunity gap, equally antiracist reformers call it, not the achievement gap." (103) How do we movement toward creating opportunities for more than children to succeed inside and outside of school? How exercise we admit and celebrate dissimilar kinds of intelligence?

Chapter 9 – Color

Kendi talks about the dueling consciousness of antiracist pride in one's ain race and assimilationist want to be another race. (p 109) For him, it was wearing colored contact lenses to portray himself as lighter. He too talks nigh white people tanning to become darker. In his words, "to exist antiracist is not to reverse the beauty standard. To be antiracist is to eliminate whatsoever standard based on peel, eye color, hair texture…to exist antiracist is to diversify our standards of beauty like our standards of civilization or intelligence, to encounter beauty equally in all skin colors, broad and sparse noses, kinky and straight hair, light and dark optics. To exist an antiracist is to build and live in a beauty civilisation that accentuates instead of erases our natural beauty." (p 113) What would an antiracist dazzler culture look like? What practice we need to change to go there?

How have you experienced the dueling consciousness of pride in one's own body and assimilationist desire to fit in with others?

View Part 2: Chapters 10-18.

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Source: https://dce.olemiss.edu/how-to-be-an-antiracist-reading-guide-part-1/