#how to be an antiracist

[nando161mando]

[morlock-holmes]

So, I decided to keep looking and got Ibram X. Kendi's *How to Be An Antiracist* from the library.

This is going to be the hardest one for me to finish, not because of anything political at all but just because I find the way Kendi writes memoir stylistically unexciting.

It reminds me of those long-form magazine pieces that go on and on about the subject's disarming smile and the color of his Italian loafers and how the sunset looks from the coffee shop he selected for the interview and the whole time you're going, "Jesus Christ get to the good parts about securities fraud already"

I'm not coming into the book with a positive attitude which certainly can't help.

So far the political arguments are... well they're arguments, so it's immediately a huge step up from *White Fragility*. That there is even a cogent argument being made feels bizarre after slogging through the utter mess that is *White Fragility*.

They also, unless I'm totally misunderstanding what Kendi is saying, seem *entirely* incompatible with Robin DiAngelo's approach to antiracism on some extremely fundamental levels, which is making me reconsider what *White Fragility* actually is and what was going on in 2020 in general.

I am kind of getting to the point where I almost want to recommend that people read *White Fragility* just so you can understand how truly shockingly bad it is. Like I really cannot overstate it, it's not just that I disagree with the politics, it's really genuinely awful even as an example of those politics.

[alwaysinbetweeninsaneandinsecure]

This family HAS BEEN ABLE TO FLEE SUDAN!! AND ALSO They are still in need of funds to help with immigration costs. Every give and share helps this family move toward the safety and peace that they so deserve.

[subjects99]

Follow for more memes ✨️✨️

[lacephale]

Louis Armstrong drawing a trumpet and signing on one crassy though classy crane

1961

[alurite-l]

"I am not my ancestors!!!"

*Doesn't call out their friends racism, believes in stereotypes, denies their white privilege, uses the police as a way to keep black people in line, steals from black creators then tries to rebrand it as something new, gets mad a black safe spaces, uses their white tears as a way to get black people in trouble, whitewashes the truth,and is somehow always the victim in any situation at all time.*

Just cuz you don't have a whip in your hand and aren't telling black people to get back into the fields doesn't mean you're any different from your meemaw in the 50s or your pop pop in the 1700s bitch 🤷🏾‍♂️

[misscannibalprincess]

Lmao I saw some gringos getting mad that a racist got arrested in my country (Brazil)

Sorry mano, but some of us actually do something instead of making excuses for hate crime. Hate speech will never be free speech.

And just to clarify, racism against arabs, asians, antisemitsm are also crimes here.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“The most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a White ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a “race-neutral” one.”

-- Ibram X. Kendi, “How to Be an Antiracist”

Not being racist is more racist than being racist. 🤡

[nando161mando]

COUNTER COUNTER PROTEST SUN 11.30AM PARLIAMENT

NEVER AGAIN MEANS GAZA 🇵🇸

This Sunday, racist opponents are holding a "Never Again Is Now" rally in solidarity with the Zionist entity currently enacting genocide in Palestine. Politicians addressing the rally will reiterate that they stand with Israel while it drops bombs over Gaza.

Western nations failed to prevent the Holocaust and "again" are failing to prevent the systemised torture, starvation and mass murder of a people.

We must directly counter Zionism, fascism and the political forces that express support for genocide and racism in society.

Zionism is a racist, colonial ideology. As Jews and Palestinians, we stand against all forms of racism and all colonial, imperial violence justified through dehumanisation and hate and allowed to be mainstream.

Join the counter counter protest to the Free Palestine rallies, to say that today, "never again" includes Gaza.

Never again means respecting the memory and lessons of the Holocaust.

@antifainternational @anarchistmemecollective @radicalgraff @kropotkindersurprise

[tododeku-or-bust]

Ibram X Kendi calls it "racial abuse" and frankly, he's right. Existing Black in America (esp as a woman or LGBTQ) really is like an abusive relationship with White supremacy.

You either get the one that's outright beating the shit out of you, calling you names and lying on you, and then threatening you and your family's life if you leave or step out of line (white conservatives)

Or you get the one hitting you where no one can see, then brings you flowers going "it'll never happen again, i love you!", until you step out of line and bring up the abuse, and then the cycle repeats while everyone claims how GREAT they are to you (performative white liberals)

This shit is EXHAUSTING. And then you'll be told you have to "work with them, don't be mean" bc there's "two sides to every story" and "what did you do?" Like 🙄 I'm sorry i wanted them to be held accountable (and maybe even do better societally?), i guess that makes me an "equivalent abuser"!?! Be fr.

[ausetkmt]

NPR: In new documentary, Ibram X. Kendi asks 'What is wrong with Black people?'

In new documentary, Ibram X. Kendi asks 'What is wrong with Black people?'

Eric Deggans looks at the new documentary "Stamped from the Beginning," which looks at the history of racist ideas in America.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

The Netflix documentary "Stamped From The Beginning" starts with a provocative question writer and professor Ibram X. Kendi asks of other Black academics.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING")

IBRAM X KENDI: Can you please tell me what is wrong with Black people?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: What is wrong with Black people?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: OK, what do you mean by that?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: What is wrong with Black people?

RASCOE: Kendi, who founded the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, answers by invoking how systemic racism can convince Black people and everyone else that Black people deserve to be marginalized. NPR TV critic and media analyst Eric Deggans has watched "Stamped From The Beginning" and has also been following recent allegations of mismanagement against Kendi at the BU center. Hi, Eric.

ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Hi.

RASCOE: So first, tell us more about this documentary. It's out on Netflix later this month.

DEGGANS: Yeah, it's this percolating primer on the themes in Kendi's award-winning 2016 book of the same name. Now, there's compelling animation, historical photos, interviews with lots of academics - although it might be tough for some people to watch. It's centered on this idea that much of the systemic racism that's directed against Black people was created as an attempt to justify enslavement and exploitation of Black people, not the other way around. And in the film, you know, Kendi speaks of this ruler known as Prince Henry of Portugal who he says turned to enslaving Black people from Africa in the mid-1400s instead of Europeans because it was harder for them to run away. Here's a clip. Let's listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING")

KENDI: Prince Henry didn't want to admit he was violently enslaving African people to make money, so he dispatched a royal chronicler by the name of Gomes Zurara.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KENDI: Gomes Zurara justified his slave trading by stating that Prince Henry was doing it to save souls and that these people in Africa were inferior.

DEGGANS: So that, Kendi says, is the creation of Blackness in which Europeans treat Africans from many different tribes and countries as one inferior race to justify exploiting them.

RASCOE: So these are some very complex concepts about race and history. How does this fit with his other work, you know, like his bestselling book "How To Be An Antiracist" or his ESPN series on sports and race?

DEGGANS: Well, you know, I've interviewed Kendi for NPR's Life Kit podcast. And at the core of a lot of his work is this idea that racism is a behavior, not just a state of being - that it comes down to choices you make every day. And in Netflix's "Stamped From The Beginning," that means examining these ideas like the myth of Black hypersexuality, which has been invoked throughout history to justify raping Black women or lynching Black men. And after the death of George Floyd in 2020, you know, Kendi gained new prominence speaking on these themes - the themes in "How To Be An Antiracist." And those ideas are found in so many contemporary issues that it makes sense that Kendi could leverage them into an ESPN project on racism in sports or this Netflix film.

RASCOE: And what about that criticism Kendi ran into following his decision earlier this year to lay off about half the staff at the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University? Where do those allegations of mismanagement stand?

DEGGANS: Well, the university just released an internal audit finding there were no issues with how the center's finances were handled, which kind of backed up Kendi's contention that the layoffs were not a result of bad fiscal management. And it also pushes back against some critics who tried to delegitimize his concepts by suggesting he's some kind of fraud. Now, hopefully, this will allow people to focus more on his ideas, which he sums up at the end of "Stamped From The Beginning" by answering that original question. The only thing wrong with Black people, he says, is that we think something is wrong with Black people.

RASCOE: NPR TV critic and media analyst Eric Deggans. Thank you so much.

DEGGANS: Thank you.

[witchyphilosophe]

Let’s go!

[connanro]

i just realised that all THREE (3) books im currently reading are about racism

[52booksproject]

Book 37: How to be an Antiracist

This week I chose How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. It was a tough book. There is just a ton of historical racist ideas and rhetoric presented as what we're fighting against and it made for very uncomfortable reading. My library's copy was an updated book that had annotations that fixed problematic terms and clarified points he had been criticized about.

Kendi's premise is that one cannot simply be a "not racist" person and the opposite of racism is antiracism. There are two kinds of racism - one that thinks some races are inferior and always will be and one that says some races are inferior, but not inherently because if they assimilate to the right (white) ideas they can become equals. He talks about the connection and intertwining of Capitalism and racism and the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality. Apparently modern Capitalism was born when Prince Henry the "Navigator" started Black slavery. Racism isn't necessarily about bad people hating other people for the color of their skin- it's more about self interest and using the concept that others are inferior to justify unfair policies.

Kendi is absolutely frank about his own history of internalized racist ideas and college era bigotry against white people. At one point he even believed whites were aliens that came to oppress Earthlings of color (his friend laughed him out of the room at that one and he soon dropped the idea).

Essentially to be an antiracist is to support policies that seek to eliminate racial injustice.

BEST QUOTE: We cannot be antiracist if we are homophobic or transphobic.

SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK? I give this one a resounding yes! It's an interesting premise and a great look into America's and the World's racism problem.

ART PROJECT:

Ok, I really couldn't think of anything to do for this that wasn't totally cheesy.

So I thought in the spirit of the self confession in the book that I would share my history of being racist. I started a few spaces ahead as my parents are antiracist oriented (nobody's perfect though), and and raised me as best they could in a racist society. I still held a lot of racist ideas and ignorance honestly. And though I was raised to be a gay ally, back when I was a kid I was pretty transphobic and would be until the trans movement gained better traction in the 2000s and I finally learned that trans men and women are in fact men and women. Unfortunately for me, I was in a very white area and the only substantial population of people of color were Latinix. That thankfully made most of my racist mistakes not targeted at actual individuals. I still struggle with racist ideas though I try very hard to be antiracist. All I can do is continue to chip away at my ignorance and be eternally vigilant.

[thescentofrainonstone]

r/Europe has gone full Nazi and when you say something against this shit you're downvoted into oblivion. We are talking about thousands of people living on the continent genuinely thinking of refugees as "economic migrant" who take to the sea as if the Nazi do for a holiday. And you can't fuckin educate them and it drives me insane.

Yesterday I spent an hour chatting with a friend and colleague, so eloquent and insanely well educated. He's a refugee in the UK. I asked him about the asylum process and he was extremely candid and again, so acutely aware of the system and with the language to break it down. Dog whistles like "economic migrant" are just Nazi Europe trying to forget the fact that if they left countries on their knees that people cannot feed themselves and so they have every right to survival including migrating to a country where food is no question.

Between colonialism and resources extraction from the third world Europe should fucking bow their head and pay reparations to every country they destroyed instead these white fuckers who have not worked for the luck hey have of being white of being born on the right side of an imaginary line talk about refugees as liars, as calculated manipulators who supposedly want more than even white people have. I'm not surprised the media came up with this stories but that adult people just eat it up?

And then I'm reminded, people with privilege just care about keeping their birth lottery ticket valid.

And then maybe we deserve to go extinct

[yourneighborpersephone]

If the children do not stop using the language of social justice to reinforce the same tired segregationist boundaries I swEAR TO MYSELF

“Maybe I shouldn’t hang out with the working-class kids because I am upper-middle class and my privilege might be a problem” is the second most cop thing I have read today