Returning to the speech he discussed in the book’s introduction, Kendi can now clearly identify the reason his message was racist: he repeated the common idea that Black people are somehow predisposed to bad behavior, and that this behavior leads to poverty and violence. It’s illogical to say that a racial group behaves in certain ways
because of race, and it’s much harder for people to never make mistakes than it is for society to change in order to forgive some of those mistakes. The fact that Kendi slept through his timeslot and still won the contest is even clearer proof that people’s good or bad behavior does not always correlate with their outcomes in life. It also attests to the value of second chances, something that Kendi advocates is necessary for antiracist activist to grant others.