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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in How to Be an Antiracist, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism vs. Antiracism
Activism and Social Transformation
Intersectionality
The History of Racist Ideas and Policies
Summary
Analysis
In high school, Ibram X. Kendi used to hate dressing up—so when he had to give a speech to 3,000 people as part of a county oratorical contest, he showed up in a colorful blazer and baggy pants. Unlike the other finalists, he was an average student. In fact, he was surprised to get into college at all. A few weeks earlier, his father had visited the school basketball court with an envelope: it was his offer of admission to Hampton University. Kendi cried tears of joy.
Kendi begins with a personal anecdote that illustrates how racism affects his everyday life and how he’s managed to transform himself into an antiracist over the years. Kendi’s choice of clothing at the high school speaking contest seems to confirm his suspicion that he’s a misfit there. But the contrast of Kendi’s clothing and grades alongside his participation in a prestigious oratory contest and admission to Hampton University also challenges common racist ideas about young African American people. Specifically, mainstream white culture tends to stereotype young Black men like him as poor or involved in crime. But by showing himself succeed in a public speaking contest and get into college, Kendi points out that this assumption is a racist lie. He thereby forces his readers to consider their own racist assumptions about young Black men who underperform in school and wear baggy pants.
Themes
Kendi used to consider himself “too stupid” to go to college, because he wrongly thought that grades and test scores objectively measured intelligence. But now, many years later, Kendi understands that his subpar academic performance in high school was about a lack of interest, not a lack of ability. And if he knew more about American history, Kendi would have also understood why the town where he lived—Manassas, Virginia—was full of Confederate monuments. His school was even named for the Confederate General Stonewall Jackson.
Kendi is essentially admitting his past racism: he accepted racist assumptions about why Black students perform worse in certain academic settings. He wasn’t racist because he hated Black people like himself, but simply because ideas like this have been normalized in American society. In retrospect, Kendi can recognize the underlying social influences that made him disinterested in school. He also implies that naming a high school after a Confederate general could have a detrimental impact on Black students whose ancestors were enslaved in the Confederacy.
Themes
Kendi felt a rush of self-confidence while delivering his speech. During this period of his life, it’s difficult to say whether his low self-esteem made him look down on Black people in general, or his racist ideas about Black people made him look down on himself. This cycle of negative thinking is common: upon hearing racist ideas, people of color’s self-esteem worsens and white people’s improves, which in turn makes both groups more likely to accept more racist ideas. In Kendi’s case, the media (and his own community) constantly sent the message that Black kids were bad students. This led him to expect that he’d fail in school, and when he did, it reinforced his belief that Black people were bad students. Instead of breaking the cycle, he internalized the racist ideas that fed it.
Kendi uses psychological research about how different people respond to racism in order to explain why racist ideas are so attractive to dominant groups, like white people in the United States. Essentially, they make people in these groups feel superior. And by accepting that subordinate groups are less powerful because they are somehow inferior, dominant groups justify inequity and paint an unjust world as just. But these racist ideas harm subordinate groups, helping to create the inequities that dominant groups cite as evidence for them in the first place.
Themes
During his speech, Kendi evoked Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to argue that young Black people were falling behind because they did not value education, family planning, or middle-class jobs. The audience loved this message, but Kendi explains that it was a racist idea: by suggesting that something was wrong with Black people as a collective, he implied that Black people were an inferior racial group. Like all racist ideas, this leads blaming people, not policy, for racial inequities. Kendi believes that this is what Donald Trump was doing when he said that Black people are lazy and that Latinx immigrants were criminals. And all the while, he insisted he’s “the least racist person.” This is normal: people who hold racist ideas and push racist policies usually claim to be “not racist.”
Ironically, Kendi’s success in the oratorical contest disproves the message of personal responsibility that he was preaching. He even used this same idea to explain his own academic underachievement in the past—but in his speech, he suddenly decided that he was better than the rest of the young Black people surrounding him. Unlike Donald Trump, however, Kendi does not try to defend what he said—rather, he is willing to accept criticism and change. He recognizes that a lot of mainstream ideas are racist, and that almost everyone believes in some racist ideas.
Themes
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But according to Kendi, there’s no such thing as being “not racist.” Rather, people can be racist (which means that they believe in a racial hierarchy) or antiracist (which means that they believe that racial groups are fundamentally equal). Racists blame people for racial inequities, while antiracists blame racist policies for inequities and try to change them. There is no neutral middle ground. People only claim to be “not racist” when they feel attacked. But “racist” is not a slur or personal attack: it’s a descriptive term for certain ways of thinking and acting. Similarly, when people claim to be “color-blind” or not see race, they are really saying that they want to ignore racial inequities and allow them to continue. In fact, the Supreme Court used exactly this defense to legalize Jim Crow segregation in the landmark 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson.
Kendi’s argument that everything is either racist or antiracist might sound extreme or oversimplified at first. But he isn’t saying that everything is all good or all evil; that everyone is either with him or against him; or that antiracists all have to follow a specific code of acceptable thoughts and behaviors. Rather, he’s making the point that there’s no neutral middle ground between equality and inequality: people either believe that different racial groups are equal, or they believe that they’re unequal. Additionally, Kendi makes the point that nobody can ever be “not racist.” Racism already exists, and people must choose to either go along with it or actively reject it.
Themes
“Racist” and “antiracist” are descriptive terms for people’s behavior, not permanent identities for people themselves. People are capable of transformation—Kendi was often very racist in the past. He claimed to be race-neutral, and he blamed racial groups themselves for racial inequities. Expecting white people to view him as a representative for all Black people, he tried to present himself as favorably as possible in hopes of fighting racism. But in reality, no individual represents their whole race, and nobody is responsible for undoing anyone else’s racist ideas. Kendi himself went through anti-Black racism and then anti-white racism before becoming an antiracist. This shows that racists can absolutely change—but they must learn to view inequities in terms of racist power and racist politics rather than blaming them on racial groups’ inherent characteristics.
Kendi isn’t arguing that society should blacklist or relentlessly attack everyone who says or does racist things. Rather, he’s arguing that racism is extraordinarily common and that, in most cases, people don’t consciously choose to believe it. They’re not racists because they’re evil—some people are racist because it benefits them, and many more are racist simply because they’ve learned racist ideas from their culture. True antiracists focus on condemning racist actions and words, but also on giving people the chance to grow and change.
Themes
