How to Be an Antiracist Themes

In How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi combines history, theory, and memoir in order to explain how people can actively become antiracist. Although defining key terms might seem boring or unglamorous, Kendi argues that they’re actually the single most important—and most overlooked—way to improve our ideas, policies, and conversations about racism. In particular, Kendi argues that the meaning of the word “racist” has in many ways been distorted: many people…

Ibram X. Kendi’s goal is not merely to educate people or help them measure how antiracist they are: rather, it’s to build a racially equitable society. Although education and personal change are important steps along the way to political change, the latter is rooted in governmental and institutional policies, not merely ideas. In fact, Kendi argues that anyone who elevates ideas above policy change is not really an activist at all. While education and…

Before writing How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi was an award-winning historian who studied how racist ideas have transformed over the centuries. In this book, he repeatedly references what he calls “racist progress”: racism’s capacity to adapt to new social contexts by generating new racist ideas and policy strategies. But at the same time as racism’s ideas, language, and policy proposals evolve, its basic ideological assumptions and political goals largely stay the…