How to Be an Antiracist

Summary, part 1

Chapters 1–4

Before you begin reading the summary of this book, it is recommended that you write down how you currently understand racism. Things to consider include, but are not limited to: what racism and the opposite of racism are, whether or not racism is a systemic problem (and if so, in what ways), and how one is or is not racist.

In Ibram Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist, he articulates what racism is, the many different ways racism manifests, and how antiracists should approach antiracist work. This study guide explores these themes chapter-by-chapter.

Chapter 1: Definitions

Having a shared vocabulary to talk about racism helps us better understand the world and its history. Below are key terms Kendi defines in the first chapter. He adds more terms in each chapter.

Racist: One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea

Antiracist: One who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea

Racism: A collection of racist ideas and policies that have normalized racial inequalities

Racist idea: An idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group

Antiracist idea: An idea that suggests groups are equal in all their differences, nothing is right or wrong, superior or inferior

Racist policy: A measure that produces or sustains racial inequity

Antiracist policy: A measure that produces or sustains racial equity; to treat everyone equally is to treat everyone differently

Racial discrimination: The immediate and visible manifestation of racial policy

It is important to note that Kendi does not use the words 'systemic', 'structural,' or 'institutional to describe racism. Kendi argues that these words are too vague and that we should instead point to manifestations of racism such as policy. Racism is already systemic, structural, and institutional. Kendi also points out that everyone can discriminate, but only policies and policymakers can hold racist power.

Chapter 2: Dueling Consciousness

A dueling consciousness refers to the conflict between antiracist and racist (e.g., assimilationist or segregationist) ideas within Black and White people.

Assimilationist: One who is expressing the racist idea that a racial group is culturally or behaviorally inferior and is supporting cultural or behavioral enrichment programs to develop that racial group

Segregationist: One who is expressing the racist idea that a permanently inferior racial group can never be developed and is supporting policy that segregates away that racial group

Antiracist: One who is expressing the idea that racial groups are equals and none need developing and is supporting policy that reduces racial inequality

For Black people like Kendi’s parents, the dueling consciousness manifested in the value of Black self-resilience. This value held the antiracist belief that Black people can fend for themselves, as well as the racist and assimilationist view that Black people need to pick themselves up by their baggy pants.

For White people, this dueling consciousness can turn into racist policies: segregation to keep people of color as slaves or in prison, to kick people of color out of the country, and to murder people of color, as well as assimilationist policies that “develop, civilize,” and integrate Black people into White culture.

To be antiracist is to untangle the dueling consciousness, to value neither segregation nor assimilation, to know there is no such thing as the American body, but only bodies racialized by power.

Chapter 3: Power

Race: A power construct of collected or merged difference that lives socially

Kendi's parents paid for him to go to a private school where he only had one Black teacher. When first visiting the school, he asked the teacher why she was the only Black teacher and said that him being aware of his Blackness allowed him to "clearly see myself historically and politically as being an antiracist, as a member of the interracial body striving to accept and equate and empower racial difference of all kinds" (p. 38).

Race, Kendi states, is a power construct, as opposed to a social construct. Race creates the power to categorize and judge others. The power construct of race was created to maintain the self-interest of racist power. He states that it all began with Prince Henry of Portugal, who established the Atlantic slave trade. Prince Henry's chronicler Gomez de Zurar grouped those from Africa together as an African race to create hierarchies, which made it easier to sell slaves abroad.

Chapter 4: Biology

Biological racist: One who is expressing the idea that the races are meaningfully different in their biology and that these differences create a hierarchy of value

Biological antiracist: One who is expressing the idea that the races are meaningfully the same in their biology and there are no genetic racial differences

One way biological racism manifests is through what some people call microaggressions. Microaggressions were first defined by Chester Pierce in 1970 as the "constant verbal and nonverbal abuse racist White people unleash on Black people wherever we go about our day" (p. 46). This definition has since been expanded to include denigrating messages for any marginalized group.

Kendi states that those who use the term microaggression live in a post-racial world where they are afraid to say the word 'racist.' He strongly dislikes the term, because "a persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor" (p. 48).

Kendi states that biological racists are segregationists and believe in biological racial differences. Some ideas of racial difference they may hold are the following: Black people are stronger, less intelligent, have better improvisational skills that make them better at jazz and rap, have larger penises and hypersexuality that make them more likely to rape white women, and that they are the descendants from Canaan, which justifies things like slavery (even though there is no evidence for any of these claims).

Where segregationists see mankind as distinguished by racial difference, assimilationists only see one human race and become colorblind. Assimilationists fail to acknowledge that “race is a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself around in very real ways” (p. 54). By denying this, they believe in the post-racial myth that talking about race constitutes racism. Thus, they also fail to recognize that erasing racial categories will make it harder to identify racial inequity. Terminating the category of race, Kendi states, may be the very last step of antiracism–not the first.