Nash Library & Student Learning Commons: Racism and The Black American Experience: How to be an Anti-Racist

How to be an Anti-Racist - some quotes

30 Quotes from How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Quotes from Ibram X. Kendi's book:
1. The opposite of racist isn’t “not racist”. It is “anti-racist”.
2. What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist.
3.One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist.
4. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist.
5. There is no in-between safe space of “not racist”.
6. What’s the problem with being “not racist”? It is a claim that signifies neutrality: “I am not a racist, but neither am I aggressively against racism.”
7. There is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” It is “antiracist”.
8. The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism.
8. The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what — not who — we are.
10. Black people are apparently responsible for calming the fears of violent cops in the way women are supposedly responsible for calming the sexual desires of male rapists.
10. Racist ideas love believers, not thinkers.
11. Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy.
12. Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.
13. Denial is the heartbeat of racism, beating across ideologies, races, and nations.
14. We were unarmed, but we knew that blackness armed us, even though we had no guns.
15. Assimilationist ideas are racist ideas. Assimilationists can position any racial group as the superior standard that another racial group should be measuring themselves against, the benchmark they should be trying to reach.
16. The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it—and then dismantle it.
17. Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than
“Institutional racism” and “structural racism” and “systemic racism” are redundant. Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic.
18. To be antiracist is to think nothing is behaviorally wrong or right- inferior or superior- with any of the racial groups.
19. To be antiracist is to deracialize behavior, to remove the tattooed stereotype from every racialized body.
20. Behavior is something humans do, not races do.
21. The idea that Black languages outside Africa are broken is as culturally racist as the idea that languages inside Europe are fixed.
22. No one becomes racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be one or the other.
23. What if we realized the best way to ensure an effective educational system is not by standardizing our curricula and tests but by standardizing the opportunities available to all students?
24. To be antiracist is to view national and transnational ethnic groups as equal in all their differences.
25. To be antiracist is to challenge the racist policies that plague racialized ethnic groups across the world.
26. To be antiracist is to view the inequities between all racialized ethnic groups as a problem of policy.
27. Culture defines a group tradition that a particular racial group might share but that is not shared among all individuals in that racial group or among all racial groups.
28. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.
29. Every single person actually has the power to protest racist and antiracist policies, to advance them, or, in some small way, to stall them.
30. Individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals. But policies determine the success of groups. And it is racist power that creates the policies that cause racial inequities.

How to be an Anti-Racist - the book

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Call Number: E184 .A1 K344 2019
ISBN: 9780525509288
Publication Date: 2019-08-13
This book is currently in the New Book section and will be available for checkout when the GU Nash Library reopens,
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a "groundbreaking" (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society--and in ourselves. "The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind."--The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review * Time * NPR * The Washington Post * Shelf Awareness * Library Journal * Publishers Weekly * Kirkus Reviews Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism--and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas--from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities--that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society. Praise for How to Be an Antiracist "Ibram X. Kendi's new book, How to Be an Antiracist, couldn't come at a better time. . . . Kendi has gifted us with a book that is not only an essential instruction manual but also a memoir of the author's own path from anti-black racism to anti-white racism and, finally, to antiracism. . . . How to Be an Antiracist gives us a clear and compelling way to approach, as Kendi puts it in his introduction, 'the basic struggle we're all in, the struggle to be fully human and to see that others are fully human.' "--NPR "Kendi dissects why in a society where so few people consider themselves to be racist the divisions and inequalities of racism remain so prevalent. How to Be an Antiracist punctures the myths of a post-racial America, examining what racism really is--and what we should do about it."--Time

Other books on Racism: These books will be available for checkout when the GU Nash Library reopens.

America for Americans by Erika Lee
Call Number: E184 .A1 L4135 2019
ISBN: 9781541672604
Publication Date: 2019-11-26
An award-winning historian reframes our continuing debate over immigration with a compelling history of xenophobia in the United States and its devastating impact The United States is known as a nation of immigrants. But it is also a nation of xenophobia. In America for Americans, Erika Lee shows that an irrational fear, hatred, and hostility toward immigrants has been a defining feature of our nation from the colonial era to the Trump era. Benjamin Franklin ridiculed Germans for their "strange and foreign ways." Americans' anxiety over Irish Catholics turned xenophobia into a national political movement. Chinese immigrants were excluded, Japanese incarcerated, and Mexicans deported. Today, Americans fear Muslims, Latinos, and the so-called browning of America. Forcing us to confront this history, America for Americans explains how xenophobia works, why it has endured, and how it threatens America. It is a necessary corrective and spur to action for any concerned citizen.
Backlash by George Yancy
Call Number: E185.615 .Y36 2018
ISBN: 9781538104057
Publication Date: 2018-04-15
When George Yancy penned a New York Times op-ed entitled "Dear White America" asking white Americans to confront the ways that they benefit from racism, he knew his article would be controversial. But he was unprepared for the flood of vitriol in response. The resulting blowback played out in the national media, with critics attacking Yancy in every form possible--including death threats--and supporters rallying to his side. Despite the rhetoric of a "post-race" America, Yancy quickly discovered that racism is still alive, crude, and vicious in its expression. In Backlash, Yancy expands upon the original article and chronicles the ensuing controversy as he seeks to understand what it was about the op-ed that created so much rage among so many white readers. He challenges white Americans to rise above the vitriol and to develop a new empathy for the African American experience.
Race on the Brain by Jonathan Kahn
Call Number: HV9950 .K34 2018
ISBN: 9780231184243
Publication Date: 2017-11-07
Of the many obstacles to racial justice in America, none has received more recent attention than the one that lurks in our subconscious. As social movements and policing scandals have shown how far from being "postracial" we are, the concept of implicit bias has taken center stage in the national conversation about race. Millions of Americans have taken online tests purporting to show the deep, invisible roots of their own prejudice. A recent Oxford study that claims to have found a drug that reduces implicit bias is only the starkest example of a pervasive trend. But what do we risk when we seek the simplicity of a technological diagnosis--and solution--for racism? What do we miss when we locate racism in our biology and our brains rather than in our history and our social practices? In Race on the Brain, Jonathan Kahn argues that implicit bias has grown into a master narrative of race relations--one with profound, if unintended, negative consequences for law, science, and society. He emphasizes its limitations, arguing that while useful as a tool to understand particular types of behavior, it is only one among several tools available to policy makers. An uncritical embrace of implicit bias, to the exclusion of power relations and structural racism, undermines wider civic responsibility for addressing the problem by turning it over to experts. Technological interventions, including many tests for implicit bias, are premised on a color-blind ideal and run the risk of erasing history, denying present reality, and obscuring accountability. Kahn recognizes the significance of implicit social cognition but cautions against seeing it as a panacea for addressing America's longstanding racial problems. A bracing corrective to what has become a common-sense understanding of the power of prejudice, Race on the Brain challenges us all to engage more thoughtfully and more democratically in the difficult task of promoting racial justice.