How to be an Anti-Racist
Ibram Kendi

Summary

A controversial book but one of the more impactful books I've read. Ibram is a historian of race and discriminatory policy in America and does a fantastic job of explaining how the systems created in America are racist.

Rating: 4/5

Notes

Racist ideas make people of colour think less of themselves and white people more of themselves

The function of racist ideas is to manipulate you into seeing the people as the problems instead of the policies than ensnare them

Racist policy = systemic, structural and institutional racism

There is no such thing as a not-racist idea: either it’s racist or anti-racist idea

Do nothing climate policy is racist policy since pre-dominantly non-white south is victimized more than the whiter global north, even as the north contributes to its acceleration

There is no greater consequence of white privilege than life itself

Racist voting policy (Jim crow, voter-ID and mass incarceration)

The Reagan revolution was done for the already powerful: less taxes, less regulations, more military and weaker unions, cutting social insurance spending

We’ve been trained to see the deficiencies in people rather than the policy

Assimilationist ideas are racist because it implies you need to assimilate into white culture and they are the gold standard

Powerful economic, political and cultural self-interest is behind racist policies

We can’t all be one human race, because race is a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself around in real ways

Ethnic racism involves racist ideas about an ethnic group

The central double standard of ethnic racism: loving one’s position on the ladder over other ethnic groups and hating one’s position below other ethnic groups

Violent crime is more clearly correlated to unemployment than race

Individual stories are the only proof of behaviour of individuals, not a whole race

Attribution effect: when you take personal credit for any success even when it’s outside of your control

Standardized tests have always been a racialized and class problem 

• The racial problem is the opportunity gap, not the achievement gap

There is a difference b/w racist policymakers and white people

Racist power produces racist policies out of self-interest and then produces racist ideas to justify that policy

White supremacist is code for anti-white/anti-human

Black people do have power, even if limited. White people have been mind controlling black people which robs them of a power to resist

Black people can be racist, just like other people

Upward mobility is greater for whites and downward mobility is greater for blacks

To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism

Power of spoken word is in the power of the word spoken

It is best to challenge ourselves by dragging ourselves before people who intimidate us with their brilliance and constructive criticism

If a person has no reward of power or policy change, than that person is not an activist

Success is the dark road we fear where anti-racist policy and power pre-eminate

Institutionally racist policies is more concrete than institutional racism

Racist: someone who supports racist policies or expresses racist ideas

The source of racist ideas was not ignorance or hate but self-interest

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