IXK: Id say in two ways: First, talk about how historically white supremacist organizations have always gone to white people and said you are the primary victims of racism. And that part of how we rectify some of the societys imbalances is to ease those underlying conditions. And then the world changed, your role in the world changed. That latter company, that latter scenario to me is more in line with being antiracist, and the first one is more symbolic. IBRAM X. KENDI: Well, what it means to be antiracist is to first recognize that we live in a society of racial inequities, from wealth to health to criminal justice to education, and to recognize that weve been taught that, lets say, Black people are disproportionately impoverished or incarcerated because theres something wrong with Black people behaviorally or culturally. PDF downloads of all 1711 LitCharts literature guides, and of every new one we publish. How does this make the transition not into a bill that were just looking at but into the harsh trade-offs that we all face in everyday politics? So if you had this kind of analysis for, say, Bidens American Jobs Plan or maybe we could even use the American Rescue Plan, which already passed, how would you like to see an analysis like that go? I even wanted people to understand the relationship of the individual to these larger structures of racism. And I guess one of the things thats happened and I write about this in my work. And then we talk, of course, about the right-wing backlash to his ideas and the way the anti-critical race theory movement has used him as their central villain. But even more importantly, what I found, especially in the turn after civil rights, that those who were seeking to maintain racism through Jim Crow segregation and separate-but-equal policies, by the early 1970s, they were making a different case to maintain and conserve racial inequity and injustice. We have to analyze it. }); TLFS: Its not your job to help white parents raise their kids, but are there questions that you can help people answer for themselves? EZRA KLEIN: Let me ask you, as we come to the end here, if you could build a couple of institutions or implement a couple of changes that you think would really advanced antiracism, what would they be? For one thing, I think you see a very clear admission on the part of the right of this conversation that they might be losing control of the American narrative, and they want to get it back. In other words, its their culture, its their behavior. So I take your point that there are spaces where if you dont fight, its never going to happen. These ideas ignored the facts, but they steered the political discourse towards stances such as tough on crime and hard on drugs; in reality, these stances were fundamentally anti-Black. And so if that then raises racial inequality in crime victims, where does that end up under your framework? And this was really the subject of our last conversation. And I just assumed the hypothesis was that these racist ideas were coming out of ignorance and hate of the people who were producing them. If you dont, you are being racist. And so if that then raises racial inequality in crime victims, where does that end up under your framework? The second date is today's Kendi then addresses the intersectionality between racism and sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or And what happened is the Congressional Budget Office came out and they took their best guess, and they said they didnt think that would. IBRAM X. KENDI: Well, Ezra, Im happy you ask about that because there are policies that are pretty straightforward. Ibram X. Kendi: Someone tipped me off. IXK: Thats the goal. But if they figured out a way to appeal to Philadelphians or people who live in Detroit, all of a sudden that idea would dissolve and Detroit and Philadelphia would no longer be corrupt. At a time, it was the result of we had this genetic predisposition to violence and criminality. IBRAM X. KENDI: And I think thats one of the challenges of creating a different type of world, because its certainly not going to be easy. Intersectionality refers to the way that different forms of inequity work together: they are created by the same powerful, self-interested people and institutions, and they overlap. If things stayed as they were, they could exploit people in the same way. And so I think there are studies that show that funding put in other areas can actually have an impact as well. Teacher Editions with classroom activities for all 1711 titles we cover. It demanded just a constant ongoing analysis of every policy, of every tactic, with no margin, really, offered for peoples good intentions in an uncertain world. Thats the irony of it. Kendi is professor in the humanities at Boston University, where earlier this year resurrected the abolitionist paper, The Emancipator, in collaboration with The Doctors Note Issue 18 Sometimes you have to boil the ocean In this issue: My online courses / Anti-racism is a marathon, not a sprint / Boiling the Ocean / Beyond the Double Diamond / The Linkhole / Book Corner If we transform the political winds and it becomes obvious to him that he can no longer sort of stoke up white fear in order to win elections, hes not going to do it anymore. And so they had to appeal to the changing demographics of the country. You're welcome to link to or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know. That instead of the current principle that was affirmed recently by the Supreme Court decision in Arizona voting law, that pretty much in order to prove that a policy is, lets say, racist we have to show intent, instead, if a policy had disparate impact, then it could be defined as a policy that potentially needs to be eradicated and presumably is even unconstitutional or even is racist towards a particular group. 
And then the other side of this question becomes, what is the cause of crime? Youve proposed a constitutional amendment that would block policy that would add racial inequality. Garrison, for his part, does not believe Blacks are genuinely inferior to whites but continues to espouse racist ideas, such as that exposure to whites can help improve Black Americans morally. Does she regret her decision? It doesnt matter why youre doing it. Thats the irony of it. What if we measure the radicalism of speech by how radically it transforms open-minded people, by how the speech liberates the antiracist power within. Its another thing to never battle. And I wanted to push Kendi on some of the hard questions his framework demands we ask of the debates weve had in the past couple of years. EZRA KLEIN: For those who havent read the book or who have absorbed its ideas through cultural osmosis, what does it mean to be an antiracist? Kendi accurately paints a picture of Americas racist past, but he wants to racialist America today and in the future, essentially turning society into a prison yard. And so we have to create a system or a set of policies that create mechanisms for both major political parties, if not more, to make themselves or make their candidates hospitable and attractive to everyone, to not just a small segment of primarily aging conservative white Americans. To submit a correction for our consideration, click here. EZRA KLEIN: One of the things that I think that picks up on, which is very sharp, is I thought its very telling that the locus of this backlash has been about what we will teach children in schools. Our focus should be on the outcome. And then I think what is also being recognized and I think this is what I argued and showed in How To Be An Antiracist, this is what Jonathan Metzl argued in his book called Dying of Whiteness, this is what Heather McGhee recently demonstrated in her new book, The Sum of Us, that structural racism has not just harmed people of color, its also harmed white people. How do you think about the question of whether defunding the police is an antiracist policy? And often, thats it. translators. Historical Amnesia About Slavery Is a Tool of White Supremacy. )The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). The Q&A And I dont see a lot of that. So people believe that to change racist policies, you first have to change peoples racist ideas, that the policy is emergent out of individual belief systems. There are a lot of folks publicly acknowledging their privilege and issuing statements of solidarity and claiming to be antiracist while doing very little to truly reduce racial inequality, doing very little of the analysis of action and speech that he demands. But there are a lot of policies you can make the argument, at least that have really mixed effects. Are there times when you think you shouldnt say something because that will lead to someone terrible getting elected? He is Professor of History and International Relations All talks at the Media Lab, unless otherwise noted, are open to the public. And I wanted to push Kendi on some of the hard questions his framework demands we ask of the debates weve had in the past couple of years. publication in traditional print. But theres no evidence that supports that. So thats the scale of funding that were providing for the police. We somehow imagine that that form of analysis is divisive, even though, to me, it will actually bring us together because different communities will be able to see that it is additive for their communities. Racist policies make racists. The Book That Exposed Anti-Black Racism in the Classroom. tn_subject: ['activism', 'racism-and'], } Celebrating Labor Activist Dolores Huerta. My question for Kendi in our first podcast years ago now was whether the level of immediate consequentialist analysis he was demanding was really even possible. Or even a company who before stated that they were committed to diversity, and today theyre saying theyre committed to being in an antiracist company or they are an antiracist company and theyve replaced the diversity statement with a statement of commitment to being antiracist, I would distinguish that company from a company who came out with maybe a similar statement but documents precisely what they intend to do to create more equity within the company, precisely how they plan to make an impact on the larger community in terms of more justice. What are the policies that happen alongside of it? And theres a move youre making here. He emphasizes the fact that a person such as Jefferson could be deeply conflicted, loving and respecting certain Black people (resulting in the trope of the extraordinary negro) but also expressing contradictory views of Black people and slavery for personal and political gain. So to be able to have a really data-informed guess that this will cut child poverty in the white community by a third Im just throwing out a number this number of white children, and Black children, and Native children, and Latinx children, this is the potential impact could help to shape that larger discussion. Kendi makes this clear in the first two double-page spreads: Antiracist Baby is bred, not You are free: to share to copy, distribute and transmit the work; to remix to adapt the work; Under the following conditions: attribution You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. And to be antiracist is to say, no, the racial groups, not individuals, but the racial groups are equal, that theres no group that is inferior or superior. Kendi provoked controversy when he tweeted about Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump's third Supreme Court nominee, and two of her seven children, who had been adopted from an orphanage in Haiti. Kendi said: [39] Some White colonizers 'adopted' Black children. freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ I loved his previous book, Stamped From The Beginning, which I still think everyone should read, even if youve read, by the way, How To Be An Antiracist. But what struck me about How To Be An Antiracist was how intensely consequentialist Kendis views on racism had become. Ibram X. Kendi says he can't remember the first time he saw the infamous video of George Floyd dying while gasping for breath beneath a white policeman's knee. And so what do you think of the big training investment, if its not really matched by other things, particularly if you dont really do the work on whether or not these trainings work? So let me lay my cards on the table on this one. But theyre just throwing out stuff that theyve not done any analysis on whatsoever. But still, some people decided that they were going to do the unthinkable. Even my own story, in How To Be An Antiracist, I document 20 years that it really took me to really grow and to move to be antiracist. And so how would you build that policy to eliminate the racial wealth gap? And at least that served as at least a basis for debate. And he ends this passage and it was really interesting, and I asked him about it in our interview. And so for me, if we were to replay that time, and if Obama would have came out and said, the Tea Party is racist and its being driven by racist ideas and that would then have led to a backlash which ultimately prevented the Affordable Care Act from passing, and so we had that option or the option of what he did, I would certainly choose and support him or someone else from not making that claim. And to be antiracist is to identify those and challenge them and to try to rebuild a nation that policies and practices that create equity and justice for all people. BUY 3, GET 1 FREE (add 4 to cart) See all eligible items and terms. Even my own story, in How To Be An Antiracist, I document 20 years that it really took me to really grow and to move to be antiracist. Ibram Kendi On Anti-Racism And His New Book, Be Antiracist : Life Kit Author and renowned scholar Ibram Kendi's new book asks readers to examine their own relationship with race. NPR's Eric Deggans spoke with him about it. Kendi imagines an antiracist world in which every group has its own spaces, and everyone can participate in any of them. And to be antiracist is to say, no, the racial groups, not individuals, but the racial groups are equal, that theres no group that is inferior or superior. Thats the entire framework. But then I think for that understanding to come about as a result of, least for many people, the brutal murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor obviously was very difficult for me to deal with it. And on the other hand, you cant ignore the bad effects of having heavily overpoliced communities. And what I make of this whole fiasco I was surprised when I learned that I was the father of critical race theory, when critical race theory was born before I was born. This is a dangerous book. Published Feb. 25, 2021 Updated March 1, 2021. Learning From Decades of Public Health Failure Web-Dr. Ibram X. Kendi Antiracism: is a powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracists. Hes also the author of five number one New York Times bestsellers, including Stamped: Racism, Anti-racism, and You, which was number two on the American Library Associations list of most challenged books in 2020. For week 4 of TED2020, leaders in international development, history, architecture and public policy explored how we Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters, like todays episode with Ibram X. Kendi.
EZRA KLEIN: I think is such an important point. No ones going to read a book called How To Be An Antiracist because no one is going to be willing to look in the mirror. IBRAM X. KENDI: Precisely. Download the entire Stamped from the Beginning study guide as a printable PDF! Definitions and examples of 136 literary terms and devices. And so from the framework of being antiracist, from the framework of taking seriously whether or not things are going to lead to an increase or decrease in racial inequality, are there political strategy trade-offs? Give this article. And so I want to use a different example here. Going back to an argument you made earlier, I think everything in our history should lead you to believe that we created what the sociologists call or the criminologists call criminogenic conditions in Black communities. Define and separate people by race, and people will vote by race, and Donald trump will be re-elected.
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