I think it's time for us to have a conversation about the harms enabled by How To Be Antiracist by Ibram Kendi.

I will return to this with receipts soon. it's clear that most people endorsing this book have not actually read it.

you would think that his book may lay out some instructions on the process of becoming anti-racist, but surprisingly, it has very little proscription for anti-racist actions. it reads more like a memoir

most chapters begin with binary definitions, to solidify his initial claim that actions are either racist or anti-racist. while they may help readers distinguish between “racist” and “anti-racist” actions, the binary definitions only work if you don't consider histories of power

he defines racism as a “marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.” Antiracism is defined as its opposite.

racist policy is “any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups…. [It includes] written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people.” he claims this def is clearer than "structural racism"

but it actually makes policy equal to everything and anything. it is really unclear. He says cultural relativism as the goal of antiracism, but cultural relativism has its own fraught intellectual history within the discipline of Anthropology

where it originated, and has largely been debunked as an analytical framework because of its roots in colonialism and white supremacism.

he asserts that any racial and ethnic group can be racist, and he specifically points out that Black people can be racist. his def of racism and racist power, and his universal application of racism and racist power to all racial groups, is only possible b/c

he refuses to incorporate anti-blackness and settler-colonialism into his writing. He coins the term “powerless defense” to describe the “racist” idea that Black people cannot be racist because they do not have power.

he defines an “anti-white racist” as “one who is classifying people of European descent as biologically, culturally, or behaviorally inferior or conflating the entire race of White people with racist power.” if you believe white ppl have power b/c of their race, then...

you are an anti-white racist. by equalizing racist power and doling it out to all racial and ethnic groups, he does not attend to histories of global oppression founded upon the denigration of Black bodies and the systems and institutions created to uphold that oppression.

also Black women serve as mules for his own learning, as mirrors for reflection upon his own “racist,” sexist, and homophobic behavior. He describes the Black queer women in his book as “intimidating” and “large,” reinforcing misogynoirist stereotypes about Black women.

he does not rigorously interrogate his own sexism, homophobia, & transphobia. this is evident in his later writings about Black queer and trans women. here is a screenshot from a NYT anti-racist reading list. this is transmisogynoir disguised as "self-reflection."

this is dangerous for Black liberation movements. this empowers liberal white people and decenters the violence of white supremacy and anti-blackness.

Black cis het men often use “self-reflection” as a space to perpetuate anti-black, sexist, and homophobic discourses about Black trans and cis women. they center themselves and position themselves as experts at our expense. this has to end.

white liberal academic spaces enable this b/c of the myth of the “endangered Black man.” uplifting educated Black men becomes a new white savior project that further oppresses Black queer/trans people. we cannot liberate Black folx thru scholarship that perpetuates anti-blackness