How to Be an Antiracist

Ibram Kendi describes his parents’—Carol and Larry—transformative experience in 1970 at a Soul Liberation concert at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. For two young Black students living in New York City, this trip introduced them to Black liberation theology through Tom Skinner’s preaching and Soul Liberation’s revolutionary music. When Carol and Larry returned to New York City, they left their conservative churches and joined the Black Power movement where “they stopped thinking about saving Black people and started thinking about liberating Black people” (16).

For Kendi, it is important to understand one’s political origins to begin establishing foundational definitions for race, inequity, and power. He defines the difference be-tween racism and antiracism. Whereas racism is the “marriage of racist ideas and racist policies that produces and normalizes racial inequities” (17-18), antiracism counters racist ideas and racist policies. Racism consists of harmful ideas about other racial groups and also policies that lead to social inequities. Policies create inequities that contribute to societal ideas about each racial group’s inherent capabilities.

Since the 1960s, the term “racial discrimination” (18) has masked the influence of racial policy on racist ideas. It conveys the belief that racism can only transpire between individuals, obfuscating the power of the state to perpetuate racism.