[In the wake of our current upsurge against racism in policing and
in our society generally, this book, published late last year, has
emerged as a top Amazon bestseller. ] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST  
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Jamal Eric Watson
November 7, 2019
Diverse: Issues In Higher Education
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_ In the wake of our current upsurge against racism in policing and
in our society generally, this book, published late last year, has
emerged as a top Amazon bestseller. _

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_How to Be an Antiracist_
Ibram X. Kendi
One World
ISBN 9780525509288

CHICAGO — On a recent Saturday night, a crowd began forming early at
The Book Cellar, cramming into one of the city’s last independent
bookstores.

Jeff Donohue had planned to drop his wife Cathy off to hear Dr. Ibram
X. Kendi’s talk and return two hours later to pick her up. But that
was before she made the public pronouncement for all to hear.

“You need to sit down and learn something,” Cathy told her
husband, who appeared agitated and slightly embarrassed by the
forceful directive. “You need to hear what Dr. Kendi is talking
about and then you need to read his book so you can be better
informed.”

With that, Jeff begrudgingly took a seat next to his wife, unaware of
how Kendi’s talk and his “book” would forever change his
outlook.

That’s the story that has been recounted across the nation as
Americans grapple with _H_ow to Be an Antiracist, the 305-page New
York Times bestseller that has catapulted Kendi — already a National
Book Award winner, professor and founding director of the Antiracist
Research and Policy Center at American University — to greater
heights.

Part memoir but firmly grounded in history and current events, the
reader comes to understand how Kendi’s ideas about race and racism
were shaped by his years growing up in northern Virginia, his time as
an undergraduate at a historically Black university in Florida, and
later as a Ph.D. student in African-American studies at Temple
University, the first institution in the nation to offer a Ph.D. in
the discipline.

“This book is ultimately about the basic struggle we’re in, the
struggle to be fully human and to see that others are fully human,”
Kendi writes in the introduction to the book. “I share my own
journey of being raised in the dueling racial consciousness of the
Reagan-area Black middle class, then right-turning onto the ten-lane
highway of anti-Black-racism — a highway mysteriously free of police
and free on gas — and veering off onto the two-lane highway of
anti-White racism, where gas is rare and police are everywhere, before
finding and turning down the unlit dirt road of antiracism.”

An antiracist world is possible, Kendi declares, “if we focus on
power instead of people, if we focus on changing policy instead of
groups of people. It’s possible if we overcome our cynicism about
the permanence of racism. We know how to be racist. We know how to
pretend to be not racist. Now let’s know how to be antiracist.”

Kendi’s book is revealing, in that he describes his own challenges
and struggles and candidly writes about his younger self as a
“racist, sexist homophobe.” At the book signing and talk in
Chicago, Kendi noted that racism can’t be viewed in isolation from
other “isms.”

“You can’t separate the origins of racism from the origins of
capitalism,” said Kendi, a former contributor to _Diverse_. “You
can’t be an antiracist if you’re a pro-capitalist because
they’re like conjoined twins.” He argues that in order to be
antiracist, one should be willing to become a feminist and actively
address forms of patriarchy.

For Kendi, who burst onto the national scene with _Stamped from the
Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America_, racism
has to be treated like a metastatic cancer that requires ongoing
vigilance and a steady regimen because it has now “spread to nearly
every part of the body politic.”

The analogy is deeply personal for Kendi, who was diagnosed a few
years ago with Stage 4 colon cancer, which brought his own mortality
into closer view.

“What if we treated racism in the way we treat cancer,” writes
Kendi. “What has historically been effective at combatting racism is
analogous to what has been effective at combatting cancer. I am
talking about the treatment methods that gave me a chance at life,
that give millions of cancer fighters and survivors like me, like you,
like our loved ones, a chance at life. The treatment methods that gave
millions of our relatives and friends and idols who did not survive
cancer a chance at a few more days, months, years of life. What if
humans connected the treatment plans?”

Dr. Robin DiAngelo, author of _White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for
White People to Talk About Racism_, praises Kendi’s book for
“challenging both mainstream and antiracist orthodoxy,” and
illuminating “the foundations of racism in revolutionary new
ways.”

The usefulness of the book, as DiAngelo rightly notes, is that Kendi
“offers us a necessary and critical way forward,” by providing
clear recommendations that can be exercised by everyone who wants to
get rid of racism.

That’s the message that Jeff Donohue took away from Kendi’s talk
as he waited in line to get a copy of _How to Be an Antiracist_ signed
by the author.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” said an emotional Donohue, who
locked arms with his wife after the book signing. “I’m really glad
that I stayed. I needed to hear this.”

His biggest takeaway?

“From now on, it’s not enough for me to simply say that I’m not
a racist,” he said with a broad smile on his face, as Cathy Donohue
shook her head in agreement. “I’ve got to do more. I’ve got to
be an antiracist.”

Dr. Jamal Watson is an award-winning journalist. He has held numerous
roles at _Diverse: Issues In Higher Education_. He has been a senior
staff writer, executive editor and is currently the editor-at-large.
He has written for the publication since 2005.

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