Remember Amy Cooper, a white woman, who called the police on Christian Cooper, a black man who was bird watching in New York’s Central Park, because he asked her to put her dog on a leash. He videoed her saying “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life.” The video went viral.
When she made a public apology, she began by saying “I’m not a racist.” Maybe that’s likely what most of us would say, especially if we have just done something racist.
Ibram X. Kendi, Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, wrote a book entitled “How to Be an Anti-racist,” published in 2019. In it he states, “The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist,’” he writes. “It is ‘antiracist.’”
The term itself has come to be used to describe what it means to actively fight against racism rather than passively claim to be non-racist. Anti-racism involves taking stock of and eradicating policies that are racist, that have racist outcomes and making sure that ultimately, we’re working towards a much more egalitarian, emancipatory society.
“One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist,” Kendi writes. “One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist.”
“There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist,’” Kendi continues. “The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism.”
To be an anti-racist, Kendi and others say, requires an understanding of history — an understanding that racial disparities in America have their roots, not in some failing by people of color but in policies that serve to prop up white supremacy. “Why were black (and Latino) people during this pandemic less likely to be working from home; less likely to be insured; more likely to live in trauma-care deserts, lacking access to advanced emergency care; and more likely to live in polluted neighborhoods?”
The answer, he writes, is simple: racism.
Anti-racism is understanding how years of federal, state, and local policies have placed communities of color in the crises they face today, and calling those policies out for what they are: racist.
It also requires an understanding of one’s own position in a racist society, many say, an acknowledgment that you can’t simply opt out of living in white supremacy by saying you’re “not a racist” — you have to actively fight against it. first step is to take stock of that and not to disavow it or invisibilize it.”
Ibram Kendi continues “I think because it takes a lot of work to be anti-racist. You have to be very vulnerable, right? You have to be willing to admit that you were wrong. You have to be willing to admit that if you have more, if you're white, for instance, and you have more, it may not be because you are more. You have to admit that, yeah, you've worked hard potentially, in your life, but you've also had certain advantages which provided you with opportunities that other people did not have. You have to admit those things, and it's very difficult for people to be publicly, and even privately, self-critical.
But anti-racism can’t be something people think about only while it’s convenient, “It has to be a commitment that you make.”
Compiled from an article by Anna North Jun 3, 2020, VOX and Ibram X. Kendi TED Talk
