How to Be an Antiracist

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

A book with such a title promises much—certainty, guidance, a sort of moral compass— but Kendi’s ambitious effort is frustratingly spotty, at times living up to its firm and optimistic title, at times falling far short.

How to Be an Antiracist is composed in a way familiar to readers of bell hooks. With short, boldly-titled chapters (think: “Body,” “Class,” “White,” “Black,” “Gender,” etc), Kendi formats each chapter in a consistent pattern, offering first a definition (or two) central to the chapter, and then usually easing in to the heavy titular subjects with a passage drawn from his own experience. This thread of memoir progresses chronologically throughout the various chapters of the book, from Kendi’s upbringing through to his college and graduate years and beyond. It is a useful device, holding the disparate chapters together and bringing a personal touch to the subjects which can sometimes feel abstract. Again and again, but in new ways each time, Kendi shows the reader how he personally has journeyed from learned ignorance to a more nuanced, deeper understanding of the different subject matters under his lens in How to Be an Antiracist.

When this spoonful of memoir is exhausted, however, Kendi attempts to pour down the medicine more directly, with uneven results. Some chapters, like the ones on Class, Power, and Biology, for example, are strong, energizing, and empowering! Rhetorically sound, they draw on history, current politics, and Kendi’s own perspectives and opinions without excess chaff. These chapters feel useful and passionate. Other chapters—and maybe the majority—fall prey to a range of flaws: some chapters are rhetorically inconsistent, conflicting with or undermining arguments made earlier in the book or arguments which are posed as overall unifying logical frameworks; some are dull, so stuffed with wordy sentences framed in parallel structures that they are nearly unreadable; many felt underbaked or superficial, as if Kendi knew the subject matter was important (i.e. the chapters on Gender and Sexuality), but wasn’t actually ready to add something profound or even useful to the conversation.

While most of these flawed chapters were disappointing more in that they detracted from Kendi’s overall argument—that we, as a society, must acknowledge racism comes from policies and the self-interest of the powerful rather than from individual people or ignorance—some of them felt actively harmful. One such chapter is “White,” where Kendi argues that White people, too, can be the targets of racism. Again, his overarching argument is sound: no one’s quality as a human being should be considered determined by their genes. But using the chapter “White” to expound on this point, when historically White people have been the racial group most likely to consider the quality of people as determined by their genes and to push forth violent, exclusionary, eugenicist, racist policies against Black, Indigenous, Asian, Jewish, and other groups of people, felt short-sighted, disrespectful, and dangerous.

The strongest elements of Kendi’s book are the definitions he offers throughout, giving his readers a common language with which to discuss various forms of racism, and his contention that racism derives from policies and the self-interest of the powerful rather than from individuals or ignorance. Accompanying this argument, he calls for a collective realization that the best ways to combat racism is through policy change and through increasing power for the powerless without asking oppressed groups to change or assimilate to satisfy the White power structure. While he returns to this powerful, deeply useful argument throughout How to Be an Antiracist, he also dilutes and muddles his thesis by showing, again and again, how he himself arced from ignorance to education, and how these changes in some ways redeemed him and in some ways pushed him towards seeking further education. While it feels clear what the book aims to be—a concise and accessible guide to antiracist thought—Kendi just doesn’t quite hit the mark, having created instead an over-long, confusing rumination on various aspects of power in our society, how they’ve manifested in his own life and historically, and how he feels passionately called upon to change things for the better.