How to Be an Antiracist

by Ibram X. Kendi

  “put politics and party above law and order”: “Crime Bill Is Signed with Flourish,” The Washington Post, September 14, 1994, available at www.washingtonpost.com/​archive/​politics/​1994/​09/​14/​crime-bill-is-signed-with-flourish/​650b1c2f-e306-4c00-9c6f-80bc9cc57e55/.

  John J. DiIulio Jr. warned of the “coming of the super-predators”: John DiIulio, “The Coming of the Super-Predators,” The Weekly Standard, November 27, 1995, available at www.weeklystandard.com/​john-j-dilulio-jr/​the-coming-of-the-super-predators.

  In 1993, near the height of urban violent crime: “Urban, Suburban, and Rural Victimization, 1993–98,” Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, National Crime Victimization Survey, U.S. Department of Justice, October 2000, available at www.bjs.gov/​content/​pub/​pdf/​usrv98.pdf.

  In 2016, for every thousand urban residents: “Criminal Victimization, 2016: Revised,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, October 2018, available at www.bjs.gov/​content/​pub/​pdf/​cv16.pdf.

  more than half of violent crimes from 2006 to 2010 went unreported: “Report: More Than Half of Violent Crimes Went Unreported to Police from 2006–2010,” RTI International, August 13, 2012, available at www.rti.org/​news/​report-more-half-violent-crimes-went-unreported-police-2006-2010.

  more dangerous than “war zones”: “Donald Trump to African American and Hispanic Voters: ‘What Do You Have to Lose?,’ ” The Washington Post, August 22, 2016, available at www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​post-politics/​wp/​2016/​08/​22/​donald-trump-to-african-american-and-hispanic-voters-what-do-you-have-to-lose/.

  National Longitudinal Survey of Youth: Delbert S. Elliott, “Longitudinal Research in Criminology: Promise and Practice,” paper presented at the NATO Conference on Cross-National Longitudinal Research on Criminal Behavior, July 19–25, 1992, Frankfurt, Germany.

  the 2.5 percent decrease in unemployment between 1992 and 1997: William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 22.

  Sociologist Karen F. Parker strongly linked the growth of Black-owned businesses: “How Black-Owned Businesses Help Reduce Youth Violence,” CityLab, March 16, 2015, available at www.citylab.com/​life/​2015/​03/​how-black-owned-businesses-help-reduce-youth-violence/​387847/.

  43 percent reduction in violent-crime arrests for Black youths: “Nearly Half of Young Black Men in Chicago Out of Work, Out of School: Report,” Chicago Tribune, January 25, 2016, available at www.chicagotribune.com/​ct-youth-unemployment-urban-league-0126-biz-20160124-story.html.

  Black neighborhoods do not all have similar levels: See “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime,” Evidence Matters, Summer 2016, available at www.huduser.gov/​portal/​periodicals/​em/​summer16/​highlight2.html.

  the highest rates of unemployment of any demographic group: For a statistical graph, see fred.stlouisfed.org/​series/​LNS14000018.

  Chapter 7: Culture

  a term coined by psychologist Robert Williams in 1973: Robert L. Williams, History of the Association of Black Psychologists: Profiles of Outstanding Black Psychologists (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2008), 80. Also see Robert L. Williams, Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks (St. Louis: Institute of Black Studies, 1975).

  “the legitimacy and richness” of Ebonics as a language: “Oakland School Board Resolution on Ebonics (Original Version),” Journal of English Linguistics 26:2 (June 1998), 170–79.

  Jesse Jackson at first called it “an unacceptable surrender”: “Black English Is Not a Second Language, Jackson says,” The New York Times, December 23, 1996.

  modern English had grown from Latin, Greek, and Germanic roots: See Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002); and Tamara Marcus Green, The Greek & Latin Roots of English (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).

  “In practically all its divergences”: Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper, 1944), 928.

  as President Theodore Roosevelt said in 1905: “At the Lincoln Dinner of the Republican Club, New York, February 13, 1905,” in A Compilation of the Messages and Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, 1901–1905, Volume 1, ed. Alfred Henry Lewis (New York: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1906), 562.

  with those racist Americans who classed Africans as fundamentally imitative: As an example, see Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), 100–101.

  “This quality of imitation has been the grand preservative”: Alexander Crummell, “The Destined Superiority of the Negro,” in Civilization & Black Progress: Selected Writings of Alexander Crummell on the South (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1995), 51.

  Jason Riley…did not see us or our disciples: Jason L. Riley, Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (New York: Encounter Books, 2016), 51.

  “If blacks can close the civilization gap”: Dinesh D’Souza, The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society (New York: Free Press, 1996), 527.

  “outward physical manifestations of culture”: Linda James Myers, “The Deep Structure of Culture: Relevance of Traditional African Culture in Contemporary Life,” in Afrocentric Visions: Studies in Culture and Communication (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1998), 4.

  “North American negroes…in culture and language”: Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 127–28.

  “It is very difficult to find in the South today”: Robert Park, “The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures with Special Reference to the Negro,” Journal of Negro History 4:2 (April 1919), 116.

  “Stripped of his cultural heritage”: E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), 41.

  “the Negro is only an American, and nothing else”: Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963), 53.

  “we are not Africans,” Bill Cosby told the NAACP: “Bill Cosby’s Famous ‘Pound Cake’ Speech, Annotated,” BuzzFeed, July 9, 2015, available at www.buzzfeednews.com/​article/​adamserwer/​bill-cosby-pound-for-pound.

  African cultures had been overwhelmed: See Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man.

  “the deep structure of culture”: See Wade Nobles, “Extended Self Rethinking the So-called Negro Self of Concept,” in Black Psychology (2nd edition), ed. Reginald L. Jones (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).

  Western “outward” forms “while retaining inner [African] values”: Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 1, 298.

  Hip-hop has had the most sophisticated vocabulary: “Hip Hop Has the Largest Average Vocabulary Size Followed by Heavy Metal,” Musixmatch, December 3, 2015, available at lab.musixmatch.com/​vocabulary_genres/.

  “rap retards black success”: John H. McWhorter, “How Hip Hop Holds Blacks Back,” City Journal, Summer 2003, available at www.city-journal.org/​html/​how-hip-hop-holds-blacks-back-12442.html.

  “You can’t listen to all that language and filth”: See “Gunning for Gangstas,” People, June 26, 1995, available at people.com/​archive/​gunning-for-gangstas-vol-43-no-25/.

  Nathan Glazer, who lamented the idea: Nathan Glazer, We Are All Multiculturalists Now (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

  “That every practice and sentiment is barbarous”: James Beattie, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, In Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism (Edinburgh: Denham & Dick, 1805), 308–11.

  “All cultures must be judged in relation to their own history”: Ashley Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1945), 150.

  Chapter 8: Behavior

  “Did Martin Luther King successfully fight”: See “D.C. Residents Urged to Care, Join War on Guns,” The Washington Post, January 14, 1995, available at www.washingtonpost.com/​archive/​local/​1995/​01/​14/​dc-residents-urged-to-care-join-war-on-guns/​0b36f1f3-27ac-4685-8fb6-3eda372e93ac/.

  “You are costing everybody’s freedom,” Jesse Jackson told: James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017), 195.

  “It isn’t racist for Whites to say”: “Transcript of President Clinton’s Speech on Race Relations,” CNN, October 17, 1995, available at www.cnn.com/​US/​9510/​megamarch/​10-16/​clinton/​update/​transcript.html.

  Black people needed to stop playing “race cards”: Peter Collier and David Horowitz, eds., The Race Card: White Guilt, Black Resentment, and the Assault on Truth and Justice (Rocklin, CA: Prima, 1997).

  The same behavioral racism drove many of the Trump voters: See “Poll: Trump Supporters More Likely to View Black People as ‘Violent’ and ‘Lazy,’ ” Colorlines, July 1, 2016, available at www.colorlines.com/​articles/​poll-trump-supporters-more-likely-view-black-people-violent-and-lazy; and “Research Finds That Racism, Sexism, and Status Fears Drove Trump Voters,” Pacific Standard, April 24, 2018, available at psmag.com/​news/​research-finds-that-racism-sexism-and-status-fears-drove-trump-voters.

  “America’s Black community…has turned America’s major cities”: See “Homeland Security Official Resigns After Comments Linking Blacks to ‘Laziness’ and ‘Promiscuity’ Come to Light,” The Washington Post, November 17, 2017, available at www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​powerpost/​wp/​2017/​11/​16/​republican-appointee-resigns-from-the-dhs-after-past-comments-about-blacks-muslims-come-to-light/.

  “obvious for decades that the real culprit is black behavior”: Jason L. Riley, Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (New York: Encounter Books, 2016), 4.

  “had improved greatly in every respect”: See B. Ricardo Brown, Until Darwin, Science, Human Variety and the Origins of Race (New York: Routledge, 2015), 72.

  Freed Blacks “cut off from the spirit of White society”: Philip A. Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freeman: Observations on His Character, Condition, and Prospects in Virginia (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889), 53, 129, 242.

  “All the vices which are charged upon the Negroes”: See Benjamin Rush, An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, Upon Slave-Keeping (Boston: John Boyles, 1773).

  Garrison stated that slavery degraded Black people: William Lloyd Garrison, “Preface,” in Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1849), vii.

  “the first and greatest step toward the settlement of the present friction between the races”: W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Conversation of Races,” in W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 20–27.

  Jim Crow historian’s framing of slavery as a civilizing force: See Bruce, The Plantation Negro as a Freeman.

  Black “infighting,” materialism, poor parenting, colorism, defeatism, rage: See Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (Portland: Joy DeGruy Publications, 2005).

  PTSD rates ranged from 13.5 to 30 percent: Miriam Reisman, “PTSD Treatment for Veterans: What’s Working, What’s New, and What’s Next,” Pharmacy and Therapeutics 41:10 (2016), 632–64.

  “There is not one personality trait of the Negro”: Abram Kardiner and Lionel Ovesey, The Mark of Oppression: A Psychosocial Study of the American Negro (New York: W. W. Norton, 1951), 81.

  The so-called Nation’s Report Card told Americans the same story: For this data in the Nation’s Report Card, see www.nationsreportcard.gov/.

  the lowest mean SAT scores of any racial group: “SAT Scores Drop,” Inside Higher Ed, September 3, 2015, available at www.insidehighered.com/​news/​2015/​09/​03/​sat-scores-drop-and-racial-gaps-remain-large.

  the U.S. test-prep and private tutoring industry: See “New SAT Paying Off for Test-Prep Industry,” Boston Globe, March 5, 2016, available at www.bostonglobe.com/​business/​2016/​03/​04/​new-sat-paying-off-for-test-prep-industry/​blQeQKoSz1yAksN9N9463K/​story.html.

  the so-called “attribution effect”: “Why We Don’t Give Each Other a Break,” Psychology Today, June 20, 2014, available at www.psychologytoday.com/​us/​blog/​real-men-dont-write-blogs/​201406/​why-we-dont-give-each-other-break.

  “average intellectual standard of the negro race is some two grades below our own”: Sir Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences (New York: D. Appleton, 1870), 338.

  France’s Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon succeeded…1905: See Margaret B. White and Alfred E. Hall, “An Overview of Intelligence Testing,” Educational Horizons 58:4 (Summer 1980), 210–16.

  “enormously significant racial differences in general intelligence”: Lewis Madison Terman, The Measurement of Intelligence (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 92.

  Brigham presented the soldiers’ racial scoring gap: See Carl C. Brigham, A Study of American Intelligence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1923).

  Physicist William Shockley and psychologist Arthur Jensen carried these eugenic ideas: See Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).

  genetic explanations…had largely been discredited: See Carl N. Degler, In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

  “both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences”: Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 311.

  districts with a higher proportion of White students receive significantly more funding: “Studies Show Racial Bias in Pennsylvania School Funding,” The Times Herald, April 15, 2017.

  The chronic underfunding of Black schools in Mississippi: “Lawsuit Alleges Mississippi Deprives Black Children of Equal Educational Opportunities,” ABA Journal, May 23, 2017, available at www.abajournal.com/​news/​article/​lawsuit_alleges_mississippi_deprives_black_children_of_equal_educational_op.

  “We must no longer be ashamed of being black”: Martin Luther King Jr., “ ‘Where Do We Go from Here?,’ Address Delivered at the Eleventh Annual SCLC Convention,” April 16, 1967, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, available at kinginstitute.stanford.edu/​king-papers/​documents/​where-do-we-go-here-address-delivered-eleventh-annual-sclc-convention.

  Florida A&M had outpaced Harvard: See “FAMU Ties Harvard in Recruitment of National Achievement Scholars,” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, February 1, 2001, available at diverseeducation.com/​article/​1139/.

  Chapter 9: Color

  “the best college marching band in the country”: For a history, see Curtis Inabinett Jr., The Legendary Florida A&M University Marching Band: The History of “The Hundred” (New York: Page Publishing, 2016).

  “white beauty repackaged with dark hair”: Margaret L. Hunter, Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone (New York: Routledge, 2013), 57.

  “colorism,” a term coined by novelist Alice Walker: See Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983).

  relegate them to minority status: See “The US Will Become ‘Minority White’ in 2045, Census Projects,” Brookings, March 14, 2018, available at www.brookings.edu/​blog/​the-avenue/​2018/​03/​14/​the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/.

  the biracial key to
racial harmony: See, for example, “What Biracial People Know,” The New York Times, March 4, 2017, available at www.nytimes.com/​2017/​03/​04/​opinion/​sunday/​what-biracial-people-know.html.

  “skin color paradox”: Jennifer L. Hochschild and Vesla Weaver, “The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order,” Social Forces 86:2 (December 2007), 643–70.

  White children attribute positivity to lighter skin: “Study: White and Black Children Biased Toward Lighter Skin,” CNN, May 14, 2010, available at www.cnn.com/​2010/​US/​05/​13/​doll.study/.

  White people usually favor lighter-skinned politicians: Vesla M. Weaver, “The Electoral Consequences of Skin Color: The ‘Hidden’ Side of Race in Politics,” Political Behavior 34:1 (March 2012), 159–92.

  disproportionately at risk of hypertension: Elizabeth A. Adams, Beth E. Kurtz-Costes, and Adam J. Hoffman, “Skin Tone Bias Among African Americans: Antecedents and Consequences Across the Life Span,” Developmental Review 40 (2016), 109.

  significantly lower GPAs than Light students: Maxine S. Thompson and Steve McDonald, “Race, Skin Tone, and Educational Achievement,” Sociological Perspectives 59:1 (2016), 91–111.

  racist Americans have higher expectations for Light students: Ebony O. McGree, “Colorism as a Salient Space for Understanding in Teacher Preparation,” Theory into Practice 55:1 (2016), 69–79.

  remember educated Black men as Light-skinned: Avi Ben-Zeev, Tara C. Dennehy, Robin I. Goodrich, Branden S. Kolarik, and Mark W. Geisler, “When an ‘Educated’ Black Man Becomes Lighter in the Mind’s Eye: Evidence for a Skin Tone Memory Bias,” SAGE Open 4:1 (January 2014), 1–9.

  employers prefer Light Black men: Matthew S. Harrison, and Kecia M. Thomas, “The Hidden Prejudice in Selection: A Research Investigation on Skin Color Bias,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 39:1 (2009), 134–68.