How To Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi, One World, ISBN 9780525509288, 2019; 320 pages, $27.00.
How To Be an Antiracist is difficult to review in 300-500 words. To finish this book, I first had to keep my White fragility in check. The author, Dr. Ibram Kendi, begins by acknowledging how racist beliefs influenced his personal world views and how his experiences and education challenged those thoughts. The book continues by defining multiple terms, starting with “racist” and “antiracist.” He proceeds to use the text to elaborate and tease out the nuances of the newly-defined term or terms listed at the beginning of every chapter. An “antiracist” is “one who supports an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea” (p. 13). The author adds that the terms “racist” and “antiracist” are not fixed—people have the ability to move from one to the other and back again. An example would be an individual adhering to racist viewpoints, but later challenging the ideology by working toward resisting those same racist concepts, racist policies, or racist behaviors that support White power and the normalizing of White supremacy.
The text itself is divided into an introduction and 18 chapters that cover a multitude of micro, mezzo, and macro considerations. Definitions continue in each section, giving meaning to the concepts of power, biology, ethnicity, body, culture, behavior, color, class, gender, and sexuality, to name a few. The author employs reflexivity to show the reader how he came to establish definitions and assertions in a contextual way. Utilizing these historical moments to explain his opinions and beliefs allows the reader to weave through a history of U.S. injustices. The reader begins to learn, in detail, how and why the creation of race is meaningless, yet it is the insidious component within a power structure that creates dehumanizing narratives to justify lifetimes of genocide and oppression.
How To Be an Antiracist is an uncomfortable book to read. It is also a book that cannot be easily broken down for a review. It not only defines terms we use, but challenges how we use them socially and professionally. Each chapter calls out specific world views that may still be a part of the individual reader’s framework and lens through which they view the world. The book highlights “the rise” in racism, only illuminating that the issue is neither new nor worse—it is enduring. For some readers, this is an incredibly difficult concept to accept. It is often easier to minimize or ignore if the reader has that privilege.
The author’s reflexivity is important to note, because it acts as an appropriate, thoughtful model for social workers. The ability to assess one’s thoughts while juxtaposing them on current and past events allows for growth. Antiracism is not a new buzzword for the “latte liberal” generation. It is another name for the framework that is ethical social work.
Reviewed by J. Lawrence Dixon, MSW, DSW candidate at Walden University, travel social worker with AB Staffing for the Fort Peck Tribes.
