A Desperately Needed Path to Antiracism for All
A Desperately Needed Path to Antiracism for All
By Louise S. Robbins
What does it mean to be an antiracist? This is a timely, fraught and confusing question. So the League Book Club is tackling it head on, reading and discussing How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. Kendi is a prolific writer and the Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C. His focus is on eliminating racist power to create a just society. It is important to note that he views racism as “a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves.”
Being an antiracist is different from believing one is not a racist. It means instead, seeking and supporting policies that stem from antiracist ideas. But, what does that mean? Fortunately, definitions are a strength of this book. For each racist idea the author examines, he offers an antiracist alternative. Each chapter of Kendi’s book offers a piece of the definition, layering various aspects of experience one on another, giving the reader an ever-widening understanding of the policies and ideas that form the many facets of racism, and how we can forge antiracist ideas and policies that will eventually undo them.
The chapters on ‘space racism’ and ‘class racism’ speak most insistently. While working as a Title IV Indian Education Reading Specialist at the Byng School north of Ada, Oklahoma, I recall a black student of mine who held his dying father, waiting for the ambulance that didn’t come because the ambulance driver didn’t want to go into the black community at night. I was a member of the Ada City Council at the time and channeled my anger into constructive change. I helped create an ambulance district and hire a new service. But when Black Lives Matter protesters took their grievances to Madison’s Hilldale Mall, a space viewed as white and upper class and unwelcoming, their perspective caught me unawares.
It’s a process.
Please join us on the journey by discussing Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist. Three distinct discussion groups will be held via ZOOM from 10-11:30; the session scheduled for Monday, July 20, is full but you can still sign up for Saturday, July 18, or Wednesday, July 22. To sign up, please email books@lwvdanecounty.org and indicate which dates you are available and if you have a preference.
Images of downtown Madison murals created in the days after recent protests taken by Georgiana Hernandez follow. See more photos of murals on Madison.com and a beautiful photo spread in this article in the Capital City Hues.
Doctors protest in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.
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