Reviews with content warning for Murder - How to Be an Antiracist

I found this very interesting and thought provoking. I learned a lot. That being said I don’t know if I fully agree with some of the things mentioned. I am a white person and I don’t think you can be fully racist towards white people(obviously you can be hateful and mean), but I do think that will turn people off from reading this book because people don’t believe that. I do think it was interesting and I understand why he said that. Know this isn’t really a how to guide on how to be anti racist, it’s more of a here’s things that are racist and then what is considered anti racist. So if you listen to that you will learn how to be more anti racist. I do recommend this because I did learn a lot and I think it would benefit people to read this.

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goldenjunegem's review

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informative medium-paced

5.0

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rieviolet's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

I am really a beginner when it comes to reading about racism and other aspects of social justice, so this book was a very important read for me and helped me a lot to understand better, to learn more and to reflect, even when that meant difficult and painful reflections.

Overall, I think the book was very accessible and easy to follow, although some of the ideas and themes included certainly need time to sink in and to be digested.

I enjoyed the narrative choice of alternating personal experiences and explanatory/reflective segments. It was really fascinating to follow the author's own journey and to see it reflected in the themes included in the chapter.
I very much enjoyed the historical sections and I look forward to expanding my reading and my knowledge of these topics.

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jojo_'s review

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informative medium-paced

4.5

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rubybooks's review

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.5

This is the second book I've read by Kendi, and it did not disappoint. I bought a physical copy, but I really enjoyed listening to Stamped from the Beginning via audiobook so I decided to do the same with this one. Kendi narrates it himself, and this really adds to the personal notes he weaves through his analysis. How to be an Antiracist felt like it had elements of a memoir mixed in, which I loved because I enjoy reading about personal experiences and how they intersect with theory.

I loved how transparent Kendi was about his own harmful views and actions in the past, and the ways he has changed his own views on racism and antiracism. I think it's so important to use racist as a descriptor, because that leaves room for people to also be antiracist and choose to change their impact on the world. I'm still not 100% sure on where I stand with some issues, but this book has really got me thinking - like about using the term institutional racism and whether it minimises the actions of individuals that can be changed.

Ibram X. Kendi also takes time to mention intersectionality and how that comes into play with class racism, gender racism etc. He speaks about how he was questioned by people about what concrete antiracist actions he was taking, which in turn made me reflect on what I can be doing beyond my own reading and research. Especially in today's climate, a lot of people claim not to be racist, but this dismisses our own personal agency in choosing to be racist or antiracist - and passivity does not equal to not being racist.

I didn't love this quite as much as Stamped, purely because of the sheer amount of information I learned while reading the latter. Regardless, this was still an amazing book that people should read, and I'd especially recommend the audiobook. The main thing I took from this is to be open minded in your approach to antiracism - as Kendi said himself, even within antiracism there are different approaches and disagreements. Be aware of discussions of racism, colourism, murder, homophobia, and cancer. 4.5 stars.

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leah_alexandra's review

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emotional informative reflective fast-paced

3.5

This book was fine. I would say it's definitely on the introductory level in terms of books about racism/American racism, but lots of people are looking for that, and all power to them! This book is best appreciated as Kendi's internal examinations of his own journey grappling with the pervasiveness of racism and its intersections with other kinds of identity-based oppression as opposed to a guidebook for other people. There are two substantive points he makes that I take issue with: I think the chapter discussing racism within non-white groups has a misplaced assumption when it critiques the idea that "Black people can't be racist." It delves into the ways that Black folks (and other non-white folks) can perpetuate anti-Black racism through thoughts and actions, which certainly is a thing that happens. But I feel like that statement is better understood as people saying that POC cannot perpetuate racism against white people, not other POCs, because of how the power dynamics are structured. So I think that argument was a bit disingenuous. I also have been learning from folks in disability activism who critique the comparisons of racism to cancer or other diseases. I understand that Kendi was and is facing cancer in very personal ways, but the analogy of an illness that was not imposed by choice to a societal problem that very much was has its limitations. People do not choose to give others cancer (although there's an argument that racist and classist policies actually have given people cancer or higher rates) but many people make the choice every day to uphold racism.

Small nit-pick: the definitions that introduce each chapter were a bit too schtick-y for me, and I thought they actually were a bit alienating.

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