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hooliaquoolia 's review for:
How to Be an Antiracist
by Ibram X. Kendi
challenging
informative
medium-paced
I love Kendi as a historian. I think his analysis of the history of ideas is incredibly insightful, and his focus on material outcomes rather than jargon is extremely important in a world where it seems like Twitter rules the discourse. Additionally, amidst of sea of books for white allies that seem to focus solely on how to monitor and change personal conduct to prevent/address instances of individual, personal racism, Kendi put the focus on racist policies and systems, which brings to light the bigger picture of how society creates and empowers individuals to enact racism, and what exactly needs to be done to enact change.
I had trouble understanding some ideas in this book, and I think perhaps he went a bit overboard on trying to create his own terms to explain different aspects of the same concept. Gender anti-racism, queer anti-racism, class anti-racism; yes, all of these things interact with racism, but there's already a term for that: intersectionality, and there wasn't much discussion of that concept in this book. Moreover, while I agree that racism empowers individuals of oppressed groups to enact racist policies, and individuals of those oppressed groups may actively institute racism in order to get more power, I don't think I agree about his stance on anti-white racism. It seems like he was trying to get at something about class in that section, and also something about how classifying all white people as the same essentially relieves them of their individual responsibility in committing racism and upholding racist systems, but I don't think he connected the points there. I additionally don't think that anyone who abides by the popular critical race theory tenet that white supremacy leaves Black folks with no power in a racist system is seriously suggesting that Barack Obama held zero power during his presidency. The idea is that when it came to issues about race, he was not viewed as objective simply because he was Black, and so he could not carry the political credibility of a white leader on those issues, even if he as a Black man had more firsthand experience with racism than his white counterparts. Yes, I do think that these issues are nuanced and not as cut and dry as any academic theory would suggest--that's the case with most things in life. But what he calls anti-white racism has zero material impact on white people, and so for someone so concerned with outcomes, you'd think he would dismiss the idea out of hand.
The format additionally left me a little wanting. Initially I really enjoyed the blend of memoir, family history, and national history. However, by the two-thirds mark, I felt like something was missing, and that perhaps he had become a little too caged by the structure. It was interesting to read about his personal history as an academic, and how he had to teach himself out of his own internalized anti-Black racism, but at the same time, I felt like some of the anecdotes were strange segues into the concepts he was trying to explain. Also, he has a weird straight-man way of explaining queerness that doesn't fully encompass how queerness threatens the nuclear family structure, and how queerness has been alienated from feminist and anti-racist movements because queer folks are aliens in whatever community they originate in.
I listened to this on audiobook, which was narrated by the author. Unfortunately, while he is a spectacular author, he is not a great performer, and that probably affected my enjoyment of the book.
I had trouble understanding some ideas in this book, and I think perhaps he went a bit overboard on trying to create his own terms to explain different aspects of the same concept. Gender anti-racism, queer anti-racism, class anti-racism; yes, all of these things interact with racism, but there's already a term for that: intersectionality, and there wasn't much discussion of that concept in this book. Moreover, while I agree that racism empowers individuals of oppressed groups to enact racist policies, and individuals of those oppressed groups may actively institute racism in order to get more power, I don't think I agree about his stance on anti-white racism. It seems like he was trying to get at something about class in that section, and also something about how classifying all white people as the same essentially relieves them of their individual responsibility in committing racism and upholding racist systems, but I don't think he connected the points there. I additionally don't think that anyone who abides by the popular critical race theory tenet that white supremacy leaves Black folks with no power in a racist system is seriously suggesting that Barack Obama held zero power during his presidency. The idea is that when it came to issues about race, he was not viewed as objective simply because he was Black, and so he could not carry the political credibility of a white leader on those issues, even if he as a Black man had more firsthand experience with racism than his white counterparts. Yes, I do think that these issues are nuanced and not as cut and dry as any academic theory would suggest--that's the case with most things in life. But what he calls anti-white racism has zero material impact on white people, and so for someone so concerned with outcomes, you'd think he would dismiss the idea out of hand.
The format additionally left me a little wanting. Initially I really enjoyed the blend of memoir, family history, and national history. However, by the two-thirds mark, I felt like something was missing, and that perhaps he had become a little too caged by the structure. It was interesting to read about his personal history as an academic, and how he had to teach himself out of his own internalized anti-Black racism, but at the same time, I felt like some of the anecdotes were strange segues into the concepts he was trying to explain. Also, he has a weird straight-man way of explaining queerness that doesn't fully encompass how queerness threatens the nuclear family structure, and how queerness has been alienated from feminist and anti-racist movements because queer folks are aliens in whatever community they originate in.
I listened to this on audiobook, which was narrated by the author. Unfortunately, while he is a spectacular author, he is not a great performer, and that probably affected my enjoyment of the book.