A review by dllh
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

5.0

I got off to a slow start with this one. I felt like the prose was awfully dense and syllogistic at first and that it was going to be hard to read much of it at a time, even though it's a pretty short book (it doesn't help that I don't much enjoy nonfiction in general). But before too long, the book became more personal, and Kendi's arguments flowed naturally and seemed pretty much unassailable (not that I wanted to assail them, to be clear). He systematically dissects many of the things that contribute to (or serve as avatars for) racism, and he made me want to be not merely not (or: less) racist but antiracist. He made me want to act, far beyond doing some self-education and donating to relevant causes. He made so many connections between racism and other systems of oppression and thought that my brain was fairly crackling reading the book the more connections he made. I give five-star ratings to books that change the way I think or that have been (or that I think will be) significantly influential on my life, and this seems like such a book. It's a must-read.