Scan barcode
A review by enbygolem
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Dr. Kendi does such an amazing job taking basic concepts and showing how those basic concepts manifest in complicated ways is the real world. Through this, he also shows us the importance of understanding the history of these concepts - without it, we cannot look at our systems and behavior correctly. For me, understanding really formed as he used these front-loaded topics and pieces of modern Antiracist theory to analyze his own history. This provided an easy pathway for me to naturally follow and take these tools to reflect on my own history.
It was not perfect though.
Unfortunately, the quality of discussion suddenly dipped when talking about both Gender and Sexuality. The section about women was simply lacking and not even close to the level of the rest of the book. In my opinion though, the biggest offender was the profound absence of meaningful discussion around the Queer community. This is so unfortunate since the intersection between People of Color and Queer identities are so underrepresented and, as the book mentions, are most aggressively targeted with hate and violence. I appreciate that he mentions his dealing with his instilled homophobia but I feel that this acknowledgement unfortunately did not keep pieces of it from leaking onto the page.
It was not perfect though.
Unfortunately, the quality of discussion suddenly dipped when talking about both Gender and Sexuality. The section about women was simply lacking and not even close to the level of the rest of the book. In my opinion though, the biggest offender was the profound absence of meaningful discussion around the Queer community. This is so unfortunate since the intersection between People of Color and Queer identities are so underrepresented and, as the book mentions, are most aggressively targeted with hate and violence. I appreciate that he mentions his dealing with his instilled homophobia but I feel that this acknowledgement unfortunately did not keep pieces of it from leaking onto the page.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism