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A review by gwentolios
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
5.0
This was a tough read for several reasons, but a good read and interesting one.
One is the physical aspect of reading and digesting it. There's a lot here, a lot of personal observations, social observations, historical observations, that I found I couldn't just read by. I read with a highlighter in hand, calling out to myself things that felt important, but I also read slowly because I'd have to sit with what a section said. Fit it with my experiences, examine the statements, think about the world.
Two is a consequence of that thinking. Kendi writes a portion of the book so that it follows his own history of confronting racism, including the intersection points between various communities - race and ethnicity, race and gender, race and class, race and sexuality. Between that and absorbing the situations and history Kendi presents, you're bound to think about your own experiences and ideology as well. It's not always pretty. It's not always something you want to think about, let alone talk about (personally, I'm confronting how I've been filtering people on dating apps).
To get the point of this book, you do have to read it with an open mind. To critically think about the contents, and then apply those to yourself.
One is the physical aspect of reading and digesting it. There's a lot here, a lot of personal observations, social observations, historical observations, that I found I couldn't just read by. I read with a highlighter in hand, calling out to myself things that felt important, but I also read slowly because I'd have to sit with what a section said. Fit it with my experiences, examine the statements, think about the world.
Two is a consequence of that thinking. Kendi writes a portion of the book so that it follows his own history of confronting racism, including the intersection points between various communities - race and ethnicity, race and gender, race and class, race and sexuality. Between that and absorbing the situations and history Kendi presents, you're bound to think about your own experiences and ideology as well. It's not always pretty. It's not always something you want to think about, let alone talk about (personally, I'm confronting how I've been filtering people on dating apps).
To get the point of this book, you do have to read it with an open mind. To critically think about the contents, and then apply those to yourself.