Book Discussion: How to be an Anti-racist

The word Community in our name is important to each of us. We take the time in all of our interactions to build and strengthen the relationships that we have with each other and with others outside of TRC- Bobcaygeon. In the case of discussing difficult topics such as racism that Kendi outlines in this book, the level of trust that we have built up allowed us to be vulnerable and to reflect honestly on our own thoughts and attitudes.

Learning for ourselves and educating interested community members after investing in our own learning plays a large role in the mission of Truth and Reconciliation Community- Bobcaygeon. Periodically a book comes our way that many of the group consider worth exploring.

Ibram X Kendi’s book “How to Be an Antiracist” is such a book and six of us dove in to read this timely tome. We had a lot of things to say which you can read below:

What I learned from reading this book:

1. Racist policies happen for reasons of power and economics; therefore cannot be changed through moral persuasion and education (mental change).  “Changing minds is not activism.” (p. 209)

2. An Activist is one who educates and researches to produce change in policies

3. Racism, feminism, homophobia cannot be seen in isolation: they are all interconnected and to fight for changes in one means to fight for changes on all areas of intersectionality.

A definition of racism:   attaching positive or negative characteristics to races based on colours of skin; and ranking the races to justify racial inequity, which further reinforces racist power and policy.  P. 238

P 13:  “ A racist is one who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction [my emphasis]or expressing a racist idea.

Defining Racist Idea:  Any concept that regards one racial group as inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.  

Anti-Black Racist Ideas:  Any ideas suggesting that Black people, or any group of Black people, are inferior in any way to another racial group. 

Intersectionality:  Prejudice stemming from the intersection of racist ideas and other forms of bigotry, such as sexism, classism, ethnocentrism, homophobia.

Defining Moment in History of Racist Doctrine

In 1506 one of the earliest printed books by the German printer Fernandes documented the writings of Zurara, who was a propaganda writer for Prince Henry ( the Navigator ) of Portugal.  Zurara wrote that Prince Henry’s actions of enslaving Africans was a noble cause of ‘salvation’ for all ‘honourable’ rulers as he took no money for the slaves ( a lie as Henry actually received the royal fifth called quinto).  Zurara convinced readers, successive popes, and the intellectuals of Europe of the ‘nobility’ of African slavery.  Being enslaved could only improve their so-called ‘miserable’ lives.  The book sent racist ideas about the inherent inferiority of black Africans globally.

Huge financial profits drove the slavery process for all involved.

More writers of the newly invented printed books continued to further racist ideas.  The first known African racist was an enslaved man named Leo Africanus ( Al-Hasan Ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi who wrote ‘Dellor descrittione dell’ Africa’.)

Initially it was thought Africans were victims of hot sun and climate that transformed people into uncivil beasts until 1577 voyages to the Arctic where Inuit people were observed.  The climate theory was killed but not forgotten.

Printing the Bible for mass audiences also brought about support for the idea that dark skin was evil. “Noah tells his sons to abstain from sex but Ham, inspired by the thoughts of inheritance, disobeys.  God wills that Ham’s descendants shall be ‘so blacke and loathsome’.”

According to the literature ‘inferior blackness’ was now either ‘curse or climate, nature or nurture’.

Climate theorists were the first known ‘assimilationists’ supporting the idea that change could occur under the ‘right’ conditions.  

These key ideas documented in the earliest published printed books became the spiritual and intellectual basis of inferiority for exploiting people of colour globally in the age of Terra Nullis (empty lands).  Many of these ideas will be developed to perpetuate the genocide of Indigenous peoples everywhere for centuries to follow.  

p. 166 Space antiracism: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity between integrated and protected racialized spaces, which are substantiated by antiracist ideas about racialized spaces.”

Public space is assumed to be for white, adult, male, Eurocentric population, unless it is labelled specifically for women, blacks, Asians, kids, seniors, Indigenous peoples.

The assumption is that everyone should aim for integration into white, adult male Eurocentric spaces because they are the highest standard (of what?)

The point is that when we unchain ourselves from the space racism that deracialized and normalized and elevated elite White spaces, while doing the opposite to Black spaces, we will find good and bad, violence and nonviolence, in all spaces, no matter how poor or rich, Black or non-Black.”

Protected “black spaces” (or Indigenous spaces”) essential for a feeling of safety are often  regarded with suspicion by white Racists.

p. 175: “Whenever Black people voluntarily gather among themselves, [or Indigenous ceremonial places—including pow wows, sweat lodges] integrationists do not see spaces of Black solidarity created to separate Black people from racism.  They see spaces of White hate.  They do not see spaces of cultural solidarity, of solidarity against racism.  They see spaces of segregation against White people….”

Segregation and separation should not be used interchangeably.  

Many supposedly public “spaces” support racism whether it is neighbourhoods eg. “black ghettos”), schools (young Indigenous teenagers living north of Thunder Bay needing to live away from home in order to attend high school and are often steered into basic courses rather than university track courses), banks (differences in accessing loans based on skin colour), housing available for rental, health centres etc.

 p. 172: “Resources define a space and predominantly Black spaces [as are Indigenous spaces] notoriously under resourced.  (– Schools, health centres, remote communities with no clean water supply…)

As a biology teacher, Ibram’s discussion about Carl Linnaeus’ racial hierarchy in his famous Systema Naturae (1735) was particularly striking, as it is not something that is ever seen in any of our textbooks where we teach about his methods of classification. His work is celebrated and applauded for still being relevant. This is a great opportunity to discuss race in the biology classroom, linking to the work of the Human Genome Project (2000), where genetic technology is used to support that humans are 99.9% genetically identical, regardless of race.

There is a lot of work to be done to unlearn what we, as the privileged white race, don’t even know we have learned. This includes those in positions of power who make the policies that perpetuate racism in our society. If those discussions start at home and are carried on in schools by adults who have done this work, then there is hope that those in power in the future will be coming from a much better informed place. 

I appreciate Ibram’s simple clarity (despite all the types of racists/racism) on what being a racist is — it’s whenever we attribute someone’s life experiences, character, etc to their perceived race (i.e., colour of skin) and on what being anti-racist is — actively positioning oneself against racist perceptions, policies, etc. Ibram talks about the systemic nature of racism — about how it is in so many structures and policies in the US (and Canada). In my experience, this can be hard for many people to comprehend.

For me, Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (Māori, Ngāti Awa, and Ngāti Porou iwi) book, “Decolonizing Methodologies” clearly articulated some of the reasons why what is so obvious to some people is so hard for many white, Westerners to see. She refers to western universalism –an unstated assumption held in western culture that Western/European/white people and their ways are the centre of the universe and against which all “others” are compared. In fact, white Westerners are so much the assumed “norm” that they do not even need to be identified, explained or studied. Instead, only the “other” (all that is not white/Western/European) needs to be studied. She refers to this as “othering”.  

This is so embedded in Western culture that until recently, few Westerners even noticed it let alone acknowledged it.  She also calls out the Western presumption of a hierarchy that places itself at the top – the presumed achievement of “progress” and “development”. For me, as a white Settler, these unstated and therefore often unrecognized assumptions of being the norm (western universalism) and of being supreme (re: at the top of the hierarchy) are intricately related to the challenges many white people in Canada have when it comes to recognizing and understanding systemic racism and systemic Western/white supremacy in our systems.

We were in agreement on some points  especially with how we might focus our attention going forward.

• History is impacting today. The ways of thinking and being that were birthed in the 14th Century are still playing out  in all of our institutions and public spaces.
• Racism is multi-dimensional and impacts all of our institutions – educational, judicial, law enforcement, all levels of government
• Racism is based on maintaining dominance and creating economic advantage.
• What we can make up and learn we can unlearn.
• Antiracist activism needs to work on changing policy
• We need to consider Intersectionality at every turn
• Politicians typically have a short term perspective that is more about re-election than on understanding the history and culture of all their constituents and serving that.
• Being an anti-racist and an ally is on-going, a real commitment and a responsibility that we each have as members of society.