Episode 20: Banned Book Review #4: How to be an Antiracist

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Welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing some micro discriminations that I had while raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to know how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, and the practical applications and actions that you can take to address these issues, then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I will review one of the books from the Banned Book List how to Be an Anti Racist by Ibram Kendi. The intent of this and the other monthly book reviews is to examine, to analyze, to investigate why these books were on the banned book list for K 12 public school reading. These are the main points that I gleaned from reading this book. This is the cycle. Racist ideas make people of color think less of themselves, which makes them more vulnerable to racist ideas. Racist ideas make white people think more of themselves, which further attracts them to racist ideas. Internalized racism is the real black on black crime. The consistent function of racist ideas and any other kind of bigotry more broadly is to manipulate people into seeing people as the problem instead of the policies that ensnare them. Denial is the heartbeat of racism feeding across ideologies, races and nations. The opposite of racist isn't not racist, it's anti racist. The difference is that one endorses the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist or racial equality as an anti racist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people as a racist or locates the roots of problems and powers and policies as an anti racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere as a racist or confronts racial inequities as an anti racist. There is no in between space of not racist. The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it and then dismantle it. Racists and anti racists are not fixed entities or identities. We can be a racist one minute and an anti racist the next. Movement from racist to anti Racist is always ongoing. If we don't do the basic work of defining the kind of people we want to be in a language that is stable and consistent, we can't work toward stable, consistent goals. Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An anti racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between groups. Racist policy indicates exactly what the problem is and where the problem is as compared to more vague terms of institutional racism, structural racism and systemic racism. Racial discrimination takes our eyes off the central agents of racism, racist policy and racist policymakers. In other words, racist power. The construct of race neutrality actually feeds white nationalists victimhood by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non white Americans toward equity is reverse discrimination. An anti racist idea is any idea that suggests the racial groups are equals in all of their apparent differences. That there is nothing right or wrong with any racial group. Anti racist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities. No one becomes a racist or an anti racist. We can only strive to be one or the other. We can unknowingly strive to be a racist and we can unknowingly strive to be an anti racist. Being an anti racist requires persistent self awareness, constant self criticism and regular self examination. The author posits that ignorance and hate are not the root problem of racism. The root problem is and always has been the self interest of racist power. Powerful and brilliant intellectuals have produced racist ideas to justify the racist policies of their era. To redirect the blame for their errors, racial inequities away from those policies and onto people. The author also refrains racial microaggressions as racist abuse. He calls the zero tolerance policy preventing and pushing and punishing those abusers what they are. Anti racist. Only racist. Shy away from the R word. Racism is steeped in denial. Biological races are segregationists. Biological racism rests on two ideas. That the races are meaningfully different in their biology and that these differences create a hierarchy of value. Whoever makes the cultural standard makes the cultural hierarchy. The act of making cultural standards and hierarchy is what creates cultural racism. To be anti racist is to reject cultural standards and level any cultural differences. Racial group behavior is a figment of the racist imagination. Individual behaviors can shape the food success of individuals. However policies determine the success of groups. It is the racist power that creates the policies that calls in racist inequities, making individuals responsible for the perceived behavior of racial groups and making whole racial groups responsible for the behavior of individuals are the two ways that behavioral racism infect our perception of the world. This seems to be the ethos of the progressive Americans in the 1990s. Just as race doesn't exist biologically, race doesn't exist behaviorally. The author posits that the academic achievement gap promotes a racist idea, that of intellectual inferiority, that disparities in academic achievement reflect disparities in intelligence among racial groups. He states that intellect is the linchpin of behavior and the racist idea of achievement gap is the linchpin of behavioral racism. I don't interpret the academic achievement gap in that way. I agree that the disparities fall in using testing instruments such as standardized test scores, but my issue with the testing is that it is skewed or biased in the testing of the various intelligences that exist between individuals. He does come to this conclusion and indicates that the tests have always been the racial problem the skin color racist discussion disclosed the long held dispute about light skin versus dark skin. It was an interesting discussion and one that seems to still be held over in today's times. Racist ideas love believers, not thinkers in the chapter on white racism, Ibram Kendi points out that the only thing wrong with white people is when they embrace racist ideas and policies and then deny their ideas and policies are racist. He does not deny that white people have massacred and enslaved millions of indigenous and African peoples, colonized and impoverished millions of people of color around the globe as their nations were rich, all the while producing racist ideas that blame the victims. White races do not want to define racial hierarchy or population policies that yield racial inequities as racist. To do so would be to define their ideas and policies as racist. Instead, they define policies not rigged for white people as racist ideas, not centering white lives as racist. He moves on then to the chapter on black racism, stating that every time we say something is wrong with black people, we are simultaneously separating ourselves from them and in so doing we are being a racist. When we racialize classes and support racist policies against those rights classes justifying those racist ideas, we are engaging in class racism. To be anti racist is to equalize the race classes. To be anti racist is the route to economic disparities between equal rights classes and policies, not people. Constructs of ghetto. Blacks and white trash are the most obvious ideological forms of class racism. Whoever creates the norm creates the hierarchy and positions their own race class at the top of that hierarchy. To love capitalism is the end of loving racism. To Love racism is the end of loving capitalism. These are like conjoined twins and the conjoined twins are two sides of the same destructive body. Capitalism is essentially racist. Racism is essentially capitalist. Ibram moves on to chapter about gender racism. In that chapter he states obviously that women are gender and black people are a race. When we identify black women, we are identifying a race gender. When a policy produces inequity between race genders, it is gender racism. To be feminist is to reject not only the hierarchy of genders, but the hierarchy of race genders. To truly be anti racist is to be feminist. To truly be feminist is to be anti racist. To be anti racist and feminist is is to level the different race genders to route the inequities between the equal race genders in the policies of gender racism. Black feminists have been saying from the beginning that when humanity becomes serious about the freedom of black women, humanity becomes serious about the freedom of humanity. To understand why racism is lives is to understand the history of anti racist failure. In other words, why people have failed to create anti racist societies. To understand the racial history of failure is to understand failed solutions and strategies. To understand failed solutions and strategies is to understand failed racial ideologies. Terms and sayings like I'm not a racist and race neutral and post racial and colorblind. And only one race, the human race and only racists speak about race and black people can't be racist and finally white people are evil. These are all bound to fail in identifying and eliminating racist power and policy. Healing symptoms instead of changing policies is bound to fail in healing society. Critiquing racism is not activism, changing minds is not activism. And activists produce power and policy change, not mental change. If a person has no record of power or policy change, then that person is not an activist. In the last two chapters of the book, the author provides personal stories about how his wife overcame stage two breast cancer and how he overcame stage four colon cancer. He makes the case for comparative analysis of racism to cancer, racism being the cancer of our society and how using anti racist policies in words such as chemotherapy or immunotherapy to shrink the tumors of racial inequities and kill any covert thoughts. If we address it through this lens while we recognizing that racism is not even 600 years old, perhaps it's a quote unquote cancer that we caught early. Racism is one of the fastest spreading and most fatal cancers humanity has ever known. And as with any disease or chronic illness or health issue, belief is all important. Hope is of the essence because Once we lose hope, we are guaranteed to lose. Here are my overall impressions of this book. Ibram Kendi is a scholar who focuses on black history and the intersection of racism and he presents an intellectual survey of various types of racism including body racism, cultural racism, behavioral racism, et cetera and in academics, academic research based historical format supported by various stories from his childhood and early adulthood. He made sure to cover all the pertinent angles that were necessary to prove or support his argument about the different types of racism. In some ways, he overextended the discussion when trying to justify his position. It made the reading a little bit laborious. I found the chapter on racist sexuality to be interesting and an intriguing segment and discussion on racism. In that chapter, the author attempts to make a case that homophobia cannot be separated from racism in the truest sense of the definition of racism. This may be true. However, the justification for this case is specious. The book contains a plethora of references to writings and works, articles and books to further one's investigation of racial history. Some of these references date back to the early 1600s. Overall, it is an extensive discussion about various aspects of racism and the author provides the case for how to be an anti racist in each of these categories including including body racism, class racism, cultural racism, spaces racism, gender racism, and others. The source of racist ideas was not ignorance and hate, but self interest and dare I say, self preservation. I think this book is definitely one worth reading in order to garner a better understanding of America's racist history as well as providing a foundation of understanding as to what being an anti racist means. There are a couple of reasons why this book was placed on the banned book list in my opinion. One it's written by a black author and two it speaks directly to the racist ideas of individuals as well as the racist ideals propagated in policy and through policymakers. In the end, race is not a social construct only, but it is a power construct as well. The problem of race has always been at its core the problem of power, not the problem of immorality or ignorance. To be an anti racist is to let me be me, be myself, and be my imperfect self. One last thing the author mentions the notable readings for Young Black children from the Junior Black Americans of Achievement series promoted by Coretta Scott King. I encourage you to seek the books out that are on this list in the Junior Black Americans of Achievement series so that your children become acutely aware of their history. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast or whatever service you're listening to this also, I'd love to hear from you. So please leave me a comment or a review and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have an urgent question about a current issue or a specific topic that you'd like for me to cover and explore, shoot me a quick email@kimliberationthrougheducation.com to let me know what your question is. You can also connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using the handle kimjfields. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day.

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