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.
I didn't realize that to say something is wrong about a racial group is to say something is inferior about that racial group. I did not realize that to say something is inferior about a racial group is to say a racist idea.
Internalized racism is the real Black on Black crime.
This is the consistent function of racist ideas-and of any kind of bigotr y more broadly: to manipulate us into seeing people as the problem, instead of the policies that ensnare them.
When racist ideas resound, denials that those ideas are racist typically follow. When racist policies resound, denials that those policies are racist also follow.
Denial is the heartbeat of racism, beating across ideologies, races, and nations. It is beating within us.
Denial is the heartbeat of racism, beating across ideologies, races, and nations. It is beating within us. Many of us who strongly call out Trump's racist ideas will strongly deny our own. How often do we become reflexively defensive when someone calls something we've done or said racist? How many of us would agree with this statement: "'Racist' isn't a descriptive word. It's a pejorative word. It is the equivalent of saying, 'I don't like you."
What's the problem with being "not racist"? It is a claim that signifies neutrality: "I am not a racist, but neither am I aggressively against racism." But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of "racist" isn't "not racist." It is "antiracist." What's the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no inbetween safe space of "not racist." The claim of "not racist" neutrality is a mask for racism.
Racist is not the worst word in the English lan-guage; it is not the equivalent of a slur. It is descriptive, and the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it-and then dismantle it. The attempt to turn this usefully descriptive ter m into an almost unusable slur is, of course, designed to do the opposite: to freeze us into inaction.
THE COMMON IDEA of claiming "color blind-ness" is akin to the notion of being "not ra-cist"-as with the "not racist," the colorblind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist pas-sivity. The language of color blindness-like the language of "not racist"-is a mask to hide racism.
RACIST: One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.
ANTI RACIST: One who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.
"Any gospel that does not ... speak to the issue of enslavement" and "injustice" and "inequality-any gospel that does not want to go where people are hungry and poverty-stricken and set them free in the name of Jesus Christ-is not the gospel."
"A Christian is one who is striving for liberation."
James Cone's working definition of a Christian described a Christianity of the enslaved, not the Christianity of the slaveholders.
If we don't do the basic work of defining the kind of people we want to be in language that is stable and consistent, we can't work toward stable, consistent goals.
To be an antiracist is to set lucid definitions of racism/ antiracism, racist/ antiracist polici es, racist/ antiracist ideas, racist/ antiracist people. To be a racist is to constantly redefine racist in a way that exonerates one's changing policies, ideas, and personhood.
Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.
Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing.
Racial equity is when two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing.
A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups.
"Racial discrimination" is an immediate and visible manifestation of an underlying racial policy. When someone discriminates against a person in a racial group, they are carrying out a policy or taking advantage of the lack of a protective policy. We all have the power to discriminate. Only an exclusive few have the power to make policy.
The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or in equity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating in equity, then it is racist. Someone reproducing inequity through permanently assisting an over-represented racial group into wealth and power is entirely different than someone challenging that inequity by temporarily assisting an underrepresented racial group into relative wealth and power until equity is reached.
As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in 1978, "In ord er to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in ord er to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently."
There is no such thing as a not-racist idea, only racist ideas and antiracist ideas.
A racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way. Racist ideas argue that the inferiorities and superiorities of racial groups explain racial inequities in society.
An antiracist idea is any idea that suggests the racial groups are equals in all their apparent differences-that there is nothing right or wrong with any racial group. Antiracist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities.
Racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequit y and are substantiated by racist ideas. Antiracism is a powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equit y and are substantiated by anti racist ideas.
Do-nothing climate policy is racist policy, since the predominantly non-White global south is being victimized by climate change more than the Whiter global north, even as the Whiter global north is contributing more to its acceleration.
A racist is someone who is supporting a racist policy by their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea. An antiracist is someone who is supporting an antiracist policy by their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.
"Racist" and "antiracist" are like peelable name tags that are placed and replaced based on what someone is doing or not doing, supporting or expressing in each moment. These are not permanent tat-toos. No one becomes a racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be one or the other. We can unknowingly strive to be a ra-cist. We can knowingly strive to be an antiracist. Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.
As Audre Larde said in 1980, "We have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals."
ASSIMILATIONIST. One who is expressing the racist idea that a racial group is culturally or behaviorally inferior and is supporting cultural or behavioral enrichment programs to develop that racial group.
Segregationist: One who is expressing the racist idea that a permenently inferior racial group can never be developed and is supporting policy that segregates away that racial group.
Anitracist: One who is expressing the idea that racial groups are equals and none needs developing, and is supporting policy that reduces racial inequity.
Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It's a pretty easy mistake to make: People are in our faces. Policies are distant.
Antiracist ideas are based in the truth that racial groups are equals in all the ways they are different, assimilationist ideas are rooted in the notion that certain racial groups are culturally or behaviorally inferior, and segregationist ideas spring from a belief in genetic racial distinction and fixed hierarchy.
The White body defines the American body. The White body segregates the Black body from the American body. The White body instructs the Black body to assimilate into the American body. The White body rejects the Black body assimilating into the American body-and history and consciousness duel anew.
The Black body is instructed to become an American body. The American body is the White body. The Black body strives to assimilate into the American body. The American body rejects the Black body. The Black body separates from the American body. The Black. body is instructed to assimilate into the American body-and history and consciousness duel anew.
To be antiracist is to emancipate oneself from the dueling consciousness. To be antiracist is to conquer the assimilationist consciousness and the segregationist consciousness. The White body no longer presents itself as the American body; the Black body no longer strives to be the American body, knowing there is no such thing as the American body, only American bodies, racialized by power.
RACE: A power construct of collected or merged difference that lives socially.
But for all of that life-shaping power, race is a mirage, which doesn't lessen its force. We are what we see ourselves as, whether what we see exists or not. We are what people see us as, whether what they see exists or not. What people see in themselves and others has meaning and manifests itself in ideas and actions and policies, even if what they are seeing is an illusion. Race is a mirage but one that we do well to see, while never forgetting it is a mirage, never forgetting that it's the powerful light of racist power that makes the mirage.
It is one of the ironies of antiracism that we must identify racially in order to identify the racial privileges and dangers of being in our bodies. Latinx and Asian and African and European and Indigenous and Middle Eastern: These six races-at least in the American context-are fundamentally power identities, because race is fundamentally a power construct of blended difference that lives socially. Race creates new forms of power: the power to categorize and judge, elevate and downgrade, include and exclude. Race makers use that power to process distinct individuals, ethnicities, and nationalities into monolithic races.
The root problem-from Pr ince Henry to President Trump-has always been the self-interest of racist power. Powerful economic, political, and cultural self-inter-est-the primitive accumulation of capital in the case of royal Portugal and subsequent slave traders-has been behind racist policies. Powerful and brilliant intellectuals in the tradition of Gomes de Zurara then produced racist ideas to justify the racist policies of their era, to redirect the blame for their era's racial inequities away from those policies and onto
BIOLOGICAL RACIST: One who is expressing the idea that the races are meaningfully different in their biology and that these differences create a hierarchy of value.
BIOLOGICAL ANTIRACIST: One who is expressing the idea that the races are meaningfully the same in their biology and there are no genetic racial differences.
Generalizing the behavior of racist White individuals to all White people is as perilous as generalizing the individual faults of people of color to entire races.
We often see and remember the race and not the individual. This is racist categorizing, this stuffing of our experiences with individuals into color-marked racial closets. An antiracist treats and remembers individuals as individuals. "She acted that way," we should say, "because she is racist."
Scholars call what I saw a "microaggression," a term coined by eminent Harvard psychiatrist Chester Pierce in 1970. Pierce employed the term to describe the constant verbal and nonverbal abuse racist White people unleash on Black people wherever we go, day after day.
With racist teachers, misbehaving kids of color do not receive inquiry and empathy and legitimacy. We receive orders and punishments and "no excuses," as if we are adults. The Black child is ill-treated like an adult, and the Black adult is ill-treated like a child.
The segregationist sees six biologically distinct races. The assimilationist sees one biological human race. But there is another way of looking, through the lens of biological antiracism. To be antiracist is to recognize the reality of biological equality, that skin color is as meaningless to our underlying humanity as the clothes we wear over that skin. To be antiracist is to recognize there is no such thing as White blood or Black diseases or natural Latinx athleticism. To be antiracist is to also recognize the liv-ing, breathing reality of this racial mirage, which makes our skin colors more meaningful than our individuality. To be antiracist is to focus on ending the racism that shapes the mirages, not to ignore the mirages that shape peoples' lives.
ETHNIC RACISM: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity racialized ethnic groups and are substantiated by racist ideas about racialized ethnid groups.
ETHNIC ANTIRACISM: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between racialized ethnic groups and are substantiated by antiracist ideas about racialized ethnic groups.
To be antiracist is to view national and transnational ethnic groups as equal in all their differences. To be antiracist is to challenge the racist policies that plague racial-ized ethnic groups across the world. To be antiracist is to view the inequities between all racialized ethnic groups as a problem of policy.
With ethnic racism, no one wins, except the racist power at the top. As with all racism, that is the entire point.
BODILY RACIST: One who is perceiving certain racialized bodies as more animal-like and violent than others.
BODILY ANTIRACIST: One who is humanizing, deracializing, and individualizing non-violent and violent behavior.
Researchers have found a much stronger and clearer correlation between violent-crime. levels and unemployment levels than between violent crime and race.
CULTURAL RACIST: One who is creating a cultural standard and imposing a cultural hierarchy among racial groups.
CULTURAL ANTIRACIST: One who is rejecting cultural standards and equalizing cultural differences among racial groups.
BEHAVIORAL RACIST: One who is making individuals responsible for the perceived behavior of racial groups and making racial groups responsible for the behavior of individuals.
BEHAVIORAL ANTI RACIST: One who is making racial group behavior fictional and individual behavior real.
When we believe that a racial group's seeming success or failure redounds to each of its individual mem-bers, we've accepted a racist idea. Likewise, when we believe that an individual's seeming success or failure redounds to an entire group, we've accepted a racist idea.
Every time someone racializes behavior-de-scribes something as "Black behavior"-they are expressing antiracist is to recognize there is no such thing as Black behavior, let alone irresponsible Black behavior. Black behavior is as fictitious as Black genes. There is no "Black gene." No one has ever scientifically established a single "Black behavioral trait." No evidence has ever been produced, for instance, to prove that Black people are louder, angrier, nicer, funnier, lazier, less punctual, more immoral, religious, or dependent; that Asians are more subser vient; that Whites are greedier. All we have are stories of individual behavior. But individual stories are only proof of the behavior of individuals. Just as race doesn't exist biologically, race doesn't exist behaviorally.
Q
As long as the mind thinks there is something behaviorally wrong with a racial group, the mind can never be antiracist. As long as the mind oppresses the oppressed by thinking their oppressive environment has retarded their behavior, the mind can never be antiracist. As long as the mind is racist, the mind can never be free.
To be antiracist is to think nothing is behaviorally wrong or right-infer ior or su-perior-with any of the racial groups. Whenever the antiracist sees individuals behaving positively or negatively, the antiracist sees exactly that: individuals behaving positively or negatively, not representatives of whole races. To be antiracist is to deracialize behav-ior, to remove the tattooed stereotype from every racialized body. Behavior is something humans do, not races do.
COLORISM: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequities between Light people and Dark people, supported by racist ideas about Light and Dark people.
COLOR ANTIRACISM: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between Light people and Dark people, supported by antiracist ideas about Light and Dark people.
Intellect is the linchpin of behavior, and the racist idea of the achievement gap is the linchpin of behavioral racism.
Even Dark Filipino men have lower incomes than their lighter peers in the United States. Dark immigrants to the United States, no matter their place of origin, tend to have less wealth and income than Light immigrants. When they arrive, Light Latinx people receive higher wages, and Dark Latinx people are more likely to be employed at ethnically homogeneous jobsites.
To be an antiracist is not to reverse the beauty standard. To be an antiracist is to eliminate any beauty standard based on skin and eye color, hair texture, facial and bodily features shared by groups. To be an antiracist is to diversify our standards of beauty like our standards of culture or intelligence, to see beauty equally in all skin colors, broad and thin noses, kinky and straight hair, light and dark eyes. To be an antiracist is to build and live in a beauty culture that accentuates instead of erases our natural beauty.
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the strength to do what is right in the face of it," as the anonymous philosopher tells us.
Black people can be racist toward White people. The NOI's White-devil idea is a classic example. Whenever someone classifies people of European descent as biologically, culturally, or behaviorally infer-ior, whenever someone says there is something wrong with White people as a group, someone is articulating a racist idea.
The only thing wrong with White people is when they embrace racist ideas and policies and then deny their ideas and policies are racist. This is not to ignore 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 grew rich, all the while producing racist ideas that blame the victims. This is to say their histor y of pillaging is not the result of the evil genes or cultures of White people. There's no such thing as White genes. We must separate the warlike, greedy, bigoted, and individualist cultures of modern empire and racial capitalism (more on that later) from the cultures of White people. They are not one and the same, as the resistance within White nations shows, resistance admittedly often tempered by racist ideas.
To be antiracist is to never mistake the global march of White racism for the global march of White people. To be antiracist is to never mistake the antiracist hate of White racism for the racist hate of White people. To be antiracist is to never conflate racist people with White people, knowing there are antiracist Whites and racist non-Whites. To be antiracist is to see ordinary White people as the frequent victimizers of people of color and the frequent victims of racist power.
As we've learned, racist power produces racist policies out of self-interest and then produces racist ideas to justify those policies. But racist ideas also suppress the resistance to policies that are detrimental to White people, by convincing average White people that inequity is rooted in "personal failure" and is unrelated to policies. Racist power manipulates ordinary White people into resisting equalizing policies by drilling them on what they are losing with equalizing policies and how those equalizing policies are anti-White.
ANTI-WHITE RACIST: One who is classifying people of European descent as biologically, culturally, or behaviorally inferior or conflating the entire race of White people with racist power.
POWERLESS DEFENSE: The illusory, concealing, disempowering, and racist idea that Black people can't be racist because Black people don't have power.
Bring the Pain by Chris Rock
CLASS RACIST: One who is racializing the classes, supporting policies of racial capitalism against those race-classes, and justifying them by racist ideas about those race-classes.
ANTIRACIST ANTICAPITALIST: One who is opposing racial capitalism.
Poor people are a class, Black people a race. Black poor people are a race-class. When we say poor people are lazy, we are expressing an elitist idea. When we say Black people are lazy, we are expressing a racist idea. When we say Black poor people are lazier than poor Whites, White elites, and Black elites, we are speaking at the intersection of elitist and racist ideas-an ideological intersection that forms class racism.
To be antiracist is to equalize the race-classes. To be antiracist is to root the economic disparities between the equal race-classes in policies, not people.
SPACE RACISM: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to resource inequity between racialized spaces or the elimination of certain racialized spaces, which are substantiated by racist ideas about racialized spaces.
SPACE ANTIRACISM: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity between integrated and protected ra-cialized spaces, which are substantiated by antiracist ideas about racialized spaces.
Just tell the truth. That's what we should strive to do. Tell the truth.
When people contend that Black spaces do not represent reality, they are speaking from the White worldview of Black people in the minority. They are conceptualizing the real American world as White. To be antiracist is to recognize there is no such thing as the "real world," only real worlds, multiple worldviews.
Resources define a space, resources the conjoined twins divvy up. People make spaces from resources. Comparing spaces across race-classes is like matching fighters of different weight classes, which fighting sports consider unfair. Poor Black neighborhoods should be compared to equally poor White neighborhoods, not to considerably richer White neighborhoods. Small Black businesses should be compared to equally small White businesses, not to wealthy White corporations. Indeed, when researchers compare HBCUs to HWCUs of similar means and makeup, HBCUs tend to have higher Black graduation rates. Not to mention, Black HBCU graduates are, on average, more likely than their Black peers from HWCUs to be thriving financially, socially, and physically.
They desired to separate, not from Whites but from White racism. Separation is not always segregation. The antiracist desire to separate from racists is different from the segregationist desire to separate from "inferior" Blacks.
Whenever Black people voluntar ily gather among themselves, 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 solidar ity against racism. They see spaces of segregation against White people. Integrationists do not see these spaces as the movement of Black people toward Black people. Integrationists think about them as a movement away from White people. They then equate that movement away from White people with the White segregationist movement away from Black people. Integrationists equate spaces for the survival of Black bodies with spaces for the survival of White supremacy.
"White people view black people as inferior .... People with such a low view of the black race cannot be given free rein and put in charge of the intellectual care and development of our boys and girls." - Martin Luther King Jr.
Non-White students fill most of the seats in today's public school classrooms but are taught by an 80 percent White teaching force, which often has, however uncon-sciously, lower expectations for non-White students. When Black and White teachers look at the same Black student, White teachers are about 40 percent less likely to believe the student will finish high school.
Low-income Black students who have at least one Black teacher in elementary school are 29 percent less likely to drop out of school, 39 percent less likely among very low-income Black boys.
Antiracist strategy fuses desegregation with a form of integration and racial soli-darity. Desegregation: eliminating all barriers to all racialized spaces. To be antiracist is to support the voluntary integration of bodies attracted by cultural difference, a shared humanity. Integration: resources rather than bodies. To be an antiracist is to champion resource equity by challenging the racist policies that produce resource in-equity. Racial solidarity: openly identifying, supporting, and protecting integrated racial spaces. To be antiracist is to equate and nurture difference among racial groups.
GENDER ANTIRACISM: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between race-genders and are substantiated by antiracist ideas about race-genders.
GENDER RACISM: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between race-genders and are substantiated by racist ideas about race-genders.
Queer antiracism is equating all the race-sexualities, striving to eliminate the inequities between the race-sexualities. We cannot be antiracist if we are homophobic or transphobic.
ACTIVIST: One who has a record of power or policy change.
We do not have to be fearless like Harriet Tubman to be antiracist. We have to be courageous to be antiracist. Courage is the strength to do what is right in the face of fear, as the anonymous philosopher tells us.
QUEER RACISM: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between race-sexualities and are substantiated by racist ideas about race-sexualities.
QUEER ANTIRACISM: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between race-sexualities and are substantiated by antiracist ideas about race-sexualities.
It happens for me in successive steps, these steps to be an antiracist. I stop using the "I'm not a racist" or "I can't be racist" defense of denial. I admit the definition of racist (someone who is supporting racist policies or expressing racist ideas. I confess the racist policies I support and racist ideas I express. I accept their source (my upbringing inside a nation making us racist). I acknowledge the definition of antiracist (someone who is supporting antiracist policies or expressing antiracist ideas). I struggle for antiracist power and policy in my spaces. (Seizing a policymak-ing position. Joining an antiracist organization or protest. Publicly donating my time or privately donating my funds to antiracist policymakers, organizations, and protests fixated on changing power and policy.)
Admit racial inequity is a problem of bad pol-icy, not bad people. Identify racial inequity in all its intersections and manifestations. Investigate and uncover the racist policies causing racial inequity. Invent or find antiracist policy that can eliminate racial inequity. Figure out who or what group has the power to institute antiracist policy. Disseminate and educate about the uncovered racist policy and antiracist policy correctives i 4rk with sympathetic antiracist policymakers to institute the antiracist policy. Deploy antiracist power to compel or drive from power the unsympathetic racist policymakers in order to institute the antiracist pol-icy. Monitor closely to ensure the antiracist policy reduces and eliminates racial inequity. When policies fail, do not blame the people. Start over and seek out new and more effective antiracist treatments until they work. Monitor closely to prevent new racist policies from being instituted.
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