Home > Work > How to Be an Antiracist
161 " Poor Blacks in metropolitan Chicago are ten times more likely than poor Whites to live in high-poverty areas. With Black poverty dense and White poverty scattered, Black poverty is visible and surrounds its victims; White poverty blends in. "
― Ibram X. Kendi , How to Be an Antiracist
162 " Internalized racism is the real Black on Black crime. "
163 " Note that I say limited Black power rather than no power. White power controls the United States. But not absolutely. Absolute power necessitates complete control over all levels of power. All policies. All policy managers. All minds. Ironically, the only way that White power can gain full control is by convincing us that White people already have all the power. If we accept the idea that we have no power, we are falling under the sort of mind control that will, in fact, rob us of any power to resist. As Black History Month father Carter G. Woodson once wrote: “When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it. "
164 " The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism. "
165 " THE COMMON IDEA of claiming “color blindness” is akin to the notion of being “not racist”—as with the “not racist,” the color-blind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist passivity. The language of color blindness—like the language of “not racist”—is a mask to hide racism. "
166 " To be queer antiracist is to see homophobia, racism, and queer racism—not the queer person, not the queer space—as the problem, as abnormal, as unnatural. "
167 " From the beginning, to make races was to make racial hierarchy. "
168 " 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. "
169 " I am responsible for my racist ideas; they are not. To be antiracist is to let me be me, be myself, be my imperfect self. "
170 " if we stop using racial categories, then we will not be able to identify racial inequity. "
171 " is failing to recognize that racist ideas we consume about others came from the same restaurant and the same cook who used the same ingredients to make different degrading dishes for us all. "
172 " The racializing serves the core mandate of race: to create hierarchies of value. "
173 " That is the central double standard in ethnic racism: loving one’s position on the ladder above other ethnic groups and hating one’s position below that of other ethnic groups. "
174 " Across history, racist power has produced racist ideas about the racialized ethnic groups in its colonial sphere and ranked them—across the globe and within their own nations. The history of the United States offers a parade of intra-racial ethnic power relationships: Anglo-Saxons discriminating against Irish Catholics and Jews; Cuban immigrants being privileged over Mexican immigrants; the model-minority construction that includes East Asians and excludes Muslims from South Asia. It’s a history that began with early European colonizers referring to the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole as the “Five Civilized Tribes” of Native Americans, as compared to other “wild” tribes. This ranking of racialized ethnic groups within the ranking of the races creates a racial-ethnic hierarchy, a ladder of ethnic racism within the larger schema of racism. "
175 " It is best to challenge ourselves by dragging ourselves before people who intimidate us with their brilliance and constructive criticism. "
176 " Laziness is a trait in Blacks”: John R. O’Donnell, Trumped!: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump—His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991). O’Donnell is the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. In his memoir, he quoted Trump’s criticism of a Black accountant. Here is the full quote. “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day….I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump at first denied he said this, but later told a Playboy reporter, “The stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true. "
177 " Anticapitalism cannot eliminate class racism without antiracism. "
178 " Generally speaking, individual Black and Latinx and Asian and Middle Eastern and European immigrants are uniquely resilient and resourceful—not because they are Nigerian or Cuban or Japanese or Saudi Arabian or German but because they are immigrants. "
179 " In the end, hating White people becomes hating Black people. — IN THE END, hating Black people becomes hating White people. "
180 " Class racism is as ripe among White Americans—who castigate poor Whites as “White trash”—as it is in Black America, where racist Blacks degrade poor Blacks as “them niggers” who live in the ghetto. "