Antiracism Action Steps
Ibram X. Kendi’s personal steps toward becoming 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 policymaking 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.)
• I struggle to remain at the antiracist intersections where racism is mixed with other bigotries. (Eliminating racial distinctions in biology and behavior. Equalizing racial distinctions in ethnicities, bodies, cultures, colors, classes, spaces, genders, and sexualities.)
• I struggle to think with antiracist ideas. (Seeing racist policy in racial inequity. Leveling group differences. Not being fooled into generalizing individual negativity. Not being fooled by misleading statistics or theories that blame people for racial inequity.)
Ibram X. Kendi’s recommended steps to eliminate racial inequity in our spaces:
• Admit racial inequity is a problem of bad policy, 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.
• Work 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 policy.
• 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.
Philosopher David S. Owen advises the following for White people committed to antiracism: “Just as the best athletes continue to practice to improve their performance, white people who are committed to racial justice must always be practicing to become better at disrupting the system of racial oppression. To this end, whenever possible I should be asking myself these four questions:
1. How has whiteness shaped the formation of this situation?
2. How is whiteness operating right now in this situation?
3. What practices am I engaging in that are reproducing whiteness?
4. What can I do to disrupt the reproduction of whiteness?
An authentic practice aiming at racial justice will be incessantly asking these questions, and directing and redirecting action accordingly” (165).
Endnote: David S. Owen, “Cornered by Whiteness: On Being a White Problem,” White Self-Criticality beyond Anti-Racism: How Does it Feel to Be a White Probem?, edited by George Yancy. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015, pp. 153-165.