“An antiracist is someone who deliberately is confessing the racist ideas that have been nurtured within them while trying to be better, trying to be different, and trying to support policies that create equity.”
There is only one part of Ibram X. Kendi’s name he’s had all his life. Born in 1982 as Ibram H. Rogers in Queens, New York City, to parents inspired by black liberation theology, he changed his last name to Kendi, which means “the loved one” in the language of the Meru people of Kenya, when he and his wife, Sadiqa, were married in 2013. He also took the new middle name Xolani, which means “peace” in Zulu.
By this time, Kendi was already a noted historian, having written a 2012 book about black campus activism. He catapulted to much greater recognition with his 2016 book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won that year’s National Book Award for Nonfiction. The book, at nearly 600 pages, packs a wallop in its unsparing dissection of the nation’s long and deep commitment to racism, even, at times, in the hearts of people who considered themselves defenders of equal rights.
It’s very difficult to grow up in a country or even a world that’s constantly raining racist ideas on your head and to never get wet.
Kendi, thirty-six, teaches history and international relations at American University in Washington, D.C., where he is also the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center. He writes regularly for The Atlantic, The New York Times, and other publications, and is a sought-after speaker, with more than a half-dozen scheduled talks around the country in January alone.
“Despite spending years dissecting the ugly face of racism,” he’s written, “I never lost faith in the beauty of human potential. I still believe we can build a world where equity and opportunity are inalienable human rights.”
Kendi recently spoke to The Progressive by phone from San Francisco, where he had traveled for a joint appearance with Angela Davis.
Q: Your website bio says you are “hoping and pressing for the day the New York Knicks will win an NBA championship and for the day this nation and world will be ruled by the best of humanity.” Which do you think is more likely?
Ibram X. Kendi: [Laughs.] I would probably say the Knicks winning an NBA championship is more likely, if I’m being straightforward. It only takes them being able to get Kevin Durant next year, maybe add another piece, and then they could be a contender, while the world being ruled by the best of humanity is gonna take a lot more than that.
Q: One of the things that astonished me about Stamped from the Beginning, beyond the depth of your research, was how uniformly it exposed the nation’s racist underbelly, even in the words and deeds of people like Abraham Lincoln, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and W.E.B. Du Bois. How can it be that people who did important things to advance the cause of racial justice were to some extent racist themselves?
Kendi: We know that the human mind is very complex and most people are sort of thinking in contradiction, which certainly is the case when it comes to racial issues. And so in certain types of things or most things, people could express antiracist ideas but then in other things, they could express racist ideas. It really just shows how deep and widespread and pervasive racist ideas historically have been, that even people who aspired to do good or to do right by black people were sometimes simultaneously being driven by racist ideas.
Q: In writing about the Trump presidency, you’ve been somewhat optimistic, arguing that racial progress will continue. Can you elaborate on that?
Kendi: The way that I try to sort of showcase America’s racial history is by showing both racial progress and racist progress. And I do think racial progress is ongoing. I mean, when we look at this new House, the most diverse House in history, that’s certainly a representation of racial progress.
Q: How do you size up the racism of Donald Trump, relative to that of other American Presidents?
Kendi: In Stamped from the Beginning, I chronicle both segregationist and assimilationist ideas. And many Presidents, particularly since the end of slavery, have either vacillated between segregationist and assimilationist and sometimes antiracist ideas. But, for Trump, he’s primarily been advocating segregationist ideas. These are the types of ideas that classify people as animals, say we need to essentially create walls to stop them, say we need to imprison them, say that we need to kill them.
Q: In this issue of The Progressive, we are looking at what it’s like to be various versions of “The Other” in Trump’s America. Do you think it has gotten harder to be a minority in this country?
Kendi: Without question. Within Trump’s America you have a growing amount of white nationalist organizing, a growing amount of white nationalist violence, and violent police officers who feel they have a friend in the White House. You have an administration that is rolling back civil rights protections pretty much across the board. So certainly, it’s become harder to be a person of color in Trump’s America.
Q: You’ve implicated even Trump’s opponents as being caught up in denial, writing in The New York Times about how they “look away from their own racism to brand Trump country as racist.” You refuse to take people who insist they are not racist at their word. Is there really no such thing as a nonracist?
Kendi: No, there is no such thing as a nonracist, but there is such a thing as an antiracist. Nonracists, historically, are people who defend policies that create racial inequity and express ideas of racial hierarchy. When those policies and ideas are challenged as racist, their response is, “I’m not racist.” An antiracist is someone who deliberately is confessing the racist ideas that have been nurtured within them while trying to be better, trying to be different, and trying to support policies that create equity.
Q: Are you a racist? Do you harbor racist ideas?
Kendi: A large part of my upcoming book, How to Be an Antiracist, is sharing the racist ideas that I believed for the better part of my life, and how I was able to begin understanding and admitting and confessing that those ideas were racist and sort of start moving toward and awakening toward antiracist thought.
Q: Let’s talk about that book, which is due out this summer. Give us preview: In learning how to be an antiracist, what is step number one?
Kendi: Step number one is to admit and confess one’s own racist ideas, or even the policies that one has supported that create racial inequity. It’s very difficult to grow up in a country or even a world that’s constantly raining racist ideas on your head and to never get wet. That’s how hard it is, essentially, to never consume any racist ideas, and so the first step is admitting that.
Q: Tell us a little about the Antiracist Research and Policy Center. What projects is it undertaking that people ought to know about?
Kendi: Our mission is to research racial inequity, particularly the racist policies that are behind racial inequity, with the purpose of innovating antiracist policies to reduce those racial inequities, and ultimately working closely with empathetic policymakers to implement them. And so we’re organized around six areas: economy, education, environment, justice, health, and politics. Essentially, we’re going to be building these residential fellowship programs that bring to Washington, D.C., teams of scholars, policymakers, advocates, and journalists who do everything from investigating racial inequities and the policies that caused them, to innovating antiracist policies and designing campaigns to get those policies instituted.
Q: In a recent piece in The Atlantic, you noted that voter suppression and partisan redistricting have robbed people of color of their political power, and corroded their ability and willingness to participate in democracy. What can be done to restore fairness to the American political process?
Kendi: First and foremost, we have to get in positions of power in which we have the ability to essentially change policies that allow for voting to become easier if not universal. Those who are currently in positions of power want to make voting difficult, want to suppress voters, because that’s potentially how they stay in power. And so really in order to overcome this, you have to change policies to ensure that voting is as easy as anything else that people regularly do that’s important to society.
Q: In another interesting piece in The Atlantic, you wrote about the virtues of confrontation, even harassment, by those who are resisting injustice. What sort of harassment is needed now?
Kendi: We have to recognize that the racist forces in our society are not people who are just mistaken. They’re not mistaken when they say that there’s voter fraud. No, these people know the data. They know that voter fraud is extremely rare. But they also know that they need a justification for these new voter ID laws. And so, trying to persuade and convince them that voter fraud, or any other construction to justify a racist policy, is bad is simply not going to work. What has historically worked has been putting pressure on people in power, protest pressure—which includes forms of harassment—as well as getting in positions of power.
Q: Among your many public appearances this month is a joint lecture with Angela Davis in San Francisco. Davis is one of the only true heroes in your book. What is it that makes her one of the seminal figures of American anti-racism?
Kendi: For almost her entire public career, she has been someone who has been able to defend and recognize the humanity of some of the most degraded groups of black people. I’m talking about black prisoners, I’m talking about the black poor, I’m talking about black single mothers, I’m talking about black activists, I’m talking about black women, I’m talking about the black queer community. These are the communities that even groups of black people have looked down upon and denigrated and thought that there was something wrong with. And she has been one of their principal defenders, consistently for over fifty years. For me, in order to truly be antiracist, you have to recognize the humanity of all of the racial groups and she has been able to do that.
Q: You’ve written: “If allowed to proceed far enough, racism will ultimately destroy the American idea. And it will lead to contentiousness and resentment and, yes, violence that will make today’s polarization seem quaint by comparison.” How optimistic or pessimistic are you about the way things will turn out?
Kendi: I am actually optimistic and not necessarily because I see things getting better, or I see some sort of messiah that’s going to arise, or that I think the will of the people is going to rise up against the forces of racism. What makes me optimistic is because, philosophically, I know that to bring about change we have to believe change is possible. You can’t be an effective agent of change if you don’t even believe that change is possible. So that’s a large part of my optimism; I’ll never stop being optimistic in the possibility of change that’s essential to change itself.