We are one-third of the way through! Have we learned anything? I learned about different ways to manipulate language, but I’ll be a good antiracist today and just mark down language manipulation as a racist construct. In this chapter, Kendi talks more about how the oppressors view the oppressed, and how the oppressed view themselves. He does hit on some good points in this chapter, but he doesn’t seem to acknowledge the utility of those points and how they can stop the cycle of violence and crime. Kendi starts out the chapter by defining Bodily Racist and Bodily Antiracist.

“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 nonviolent and violent behavior.”

Kendi starts the chapter by telling the story of how “[v]iolence for White people really was too often a Black face.” He lists out a bunch of quotes, mostly from people I haven’t heard of, but has at least one quote from someone whom I respect, Heather Mac Donald. He gives a long list of racist quotes and ends it with “[t]he core criminal-justice population is the black underclass” cited from Mac Donald’s book The War on Cops. What he does here is a common dishonest trick of the critical theorist types. List quotes or names of some truly bad actors, and then tie those ideas to a quote from someone who is respected to discredit them. Kendi doesn’t even do a great job of that. Mac Donald’s quote comments on empirical data, not an assumption of criminal predisposition. Also, having read much of Mac Donald’s book, The War on Cops, I know she doesn’t wish this disparity to be the case. The objective is to stop crime so people in those communities can stop being terrorized, but unfortunately, that opinion is not antiracist enough for Kendi.

“I believed violence was stalking me – but in truth I was being stalked inside my own head by racist ideas.”

Here Kendi is talking about his experience in a mostly minority high school. He talks about how he avoids ominous looking groups because he didn’t want to get jumped, but then realized it was his own internal ideas of these groups that made him scared. This is how he ends this paragraph, but then begins the very next paragraph with this:

“Crews ran my high school – like crews run America.”

So Kendi admits his high school is run by violent groups yet he blames his own internal racist ideas for the way he views these “crews.” This is the silly doublethink required to be an antiracist. Don’t view a violent group of individuals as violent, even if they are, because that’s racist. I do think Kendi stumbles upon a good point though, and that is what is causing this violence in the first place. The power of narrative might be the strongest influence in our lives. Our actions are influenced by the story we tell ourselves. In this case, if a black man tells himself other black men are likely to hurt him, he is more likely to protect himself from harm by preparing for physical conflict during any altercations. This behavior isn’t genetic, it’s cultural. The only way to stop the cycle of violence is to identify it, then stop the cycle. There is no policy that will permanently change this behavior, just the individual’s willingness to make that change.

“We were unarmed, but we knew that Blackness armed us even though we had no guns. Whiteness disarmed the cops – turned them into fearful potential victims.”

Kendi gives this statement after he got into a fight, knocked a guy out, and ran away as he heard police sirens. Kendi doesn’t mind perpetuating the violent stereotype he wants to expose and disprove in this chapter, but then blames racism on the police for disproportionately arresting black people. The statement above also completely disregards the large minority representation in police forces in large minority areas, but apparently whiteness is inherent in anyone who wears a badge. Kendi goes on to list disproportionate policing statistics while completely disregarding the actions that lead to police engagement in the first place. Kendi really seems to be fighting against his own narrative in this chapter with his own personal stories and experiences. Between all the claims of injustice, he gives his own account of how he grew up around gang violence. He does it to such a degree, I imagine this chapter is on Richard Spencer’s alt-right group reading list to justify his evil views on race.

“I believed it defined me – that I should fear all darkness, up to and including my own Black body.”

This statement clarifies what I talked about earlier. It is the narrative we tell ourselves that influence how we view the world and ourselves. We need to change this perception, especially among individuals who believe they must resort to crime to get ahead. If Kendi could have stayed on this message throughout the chapter more consistently, he would have done a great service to the readers of this book.

“[R]esearchers have found a much stronger and clearer correlation between violent-crime levels and unemployment levels than between violent crime and race.”
“Antiracists say Black people, like all people, need more higher paying jobs within their reach.”

Hey, Kendi finally caught up with the rest of people who talk about how to improve impoverished communities. People who consider themselves non-racist, or what Kendi refers to as racist, have been singing this song for a while. Most people, especially today, never really viewed violence as a race problem, or at least a problem that is directly derived from race, but a problem with economic opportunity or poverty. The second quote hits on this point but blows right past the conditions needed for more high paying jobs, crime. This is a cycle between crime and poverty that needs to be broken. It’s kind of like the chicken and the egg dilemma: what do we focus on first? Do we stop crime, or do we eliminate poverty so crime stops itself? Kendi, or course, would suggest the almighty policy is what’s needed to stop this cycle. I suppose he would suggest government jobs, but the problem with government jobs is they don’t really produce wealth. It’s just a way to redistribute tax dollars. Maybe a higher minimum wage would help, but that does a better job of cutting jobs and driving away business. Maybe Kendi would recommend reparations to dampen poverty. The problem with that is it doesn’t change the behavior that leads to poverty. It’s like me doing my child’s homework for him every time he falls behind. It will get him caught up, but it won’t incentivize him to change his behavior that had him to fall behind in the first place because he will never learned the skills that will get him to keep up with the class. This leads us to the only other effective option, better policing to decrease crime. Decreased crime brings in new business investment that creates jobs. Very simple logic, but completely rejected by critical race theorists. To them, it’s not culture or behavior that needs to change, it’s society.

Thanks for reading my rant style review of the sixth chapter of How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. Please let me know if you find this useful. My goal here is to explain each chapter enough and in a somewhat objective way so others don’t waste their time and money on investigating this material themselves. I know this kind of goes against the logic of investigation where you want to read the source material yourself and build your own conclusions, but this is a very shallow read that does not strain the mind, in any positive way at least, like any proper academic book should. Please leave a comment with your thoughts.

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