This is going to be a long one. There is a central message in this chapter that Kendi asserts, and something I think is very important for bridging the differences in Kendi’s beliefs and my own. We both believe race or skin color does not dictate or predetermine behavior of the individual. Basically, treat everyone like an individual. This is the most powerful message you can give to someone who wants to improve their own life. We aren’t a collection of identities because we define ourselves. The way we view ourselves and others is what influences our behavior. What Kendi gets wrong here is his attempt to disassociate culture and behavior. I assume his intention here is to eliminate the indirect link between race and culture. There is no obligation of anyone of a particular race to subscribe to a particular culture, yet we see this relationship very often. If we didn’t see this link, then things like cultural appropriation wouldn’t be a thing. The human mechanic that links culture and race is tribalism. He mentions this nowhere in the chapter, and again, I believe this to be his attempt to separate cultural influences on behavior. Kendi begins the chapter by defining Behavioral Racist and Behavioral Antiracist.

“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 ANTIRACIST: One who is making racial group behavior fictional and individual behavior real.”

Here we go! We finally agree on these definitions, or at least we agree on the explicit definitions. I’ll explain what I mean. I 100% agree race doesn’t predetermine any individual’s behavior. As I’ve explained before, behavior is determined by a combination of personality traits, lived experience, and personally narrative (what we tell ourselves about our lives). We aren’t totally clear on, or at least I’m unaware of, any studies that conclude a strong correlation between personality traits, such as aggression or openness, and race. This is something I would imagine Kendi and I would agree on. Lived experience is also not predetermined by race, even though this idea is in extreme conflict with critical theorists or really anyone on the modern-day Left. The personal narrative, however, can be very heavily influenced by race indirectly via culture, something Kendi will deem as a racist idea throughout the chapter. I’ll explain why Kendi’s idea about completely disassociating race and culture goes directly against the unfortunate reality we know to be true throughout this review.

“One of the fundamental values of racism to White people is that it makes success attainable for even unexceptional Whites, while success, even moderate success, is usually reserved for extraordinary Black people.”

This statement is the first misconception Kendi presents in the chapter. For one, success is defined by the person characterizing their current progress. Success can mean becoming a billionaire for one person, or just becoming a father or mother for another person. I think Kendi would agree with this. This brings me to the next point, if success is defined by the individual, the goals or standards for success must be defined by that individual as well. If every person made their benchmark for success as becoming a billionaire, then only an extremely small fraction of people would end up successful. This would be considered a standard of success, and that standard can be determined by the individual but is often generalized by culture. There is no doubt that the overarching culture of America defines a standard of success in monetary terms, and I would argue this is one of the worst aspects of the American culture. But the subcultures within the overarching American culture defines success differently. There are Southern cultures that may not care as much about accumulated wealth as much as having a nice truck and boat for fishing. I come from a culture in the Midwest that find it more important to accumulate just enough wealth to support going to the supper club every Friday for a fish fry. My point is, if the individual subscribes to some sort of subculture, their definition of success might change to align with that culture. If the culture you subscribe to values a career in entertainment or sports as the standard of success, that’s a very high bar that most people will fall short of. Combine that high bar with a culture that doesn’t value education or sees the nuclear family as an obstacle to personal goals, and the outcomes for people who couldn’t make it in entertainment or sports will not be pretty.

I understand and realize that the statements I just made would probably be considered racist by someone like Kendi. It’s clear I was describing a culture in America that many black Americans subscribe to even though race doesn’t predetermine the culture the individual must subscribe to. Let me be even more clear, there is nothing wrong with black Americans. Their race or skin color determine nothing. This is why I said I agree with Kendi’s explicit definitions of behavioral racist and behavioral antiracist, but it doesn’t seem like Kendi takes tribalism into account. Tribalism, or the behavior of organizing with a tribe, is the link between culture and race. It’s the human behavior that causes me to love the Green Bay Packers and hate the Chicago Bears. It’s also the human behavior that causes real Jim Crow style racism. Tribalism is not always a bad thing, but it can lead to self-selection into groups based on the only characteristics we know about someone we’ve never met before. Do they look like me? We will dive into this more later in the review.

“It makes racist sense to talk about personal irresponsibility as it applies to an entire racial group. Racial-group behavior is a figment of the racist’s imagination. Individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals.”

Okay, we are agreeing again, but…

"But policies determine the success of groups. And it is racist power that creates the policies that cause racial inequities.”

Oh yes, the almighty policy has returned. It’s almost like Kendi believes there is no such thing as human behavior, just behaviors dictated by policy. This doesn’t mean that there can’t be, or haven’t been, policies created for the explicit purpose of producing racial inequities, but inequities between groups are not solely caused by bad policy, and, therefore, can’t just be fixed with good policy, nor should we use policy to build equality of outcome. The very thing Kendi tries to claim as a racist dog whistle, culture, is what can create closer equity between groups. Improving culture will lift all ships. Using policy to build equity will accomplish its goals by sinking every ship to the bottom of the ocean, equally.

“[W]hen we believe that a racial group’s seeming success or failure redounds to each of its individual members, 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.”

Again, 100% agree here. But now try to explain white privilege. Explain to me why I must apologize for past injustices just because those injustices where performed by people who tan in the sun similar to how I do. Also, explain to me the popular term people of color. It seems like grouping large, diverse populations by their race is okay sometimes.

“Antiracism means separating the idea of a culture from the idea of behavior. Culture defines a group tradition that a particular racial group might share but that is not shared among all individuals in that racial group or among all racial groups. Behavior defines the inherent human traits and potential that everyone shares.”

Kendi lets the cat out of the bag. Separating culture from behavior goes against everything we know about human behavior and what influences it. “Culture defines a group tradition,” already debunks his previous sentence. Traditions, such as religious beliefs, are the strongest factors in influencing our behavior we have as human beings. Behavior defines the way in which we act or conduct ourselves. It doesn’t define “inherent human traits” or “potential everyone shares” unless you are going to make some very loose connections with some mental gymnastics. This, more than any other quote or statement Kendi has made so far in this book, completely illuminates Kendi’s belief in the power of the policy. If culture, tradition, and belief have no relevant influence on our behavior, then making policy changes is the most obvious avenue for permanent behavioral change. Human beings are unconstrained by human behavior.

“It seemed that White people were free to misbehave, make mistakes. But if we failed – or failed to be twice as good – then the Black judge handed down a hard sentence. No probation or parole. There was no middle ground – we were either King’s disciples or thugs killing King’s dreams.”

Here is another instance of not racism between black and white, but different standards held by a specific culture. Not all black Americans subscribe to this culture, but it was very easy for Kendi to generalize this way, a generalization he both utilizes and condemns throughout the book. The few moments of truth and self-reflection, as shown below, tell the real story.

“I internalized my academic struggles as indicative of something wrong not just with my behavior but with Black behavior as a whole, since I represented the race, both in their eyes – or what I thought I saw in their eyes – and my own.”

Kendi talks about his struggles with academics as a young child in the last few chapters and openly admits it was not caused by lack of cognitive ability, but by the lack of value he found in education. He built up his own standards of what it means to be black in school. School wasn’t a priority, an unfortunate common theme in a culture subscribed to by many in poor black communities, and poor communities of all colors more generally. This is the central cause of bad behavior on the individual level. Not racism. Not bad policy. Not some external force holding you down. It’s the way you view yourself or your view on how you see others look at you. It’s the narrative you tell yourself. Break that narrative, which Kendi attempts to do at times, and break the cycle of poverty and crime.

“To be antiracist is to think nothing is behaviorally wrong or right – inferior or superior – 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 behavior, to remove the tattooed stereotype from every racialized body. Behavior is something humans do, not races do.”

If this was the main message of this book, I would recommend it to everyone, and this is the main reason I read books like this: to find common ground with people whom I disagree with on almost everything. Kendi and I have the same message. Treat people as individuals, not groups aligned by skin color. The very term people of color is an insult to the diversity within that group, just as the LGBT+ movement is an insult to the diverse group of people who express themselves differently within that group. Kendi sandwiches this message between a ton of bad ideas that go directly against the message, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from books like these. Learning what not to do is sometimes just as important as learning what to do.

Thanks for reading my rant style review of the eighth 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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