“Hi, we’re the Whites” said Walter White in Breaking Bad. That is an example of the only time you should capitalize the word white unless it’s at the beginning of a sentence. But in critical theory land, we are all trapped in the Upside-Down from Stranger Things. I wish this book was at least 1% as entertaining or insightful as either of those shows, but here we go anyways. Kendi starts the chapter by defining Anti-White Racism.

“ANTI-WHITE RACIST: One who is classifying people of European descent as biologically, culturally, or behaviorally inferior or conflating the entire race of White people with racist power.”

Overall, good definition, I guess. I mean, racism is racism. It doesn’t matter who is judging who, even if that person is judging someone on the basis of race who is of the same race as themselves. I imagine that is why Kendi makes this distinction. Anti-white racism doesn’t imply a power imbalance which is critical to the reformed definition of racism.

Kendi starts out the chapter by describing the entire black population as a uniform voting-base for the Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential Election. He made this assumption because “[w]e had voted to save the rest of America from the racist Bushes.” This characterization was made because of then Florida Governor Jeb Bush, brother of the 2000 presidential vote winner President George W. Bush, terminated some affirmative action programs in his state that year. Kendi continues on how the Florida vote was compromised by voter suppression and the lack of a full recount. The problem is, and what he doesn’t mention, is voter suppression has never been proven (no person came forward to claim they’ve been suppressed), and there was a recount process that didn’t change the outcome. It wasn’t a full recount process, but then a massive study was conducted by eight news organizations, including CNN and The New York Times, and showed Bush would have won the election anyways.

Kendi goes on to explain the extremely racist teachings of Nation of Islam. He explains how the NOI influenced him for a short amount of time, but to give Kendi some credit, he did reject the NOI teachings shortly after.

“To be antiracist is to never mistake the global march of White racism for the global march of White people. To be antiracist is to never mistake the antiracist hate of White racism for the racist hate for White people. To be antiracist is to never conflate racist people with White people, knowing there are antiracist Whites and racist non-Whites. To be antiracist is to see ordinary White people as the frequent victimizers of people of color and the frequent victims of racist power.”

The statement above is something I would categorize as bipolar. There is a mix of very good messages combined with a final message that is just confused at best, and a complete destruction of the proceeding message at worst. To give Kendi credit again, he very intelligently states that racism can flow in all directions. I think that’s important because many in the world of critical race theory completely reject this objective fact. Kendi is very smart to do this because all narratives, whether fiction or non-fiction, must have some truth in order for there to be buy-in for the reader. Kendi elaborated on that final message.

“We must discern the difference between racist power (racist policymakers) and White people. For decades, racist power contributed to stagnating wages, destroying unions, deregulating banks and corporations, and steering funding for schools into prison and military budgets, polices that have often drawn a backlash from some White people.”

Some people here might be confused. Ironically in this case, the confused people are the smart ones, or at least the ones who can find intellectual dishonesty in the statement above. Set the politics and economic beliefs aside, and let’s assume the list of injustices he listed are all bad and truthful. Do these have anything to do with race or racism? Certainly not explicitly, and you would have to do some bad-faith assumptions to make an implicit connection. The argument from Kendi here is the disproportionate effects of these policies on non-whites, but to categorize these policies as racist broadens the definition too far and takes power away from the term. But he continues.

“Of course, ordinary White people benefit from racist polices, though not nearly as much as racist power and not nearly as much as they could from an equitable society, one where the average White voter could have as much power as superrich White men to decide elections and shape policy.”
“Where they could no longer face the cronies of racism that attack them: sexism, ethnocentrism, homophobia, and exploitation.”
“Racist power, hoarding wealth and resources, has the most to lose in the building of an equitable society.”

Kendi continues on message to declare every injustice and inequity as racist or a derivation of racism. This will only serve to hurt the real message of antiracism, but it will also serve to broaden out the scope of racism and allow him to sell future books on those topics. I would push back more on his clear ignorance of how public policy works or basic economics, but I’ve written about the basic misunderstandings of those issues many times and am not going to make this review longer than it has to be. This next section is where Kendi moves from ignorant to evil.

“White racists do not want to define racial hierarchy or polices that yield racial inequities as racist.”
“Beleaguered White racists who can’t imagine their lives not being the focus of any movement respond to ‘Black Lives Matter’ with ‘All Lives Matter.’ Embattled police officers who can’t imagine losing their right to racially profile and brutalize respond with ‘Blue Lives Matter’.”
“Ordinary White racists function as soldiers of racist power.”

To simplify pushback against overtly race-based terminology, like Black Lives Matter, with inclusive terminology, like All Lives Matter, as being racist because white people want to be included is pure stupidity and borderline evil. To simplify the phrase Blue Lives Matter as being a way to preserve racial profiling and police brutality is just plain evil. I take an opinion that is somewhat unpopular on the Right by saying I don’t think the term Black Lives Matter is racist at all because it doesn’t imply that other lives don’t matter, but the pushback is well deserved considering how awful BLM Inc. is. Kendi’s categorization of the ordinary white racist is meant to cover anyone who thinks affirmative action might be a bad thing, therefore, implies many rational and tolerant people are soldiers of racist power. This isn’t ignorance. This is an evil idea.

Thanks for reading my rant style review of the tenth 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.

Thanks for being a part of the Engineering Politics Locals Community!