This is a real short chapter and it’s about damn time. Really, none of these chapters are more than 15 pages or so, but have you ever stood in an elevator and watched the numbers light up as you ascend or descend to different floors? Conversely, have you ever got in an elevator as you were about to start writing a text and it is a race to finish and send the text before you get to the floor you’re getting off on? The former feels like you are in the elevator for hours waiting to get to your floor, and the latter feels like you’re writing a novel as a text, no matter how short the actual text is, and the door is opening to your floor about 0.5 seconds after getting on to the elevator not giving you enough time to complete your text to the point you almost missed getting off on your floor before the doors closed because you had to finish typing on your phone. This is a long way of saying watching the page numbers go by while reading this book makes an 8-page chapter feel like you’re reading War and Peace (in terms of length, not quality). At this point, it is hard not to focus on page progress over absorbing this awful content. What makes it worse is this chapter is about sexuality which gets super weird. Normally I don’t mind getting weird, but this isn’t the fun kind of weird. Kendi starts out the chapter by defining Queer Racism and Queer Antiracism.

“QUEER RACISM: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between race-sexualities and are substantiated by racist ideas about race-sexualities.
QUEER ANTIRACISM: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between race-sexualities and are substantiated by antiracist ideas about race-sexualities.”

Getting weird already. This is another example, like the previous chapter about gender, that injects race into something that doesn’t need it. There is such a thing as homophobia and it is very real, but critical race theorists can’t resist piggybacking off the oppression of other groups so they must attempt to join forces to make an Oppression Avengers (or judging by the quality of this alliance, maybe an Oppression Justice League makes more sense…. Oppression Suicide Squad…. okay, I’m done). Kendi uses the same oppressive policy arguments he did for gender racism.

“Racist (and homophobic) power distinguishes race-sexualities, racial (or sexuality) groups at the intersection of race and sexuality.”
“Homophobia cannot be separated from racism. They’ve intersected for ages.”

The later chapters in this book rely heavily on intersectionality to build a larger oppression narrative. Kendi then uses quotes from the late 19th century to validate his claims of today.

Kendi then talks about his experience at Temple University with a friend he did not know was gay until another friend told him. He used this opportunity to examine his own ideas about how gay men act and present themselves: as more feminine men who act in a way you can tell they are gay. Kendi’s new friend did not act this way, as he presented as more masculine, which threw off Kendi’s “gaydar” (his words). Kendi sums up his preconceived notions about black gay men by stating, “I thought about Black gay men running around having unprotected sex all the time.” Yes…. that statement threw me for a loop as well, but he used it as a way to say “Black gay men are less likely to have condomless sex than White gay men.” I guess this was a way for Kendi to say black gay men are more responsible than white gay men. Maybe on average this is so, but it is a weird way to make the point that Kendi considered his thoughts to be homophobic and, therefore, make a larger point on the internalized homophobia of an un-woke generation. This is a common theme among the critical theory types. They use a personal story of how they once thought the wrong thoughts but then corrected themselves as a way to say society has a problem for allowing him to think the wrong thoughts in the first place. Kendi experienced things he has not experienced before, had mixed feelings about that experience, and then corrected himself. This is called life. This happens to all of us and doesn’t mean society or a veil of homophobia is to blame. Admit you were wrong and move on.

“I am a cisgendered Black heterosexual male – “cisgender” meaning my gender identity corresponds to my birth sex, in contrast to transgender people, whose gender identity does not correspond to their birth sex. To be queer antiracist is to understand the privileges of my cisgender, of my masculinity, of my heterosexuality, of their intersections. To be queer antiracist is to serve as an ally to transgender people, to intersex people, to women, to the non-gender-conforming, to homosexuals, to their intersections, meaning listening, learning, and being led by their equalizing ideas, by their equalizing policy campaigns, by their power struggle for equal opportunity. To be queer antiracist is to see that policies protecting Black transgender women are as critically important as policies protecting the political ascendancy of queer White males. To be queer antiracist is to see the new wave of both religious-freedom laws and voter-ID laws in Republican states as taking away the rights of queer people. To be queer antiracist is to see homophobia, racism, and queer racism – not the queer person, not the queer space – as the problem, as abnormal, as unnatural.”

This pile of word salad is only useful in highlighting the profound insanity of critical theory and intersectionality. Dr. Jordan Peterson summarized it best, and I’ll paraphrase: These infinite intersections and identities become so unique that it splits every person into an individual with their own unique identity. This creates individuals, not groups, that the typical conservative and classical liberal stands up for. Using their own logic, we should all be on the same page, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Calling out religious freedom by name only serves in illuminating what really drives this movement: politics. This dishonest derivative of Marxist class struggle only separates us in order for the ideology to thrive. This ideology feeds on disorder and chaos.

Kendi finishes the chapter by referring to a few radical black feminists who go out and attack anyone who doesn’t conform to their rigid ideology. Kendi literally uses the word “attack” to describe what these oppression fighters do. Kendi writes, “I call them attacks, but in truth they were defenses, defending Black womanhood and the humanity of queer Blacks.” Sometimes the best defense is offense, so I get it, but when on the attack in an intellectual bout, we must agree to be substantive and not just attack character. This isn’t a rule critical theory agrees to. In fact, violating this rule is vital when defending the ideology. As Kendi continues to say, “But I call them attacks because I felt personally attacked.” There is, agree with me or you’re evil and racist. Submit to my ideas or face my wrath. This is how you get cancel culture. This is how you destroy civilizations.

Thanks for reading my rant style review of the fifteenth 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!