The most apt title of any chapter in this book – we finally made it to the end and we survived. Kendi also gives his experience with struggle and survival in his own life. First, his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and survived. Then, he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and survived. I’m genuinely happy they both came out the other side of their bouts with cancer healthy, but what seemed off about his unfortunate run ins with cancer is how he tried to compare that experience with racism. He kept mentioning them both side-by-side, something he did with his chapters on gender and sexuality, but the way he did it here was truly cringeworthy. He even had a few lines where he noticed what he was doing: “We can survive metastatic racism. Forgive me. I cannot separate the two, and no longer try.” This awkward comparison made his family’s stories about beating cancer way less about winning the fight for life and way more about a desperate connection that links that fight with the useless, abstract ideas that come from critical race theory. Not only did he fail with this connection, in my opinion, but for all the people he is convincing with his narrative, the further we get from scientists and doctors focusing on creating cures and treatments for cancer, and the closer we get to evaluating science and medicine based on the approved skin color distribution of the people in those fields. When we move focus from efficiency and competence to racial equity, we change the metrics for success. Overall cancer survival rates can go down as long as there are enough doctors of the right skin color. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

“The source of racist ideas was not ignorance and hate, but self-interest.”
“The history of racist ideas is the history of powerful policymakers erecting racist policies out of self-interest, then producing racist ideas to defend and rationalize the inequitable effects of their policies, while everyday people consume those racist ideas, which in turn sparks ignorance and hate. Treating ignorance and hate and expecting racism to shrink suddenly seemed like treating a cancer patient’s symptoms and expecting the tumors to shrink. The body politic might feel better momentarily from the treatment – from trying to eradicate hate and ignorance – but as long as the underlying cause remains, the tumors grow, the symptoms return, and inequities spread like cancer cells, threatening the life of the body politic. Educational and moral suasion is not only a failed strategy. It is a suicidal strategy.”

Kendi tries to separate racist intentions and inequitable outcomes. He does this because he redefined racism as actions that result in inequitable outcomes among different racial groups. With this redefinition, he can now advocate for and implement policy that controls outcomes which is another reason why the antiracist movement is so closely linked to socialism and communism, but you making that connection means you are a racist because of your defense of a policy he does not approve of. Your defenses must be caused by self-interest instead of your principles or morals. I do not like discrimination laws in hiring because it is my right to discriminate even though someone losing out on a job opportunity because of their skin color upsets me. I would also never refuse to hire people of a different skin color than mine because I now have a smaller talent pool to select employees from. I refused discrimination, or antiracism, based on principle, and I adopted what can be considered antiracist beliefs based on my own self-interest. This is why we operate, or should operate, in a free market. We incentivize good behavior, but we should not demand it via policy because policy can just be reversed the same way it was passed. Moral policy depends on the morality of the policymakers and legislators who pass it.

Kendi says to treat the cancer and not the symptoms, but you do not fight colon cancer by forcing the patient to smoke 10 packs of cigarettes a day until he or she gets lung cancer. That is fighting cancer with cancer. That is fighting past discrimination with present discrimination.

“I did not need to forsake antiracist research and education. I needed to forsake my orientation to antiracist research and education. I had to forsake the suasionist bred into me, of researching and educating for the sake of changing minds. I had to start researching and educating to change policy. The former strategy produces a public scholar. The latter produces public scholarship.”

I too don’t like people who play with ideas in the abstract that have no application to the real world, and I think that is what Kendi is really talking about here. I hate Conservatives who talk about principles but then are too afraid to follow their own principles when it matters most. I imagine Kendi sees this with an older generation of radical professors who preached revolution from their ivory towers in prestigious universities, but Kendi does not understand the groundwork they laid for his own ascension today. He quotes a million names in his book that did exactly what he is saying was not radical enough. It is not that they were not radical, it was that they were playing the long game. Maybe the game was longer than they thought or hoped but look where we are now. It was not a failed strategy. What Kendi does not understand is policy does not change minds, and therefore, will not live long when policy is implemented. You must change minds first before you change policy if you want it to stick. It is another way of saying, “politics is downstream from culture,” as Andrew Breitbart brilliantly put it.

Kendi talks about how he founded and directed the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in 2017 with the following stated goals:

“They would investigate the racist policies causing racial inequity, innovate antiracist policy correctives, broadcast the research and policy correctives, and engage in campaigns of change that work with antiracist power in locales to institute and test those policy correctives before rolling them out nationally and internationally.”

Policies, at least in the American sense, are not supposed to regulate equity. I think this – more than slavery, imperialism, or any other injustice attributed to the United States – is the reason why critical theorists hate America. This is also why even though America did not start out as an equitable place for everyone, it has quickly become the number one exporter of freedom and equality in the world. There is certainly racial inequity today and some of that racial inequity is caused by bad policy, but more policy is rarely the right answer. Eliminating the policies of Jim Crow created equality and more equity. Implementing the policies of the Civil Rights era resulted in many necessary changes, but also helped reverse the trend towards racial equity by increasing welfare and state dependency. The War on Poverty was a corrective, as Kendi would call it. A corrective is just the state telling the people they are not competent enough to solve their own problems. Whenever someone tells you they have a corrective policy proposal, you should reject it as a general rule.

The previous chapter gave Kendi’s step-by-step process of antiracist indoctrination, and this chapter gives the step-by-step process to achieve antiracist utopia:

“Admit racial inequity is a problem of bad policy, not bad people. Identify racial inequity in all its intersections and manifestations.”

Right from the first step, Kendi disassociates bad behavior and bad outcomes, and then he asks all the disciples of antiracism to search for the racism in all disparities.

“Investigate and uncover the racist policies causing racial inequity.”

The second step is to investigate and uncover racist policies, meaning, find someone bad in history or a revised historical event to prove racism is alive and well today. This is what I call the “Ta-Nehisi Coates model.”

“Invent or find antiracist policy that can eliminate racial inequity.”

The third step is to invent or find antiracist policy, meaning, create a radical policy to control human behavior.

“Figure out who or what group has the power to institute antiracist policy.”

The fourth step is to figure out who or what group has power to push the policy and bully them into supporting that policy by calling them evil racists. This step is normally done at in the universities and large corporations who are willing to bend the knee to any social justice cause that will earn them woke capital.

“Disseminate and educate about the uncovered racist policy and antiracist policy correctives.”

The fifth step, and this might be the most critical step, use the education system, HR departments, and social justice groups to reeducate the public on how a policy, principle, idea, institution, or revised historical event was racist and how it can be corrected if power is distributed to the right people.

“Work with sympathetic antiracist policymakers to institute the antiracist policy.”

The sixth step is working with sympathetic policymakers, or what the woke crowd call allies.

“Deploy antiracist power to compel or drive from power the unsympathetic racist policymakers in order to institute the antiracist policy.”

The seventh step, and this one is a little on the nose, deploy antiracist power to compel or drive from power the unsympathetic racist policymakers. Openly character attack those who do not agree with you. Compel using bullying tactics until they submit, or they are driven out. Openly, in most cases, disavow violence while also stating any violence that does occur may never stop until the desired antiracist policy is passed.

“Monitor closely to ensure the antiracist policy reduces and eliminates racial inequity.”

The eighth step is to watch the policy help the communities you want lifted and hurt the communities you want crushed. This is the step where secondary goals might be tested like wealth redistribution to the right people, expand programs like government run healthcare and education, and the elimination of religion. The most important part about this step is it is meant to fail in its stated goal.

“When policies fail, do not blame the people. Start over and seek out new and more effective antiracist treatments until they work.”

The ninth step is the inevitable realization that the primary goal of racial equity is not being achieved so a complete restructuring of government will be required for more control over outcomes. If someone points out that new policies incentivize bad behavior, that someone will be accused of making a broad claim about race, then will be labeled as a racist, and will be sacrificed (figuratively or literally) as a way to show decent will not be tolerated. More effective antiracist treatments will be used with the increased power of the state.

“Monitor closely to prevent new racist policies from being instituted.”

The tenth and final step is to reimplement policies that achieve the secondary goals of complete state supremacy. The primary goal of racial equity may or may not be accomplished but will not be a priority since the original revolutionaries of the movement have already been purged by or during this step (jailed or killed). Utopia is achieved.

Well… this was an uplifting end to these chapter reviews. But this is not how the story of the United States of America must end. In fact, I’m confident we will never make it to the utopia described above. I’m confident that the founding principles of freedom, liberty, and faith in a higher power will eventually force this evil ideology back into the small groups on the fringes of society just like we did with white supremacy. I do not think the concept of freedom is a default setting in the human mind, but it is an intuitive goal embedded in those who were privileged enough to be born in America and is exported to those who follow American culture. Skin color is irrelevant here and we are not going to let it get between us forever.

I say it again – I’m confident we will beat this ideology, but it will not come from sitting on our hands and being silent. It will not come from sitting quietly in our corporate meeting rooms listening to antiracist training. It will not come from being too scared to raise our hands in the classroom and voice our opinions. We must voice our opinions. We must raise our hands. We must stand up.

“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” -William F. Buckley Jr.

Thanks for reading my rant style review of the eighteenth 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. This chapter is the final review. I plan to write a final piece summarizing all my reviews. Please leave a comment with your thoughts.

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