The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 24 August 2023
by Ibram X. Kendi
It's a fact of life that racism is present in the United States today, and that there is a fundamental role racism has played throughout American history. That's just the truth, despite the vast number of people who wish to either deny it or bury it, feeling for one reason or another threatened by that truth and/or denying that racism is really any big deal today. Hey, we elected a Black president, didn't we? Watch out for anyone who starts a comment with "I'm no racist, but..." It's a dead giveaway that a racist comment is about to follow. Even the most woke among us need to look closely at our prejudices, check our privileges, break the cycle of racist behavior. It's a tough thing to admit to oneself. Maybe it doesn't matter to you. But anti-racism begins at home.
Ibram X. Kendi, who is director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research (Martin Luther King attended BU in 1951, and this reader attended BU in 1983), brings us this compellingly-written, translucent and deeply-felt book that sounds like a guide to readers to start becoming anti-racist. That's because it is. At moments it feels like a self-help book, but through personal stories and repetition, he makes a compelling argument in favor of anti-racist policies and personal awareness, stuff that is different enough from the standard "solutions" that maybe it could make some real difference in our broken world. The book was well received and popular when published. It garnered some criticism for being possibly too simplistic in Kendi's response to institutional racism. This reader found that simplicity to be one of the book's appeals. While we don't agree that the arguments are simplistic, Kendi's clear writing, direct approach, and avoidance of wandering into the weeds of the more subtle (and often disturbing) aspects of our racial history, made the book just that much more accessible. Given the sharply riven nature of our so-called debate on American (and global!) racial history and present-day reality, a direct and clear declaration is perhaps necessary.
The tale is also deeply personal. Kendi reveals some of his struggles with his own racist tendencies, having bought into the centuries-old narrative that underlies so much of human civilization, and having done so without really knowing this was happening. In the end, Kendi describes, accurately, racism as a cancer that needs relentless attention to eventually root it out of our presumptions and our fundamental social structures. And that cancerous note becomes intensely personal in his turn toward a hopeful outlook. What choice does he have? Things kind of suck in our world, but it is only some semblance of hope that moves us forward.