“To be anti-racist is to view national and transnational ethnic groups as equals in all their differences. To be anti-racist is to challenge the racist policies that plague racialized ethnic groups across the world. To be anti-racist is to view the inequalities between all racialized ethnic groups as a problem of power and policy.”
~ Ibram X. Kendi, read aloud by Nick ~
Book In Review
After a few weeks off, Nick and Tara returned to Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist with Chapter 5, “Ethnicity.” Nick opened by reading Kendi’s two definitions. An ethnic racist idea is any notion that a racialized ethnic group is superior or inferior to another, or that justifies policies producing inequity between them. An ethnic antiracist idea holds that racialized ethnic groups are equals and supports policies that lead to equity between them. Nick also read Kendi’s paperback note explaining why he reframed “racism” as “racist ideas”: to keep the focus on how individuals challenge the structure. Tara grounded the chapter in its opening story, in which Kendi and his African American classmates mocked a student who had immigrated from Africa. The lesson she drew is that experiencing prejudice does not stop someone from reproducing it. Nick then read the page-67 passage tracing ethnic racism to the human trade itself: enslavers ranked African peoples by how “good” they were as slaves, prizing captives from the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) and ranking Angolans lowest. The classmates’ joke, Nick noted, repeated that slave-trader ladder.
The middle of the hour moved from Africa to American immigration law. Nick read Kendi’s rebuttal to the claim that African chiefs “sold their own people,” which Kendi calls anachronistic memory: West Africans of the 1600s and 1700s identified by ethnicity, not as one Black race, and saw the people they sold as foreign to them. Nick compared that flattening to the post–World War I partition of the Middle East, which drew borders without regard for existing tribal and ethnic groups. He then read Kendi’s history of exclusion: the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1917 Asiatic Barred Zone, the 1921 Emergency Quota Act, and the Immigration Act of 1924, which President Calvin Coolidge signed saying “America must be kept American.” Kendi carries that line forward to Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump, and Tara tied it to the present-day “go back where you came from” rhetoric aimed at Black officials. Nick read Kendi’s page-71 list of ranked ethnic groups — Anglo-Saxons over Irish Catholics and Jews, Cuban immigrants over Mexican immigrants, the “model minority” myth — and argued the same ranking is used to divide workers. He applied it to the minimum-wage debate, arguing an EMS worker should earn more instead of a fast-food worker earning less. Tara pointed to Harry Truman’s national health insurance plan, which she said was defeated by Southern Dixiecrats and the American Medical Association on racial grounds.
The closing segment turned on one word. Nick read Kendi’s note on why he now writes “equals” instead of “equal”: “equal” can suggest identical, which lays the foundation for assimilationist ideas, while “equals” means groups stand on the same level in all their cultural differences. Nick offered confetti, not a melting pot, as the image. Tara answered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s line that diversity is not our strength by arguing that unity is a shared commitment, not shared ancestry. With early voting underway and the midterms about a month out, the hosts closed by urging listeners to check their registration, make a plan, and bring a friend to vote. Next week the club moves to Chapter 6, “Body.”
Books Mentioned
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi — https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564299/how-to-be-an-antiracist-by-ibram-x-kendi/
Sources & References
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and Immigration Act of 1924 — U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian — https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act
Check your voter registration and early voting options — https://vote.gov
Veterans Fighting Fascism Anti-Fascist Book Club Guidebook (shown on screen via QR code) — https://veteransfightingfascism.org
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Thank you Courtney M 🇨🇦🏳️🌈, EG, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Devlin! Join me for my next live video in the app.
