A Sense of Doubt blog post #2290 - WHAT I AM READING: How to be an Anti-Racist

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2290 - WHAT I AM READING: How to be an Antiracist

I am going to do this new thing in which I write at least once weekly about what I am reading. I even made a WHAT I AM READING category.

I am also going to try to keep these posts focused, short, and quick both so you can digest them, and I can write them at least weekly.

Though I have several books going, my main two right now are my audio book How To Be Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow.

This post will be about the former.

I bought Kendi's book last year before the pandemic really began in earnest let alone the George Floyd murder took place. It has been on my to read stack that long, but that's normal. The to read stacks and shelves fluctuate a lot, as seen here:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2269 - REVENGE OF THE FIFTH: You Do Not Have To Feel Guilty About The Books You Haven't Read Yet

Though you will not see Kendi's book in those pictures because it has been in a special stack ON TOP of the book shelf. BTW, the "to read" shelves are not the first pictures in the blog post. Scroll down.

So, once I finished listening to Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor, I started How To Be Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. I had intended to listen to Kendi's book once I finished The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris, but the Kendi book would not play on my iPod, and I was on a walk with the dogs and so I started Akata Witch instead because that one had been in my queue for some time.

I started How To Be Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi on May 22. I am currently on page 36 of chapter three.

Though I understood the concept of being "antiracist" before reading, I knew the book would expand and enrichen my understanding.

As Kendi writes on page 23, "To be antiracist is a radical choice in the face of this history, requiring reorientation of our consciousness."

The history of which he writes is the ways racist ideologies, policies, and thinking are baked into the culture of America. This is in many ways the central idea of CRITICAL RACE THEORY and even more so of the 1619 Project.

As Kendi's shares via Audre Lorde (from 1980!) on that same page to detail what he means by "this history": "We have all been programmed to respond to human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that's not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals."

The radical shift of consciousness is the way in which we may new patterns of behavior to relate to each other as equals and to forge a society with policies that are designed for and applied to this equal relationship.

Because right now, policies and the very structures of our society are not equal. The data to prove this inequality is clear to anyone with eyes and ears and no self-interest in denial.

Start with Kendi reporting at that white people live 3.5 additional years over people of color, especially black people. Infants death rates are double for black babies over white babies.

African Americans are 25% more likely to die of cancer. 

Because of the efforts of Barack Obama and his administration, millions of people of color secured health insurance due to the Affordable Care Act. However, when Congress repealed the individual mandate in 2017, 28.5 million Americans -- the majority of them people of color -- were uninsured. I was actually one of them for a time in 2018 and 2019.

In addition to health care inequity, there are criminal justice inequities (more on that next time) and voter suppression efforts.

So blatant and targeting of black voters were laws in North Carolina that a 2016 Court of Appeals struck them down.

Unfortunately, such fair-minded thinking does not happen everywhere.

In Wisconsin, strict voter-ID laws suppressed two hundred thousand votes primarily of people of color prior to the 2016 presidential election. "Donald Trump "won" that critical swing state by 22,748 votes" (Kendi, 22).

Rigged.

Fraud.

Stolen.

All the things the crybaby former "president" is whining about today. Because his cronies and Russia rigged it in 2016 and he narrowly "won" and took office without winning the popular vote (is that the first time in history? or at least since 1900?), but the fix didn't work in 2020.

As Kendi shares, " a racist is someone who is supporting a racist policy by their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea. An antiracist is someone who is supporting an antiracist policy by their actions or expressing an antiracist idea" (Kendi, 22).

I know which I wish to be.

Which do you wish to be?

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2105.26 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2154 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.