How to be an Antiracist

"The opposite of 'racist' isn't 'not racist.' It is antiracist."
https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist-1
- Ibram X. Kendi
I will be including my notes and thoughts from reading this book. In my personal notes I've jotted down many of the definitions, concepts, and context, but that will not be made available here. I do not want to regurgitate material, because I think digesting it here would detract from the message. I hope that if anything is gotten from this page, it sparks you to read the book and continue on your own journey of learning and evolving. 
"It is descriptive, and the only way to undo racism, is to consistently identify and describe it, and then dismantle it."  
"Definitions anchor us in principles."
Protest - organizing people for a prolonged campaign that forces racist power to change policy
Demonstration - mobilizing people momentarily to publicize a problem 
“Making individuals responsible for the perceived behavior of racial groups and making whole racial groups responsible for the behavior of individuals are the two ways that behavioral racism affects our perception of the world.”
The following information I think is incredibly helpful when the following topic is brought up: “support black business.” I think we can agree that putting up monetary support is certainly good, but Kendi goes on to highlight the benefits that come from doing so: increase in employment, reduction in black youth violence, decrease in robbery, auto theft, larceny, and violent crime arrests. The strong correlation lies between unemployment and violent crimes, not race. 
“Intellect is the lynchpin of behavior. And the racist idea of the achievement gap is the lynchpin of behavioral racism.” 
“As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free” 
"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it."
- Carter G. Woodson
"To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism." 
"The idea of the dangerous black neighborhood is the most dangerous racist idea."
"Black men, raised in the top 1% by millionaires, are as likely to be incarcerated as white men raised in households earning $36,000."
Likelihood of incarceration for black men: 
6x more likely than white men 
25x more than black women
50x more than white women
“We convince ourselves we’re doing something to solve the racial problem, when we are really doing something to satisfy our feelings. We go home fulfilled like we dined at our favorite restaurant, and this fulfillment is fleeting…. What if instead of a feelings advocacy, we had an outcomes advocacy?”
Race, Power, and Policy: Dismantling Structural Racism
Racialization - "is the process by which racial understandings are formed, re-formed and assigned to groups of people and to social institutions and practices, and to the consequences of such understandings."
In addition to digesting deliberately antiracist material, I have in addition been going thru some free Open Yale courses. The one below is from a course recorded in 2011, but the concepts are quite relevant today. If you find this at all thought provoking, this entire course is full of powerful and relevant material. 

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