Steps We Can All Take to Eliminate Racial Inequity

I’m meeting today with one of the White Awake discussion groups I’ve been leading and we’ll be talking about How to be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi (which I highly recommend — along with his previous book Stamped from the Beginning: the Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.)

Of his research into the history of racism Kendi writes, “Over time, the source of racist ideas became obvious, but I had trouble acknowledging it. The source did not fit my conception of racism, my racial ideology, my racial identity. I became a college professor to educate away racist ideas, seeing ignorance as the source of racist ideas, seeing racist ideas as the source of racist policies, seeing mental change as the principal solution, seeing myself, an educator, as the primary solver…

“My research kept pointing me to the same answer: 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…

“Racist policies,” Kendi writes, “lead to racist ideas, not the other way around, as we have commonly thought. We must eliminate racist policies if we ever hope to eliminate racist ideas.”

To that end, Kendi has founded the Antiracist Research and Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where he envisions bringing together teams of scholars, policy experts, journalists, and advocates to focus on the most critical and seemingly intractable racial inequities.

He writes, “These teams would model some of the steps we can all take to eliminate racial inequity in our spaces:

• Admit racial inequity is a problem of bad policy, not bad people.
• Identify racial inequity in all its intersections and manifestations.
• Investigate and uncover the racist policies causing racial inequity.
• Invent or find antiracist policy that can eliminate racial inequity.
• Figure out who or what groups has the power to institute antiracist policy.
• Disseminate and educate about the uncovered racist policy and antiracist policy correctives.
• Work with sympathetic antiracist policymakers to institute the antiracist policy.
• Deploy antiracist power to compel or drive from power the unsympathetic racist policymakers in order to institute the antiracist policy.
• Monitor closely to ensure the antiracist policy reduces and eliminates racial inequity.
• When policies fail, do not blame the people. Start over and seek out new and more effective antiracist treatments until they work.
• Monitor closely to prevent new racist policies from being instituted.