What is an antiracist?

The opposite of being racist isn’t “not racist”, it’s “antiracist”. There is no neutrality when it comes to racism. You endorse either racial hierarchy (as a racist) or racial equality (as an antiracist). By endorsing neither, you are masking and accepting the racist status quo.

The first step towards being antiracist is re-interpreting the word “racist” from a personal insult or slur to consistently defining it as a descriptor of anything that upholds any concepts of racial hierarchy.

Even White Supremacist Richard Spencer identifies as “not racist” because it has become synonymous with “bad” and no one admits to being that. Most can’t even admit to themselves anything negative about their own worldview - otherwise, they wouldn’t hold it.

Becoming antiracist also means viewing the reigns of power as either racist or antiracist. Policies that support or uphold racial inequity are racist policies. Policies that dismantle racism or strive for racial equity are antiracist policies. Again, there is no neutral.

Passivity or neutrality, when it comes to racism, becomes racism itself because “race” was specifically formulated by those in power to establish self-serving racial hierarchies. Those concepts became ingrained in policies. To go along with those policies is passive racism.

“Discrimination” must be reconsidered through an antiracist lens. The word has a bad connotation in conversations about race, but it can be used for antiracist purposes. Discrimination can used to create or sustain either equity or inequity.

Antiracism requires unlearning. Ibram Kendi himself admits to having racist beliefs which he had to unlearn, such as biological racism. This is the belief that 1) Races are biologically different 2) Certain biological differences create a hierarchy of value.

Biological antiracism is seeing race as mostly a social construct. It’s about recognizing that there is very little biological difference between races, and therefore that people are essentially equal.

“Reverse discrimination” ideas protect and advance White Nationalist ideas that antiracist policies (promoting racial equality) are discriminatory against white people and therefore must be stopped. These efforts towards “race-neutrality” are the biggest threat to antiracism.

#

So what’s the best step you can take right now? See racism as a result of racist policies and policymakers, and work to change them. Policies and laws are the primary agent of change that will help make the most tangible difference in achieving racial equality.