I am hoping that more and more of us will read How To Be an Antiracist and/or read the other work of Ibram X. Kendi. May we passionately seek to increasingly and authentically be an antiracist. — Molly
In the 13 months since his “How to Be an Antiracist” was published — and even more intensely so in the three months since it became a hard-to-find book in the wake of George Floyd’s death — historian Ibram X. Kendi has focused his public-speaking opportunities on an obvious topic: how to be an antiracist.
But during an hour-long virtual conversation with Davidson College president Carol Quillen and a few handpicked students Tuesday night, the often-stoic 38-year-old director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University seemed to come alive most when asked about the importance of voting.
Responding to the question from Davidson senior Joe DeMartin (president of the college’s “Davidson Votes” initiative), Kendi started calmly, by saying every American should vote. He acknowledged that there were both young people and older people who were apathetic about politics.
And then he eviscerated those people.
“I don’t think people realize ... that politics is another word for power,” Kendi said. “So when you say ... ‘I don’t do politics,’ it’s equivalent to saying, ‘I don’t do power. No, I don’t want to vote. I don’t want that power.’ ”
Though he didn’t mention President Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden by name, his message — delivered to nearly 1,500 Davidson students, faculty and staff and roughly 4,500 alumni, parents and community partners who had signed in to Zoom to watch the chat — was clear and urgent.
“To say that ‘I don’t want power,’ or ‘I don’t do power,’ is to say, what? ‘I’m a slave. You know what? Please dominate me. Please pass policies that are gonna harm my life. I don’t need to be at the table... I don’t care about myself. I don’t care about my loved ones. I’m a slave. Just treat me as one.’”
HOW TO BUILD AN ANTIRACIST CURRICULUM
Kendi, who holds claim to being the youngest-ever winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction (in 2016, for “Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America”), was invited by Davidson College for its Reynolds Lecture. The event annually brings a distinguished guest from the humanities, arts, or sciences to campus.
In normal times, the lecture is held on campus in an auditorium that can hold less than 700 people, but this year’s installment was done virtually due to the pandemic. This allowed Davidson to accommodate the “crowd” of approximately 6,000, easily the largest audience for a Reynolds Lecture since the event was founded in 1959.
Parts of the conversation were highly relevant to many of those in attendance.
For instance, Quillen read a question from one faculty member (who noted that the college recently published a report by its Commission on Race and Slavery, stating that antiracism training and reform is a desired outcome) asking how antiracism might be incorporated across the curriculum at Davidson “in an all-pervasive way.”
“For the most part,” said Kendi, “curriculums are based on literature — scholarly literature. And scholarly literature is typically based in research questions that then lead to answers, that then lead to that literature.
“So to me, at the core of antiracist scholarly questions, or at the core of antiracist research, is asking what’s wrong with systems? What’s wrong with structures? What’s wrong with policies? What’s wrong with power? ...
“If we’re asking questions about systems and policies and power, and that is then leading to the literature, that’s then leading to not only the books that we’re offering, but even the questions we’re asking students — even the ways in which we’re framing assignments that we’re offering to students, even the way we’re framing our syllabi. That’s going, to me, lead to a much more antiracist curriculum.”
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