*** PRIZE ESSAY ***
A Critical Analysis of Antiracism Olivia Prevost
T
o understand the cultural resonance and the true message of Ibram Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist, we must examine closely his use and definition of the concept of race. Kendi defines race in a very particular way. Race, for Kendi, is “a power construct of collected or merged differences that lives socially.”1 He sees race not as a shared scientific or biological fact, but as a purely constructed sociological phenomenon. Race is not a physical aspect of Kendi’s anthropology; rather, it is completely determined by cultural and historical forces. Biological diversity is anthropologically meaningless, so there cannot exist any natural racial hierarchy. All physical differences are rooted in a common humanity that subsists despite racial categorizing. Race, as a sociological category, is created and preserved by power structures. Kendi traces the origins of the concept of race to the West African slave trade. Prince Henry the Navigator first began classifying the African people primarily in terms of race in order to demarcate them as a group worthy of enslavement. Race was then tied inextricably to racial hierarchy, with the people in power, the Spaniards, using the concept of race to dominate and dehumanize. Racism, then, is not something inherent to human nature, but is instead a relative phenomenon to the group that possesses political power. Kendi defines racism as “a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequalities.”2 Racism, for Kendi, is only possible when there is a power imbalance between two social groups. Members of any race can be racist against another race, or even members of their own race, as long as the discrimination affects the underprivileged race. Racism is not discriminating on the basis of race; it is discriminating against a weaker group of people on the basis of race. “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist 1 2
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist (New York: Penguin Random House, 2019), 38. Ibid., 18.
