Tough yet Easy
I met Ibram on October 5, 2017. Tamara Copeland, then president of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers, and I met him for lunch a few weeks after his arrival at American University. We wanted to learn more about this scholar coming into town talking about antiracism. A Center for Antiracism at that. On a predominantly white campus at that. Who has the audacity to do such a thing?
I went on to read his book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America with my colleagues Temi F. Bennett, Jaqueline Tucker, Elaine Thompson, and Tiffany Ward. We had been wanting to read it, but we were intimidated by its size—600 pages. When would we—five Black women on a racial justice mission in the Washington, DC area—find time?
We committed to meet over a meal once a month for five months to dissect each of the book’s five sections. We debated each other and Ibram (even though he wasn’t there!). Between us, we had probably read all the required books on race, yet there were so many new insights. It was especially heartbreaking to learn that W.E.B. Du Bois apologized on his death bed for not finishing the Encyclopedia Africana even after his relentless (and sometimes contradictory) efforts to make the case for how Black progress could happen in America. When I went to Ghana in 2019, I placed my hand on his tomb and simply whispered, “Thank you.”
Ibram’s recounting of how Black women’s bodies were brutalized in the name of gynecology, a field of study whose advances went on to improve white women’s lives, broke me open again. I had to put the book down for a few days. I needed time to recover.
After finishing Stamped from the Beginning, we moved on to How to Be an Antiracist and met up again. We debated whether Black people could really be racist as Ibram had asserted and looked forward to mixing it up with him at the 2020 if annual meeting, where he was set to be the keynote speaker. Then there was COVID and our signature event never happened.
In the meantime, Ibram moved to Boston University and relaunched his brainchild the Center for Antiracist Research. if, the organization I currently lead, and the Center began working together on a pilot project to rate housing policies in DC as either racist or antiracist. And in fall 2021, Ibram asked if I would consider applying for the role of executive director of the Center. I did and will begin my next chapter on April 1st.
Jara Dean-Coffey said it best when she reached out to congratulate me on my new role: “I can imagine this was a tough yet easy decision.” I had to sit with that. Yes, both can exist. It has been tough because I love if. I love the people and the work. I love the fact that we are building the world we deserve. And, when the pandemic hit, if partnered with Diverse City Fund and others to create Resourcing Radical Justice, a Black-centered funders collective and intentional space for deep relationship building, healing, political education and strategizing to transform philanthropy. It was and still is the salve we all needed.
This is more than a job. This is my community.
At the same time, I have been immensely proud of Ibram because of what he has been able to birth in the world. The liberation that I long for, when she arrives, will come as a result of many for sure. But, history will certainly point to this historian and his impact on the national dialogue and the systems change for which he fights. As such, I am honored to roll up my sleeves and join him and the team at the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. There is work to do.
Yes Jara, you were right. Tough yet easy.
Dr. Yanique Redwood
January 27, 2022