Ibram X. Kendi on the Importance of Being Antiracist
Introduction
In the Fall of 2021 and Winter of 2022, the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research (“the Center”) brought together thirty-five scholars and advocates for an Antibigotry Convening (“the Convening”) that examined fifteen identified categories of bigotry: ableism, ageism, anti-Asian/Asian American racism, anti-Black racism and colorism, anti-fat bigotry, anti-Indigenous bigotry, anti- Latinx racism, anti-Pacific Islander bigotry, antisemitism, classism, heterosexism and transphobia, Islamophobia, linguicism, religious intolerance, and sexism. Together with this group of “Antibigotry Fellows,” we sought to examine bigotry in the United States from multidimensional, intersectional, and interdisciplinary perspectives.
Examining Structural Bigotry and Moving Toward Antibigotry (Caitlin Glass, Jasmine Gonzales Rose, Neda Khoshkhoo, Rachael DeCruz, and Selma Hedlund)
We are at a critical moment in U.S. history. As we witness a growing number of laws prohibiting teachers from talking about certain experiences of bigotry, we also see a slew of coordinated physical, verbal, and legislative attacks on communities historically targeted by bigotry. While bigotry manifests in different ways across time, geography, and particular categories, collectively these manifestations consolidate power in insiders. Through this Antibigotry Convening Project, we have endeavored to identify common harms across categories of bigotry, which may indicate potential points of unity for an antibigotry concept and movement.
Ableism (Rabia Belt)
What is ableism? According to the dictionary, it is “discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities.” Yet this definition confounds as much as it explains. What is discrimination or prejudice? What is a disability? Scholars and activists who study and challenge ableism recognize that though disability, how it is defined, and who is captured by the term varies in time and place, the through line is about the meaning made of bodily difference. And that some bodily differences – and some people – are valued as less than others.
Ageism (Ryan Backer and E-Shien (Iggy) Chang)
Ageism is one of the most invisible and yet pervasive forms of bigotry. We define ageism as the systematic stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination against individuals based on their age. Bigotry, in the context of ageism, is the manifestation of a collective ill-will directed at less-privileged groups which systemically manipulates, degrades, and denies the dignity and autonomy of individuals within those groups in order to maintain perpetual dominance over them. There are three key manifestations of ageism as a persistent form of bigotry: cognitive (stereotypes), affective (prejudice), and behavioral (discrimination).
Anti-Asian American Racism (Paul Y. Watanabe and Sungkwan E. J. Jang)
Asian Americans have suffered from racism ever since arriving in the United States over 200 years ago, including through harassment, violence, and discrimination. Racism is perpetrated by individual actors, businesses, and institutions, as well as public policies and government actions on the local, state, and federal levels. Racism targeting those of Asian descent draws from other forms of bigotry, such as xenophobia, nativism, linguicism, fetishization, and objectification. Anti-Asian American racism is not only borne of, but also perpetuated by the “mutual reinforcement” between public policy and cultural ideas.
Anti-Blackness/Colorism (Janvieve Williams Comrie, Antoinette M. Landor, Kwyn Townsend Riley, and Jason D. Williamson)
Anti-Blackness is defined as the beliefs, attitudes, actions, practices, and behaviors of individuals and institutions that devalue, minimize, and marginalize the full participation of Black people —visibly (or perceived to be) of African descent. It is the systematic denial of Black humanity and dignity, which makes Black people effectively ineligible for full citizenship. The Anti-Blackness paradigm positions Blackness as inherently problematic, rather than recognizing the long, rich, and diverse history of Black people throughout the African diaspora, and acknowledging that Black communities across the United States (and the world) have been severely disadvantaged as a result of historical and contemporary systemic racism.
Anti-Fat Bigotry (Joy Cox and Amy Erdman Farrell)
Anti-fat bigotry is a deeply embedded form of bigotry that spans centuries of Western history. Rooted in the histories of 18th and 19th century race science and concepts of “civilization,” anti-fat bigotry today often hides behind a cloak of “health concern” that works to legitimize processes of discrimination and oppression of fat people. While everyone feels the effects of anti-fat bigotry, larger-bodied women, people of color, and poor people particularly bear the brunt of its negative consequences, which work in tandem with many other forms of oppression. The ill-effects of anti-fat bigotry get played out in every arena of life: health care, housing, education, business, and interpersonal and family relationships. Today, anti-fat bigotry is kept in deep-seated and often invisible anti-fat ideology that works in tandem with a diet and weight loss industry that tops almost $80 billion a year in the United States.
Anti-Indigenous Bigotry (Judy A. Dow)
Bigotry has been a part of Indigenous People’s lives since the arrival of Europeans. Here in Northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine the story is slightly different than much of Northeastern America because our first interaction was with the people trying to establish New France (Canada). First meetings began with the Norse about 900 BP (some say even earlier). In America for the most part, we are talking about contacts being a little over 400 years ago. The tactics used to steal the land were not necessarily the same as those used in America, but the purpose and results were the same: theft of land, and slow elimination of Indigenous People by assimilation or marriage.
Anti-Indigenous Bigotry (Kyle T. Mays)
In the 1820s, French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville traveled throughout the young United States documenting how democracy functioned in this new society. Traveling from the Northeast to the Deep South, this deep ethnography of a nation-state and the meaning of democracy would be published in the now important, Democracy in America (1835). While historians and political theorists repeatedly cite the many pages in which he discusses political theory, they often ignore the importance of the chapter on the three races; that is, how Tocqueville believed Black, Indigenous, and white Americans would live collectively on this land. He didn’t think that it was possible long-term. Tocqueville concluded that Black people would forever be oppressed and Indigenous peoples would ultimately disappear because white Americans deemed both of these groups as inferior. Unfortunately, the ongoing discourse of Indigenous peoples’ inevitable disappearance remains a core feature of American life.