Chapter: 6 BODY

Date: Sept. 2, 2021

 

            The book jacket includes a quotation that permeates Kendi’s, How to be an Antiracist (2019): It reads, “The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it - and then dismantle it.” While this quotation seems simple and straightforward enough, Kendi consistently describes in detail the ways that systemic racism has infiltrated all aspects of our lives and culture, therefore living within us even when we are relatively unaware of our own racist views/experiences. As he posits, it is impossible to address that which we are unaware of.  In Kendi’s chapter 6, entitled Body, he offers a comprehensive timeline that illustrates the ways in which language, social constructs, leaders, and our media messages, over decades, have fed the conceptualization of fearing Black bodies. His conclusion is one that I share; that the social context of individuals, groups of individuals, and more importantly the socioeconomics, are what we should fear: Poverty leads to desperation and violence, not a genotypical or phenotypical composition.   Additional takeaways from Kendi’s chapter on bodily racism/antiracism include the need to quickly grow our social consciousness, ceasing to uphold racist policies camouflaging as ‘not racist,’ and challenging individuals and politicians alike to identify internalized racism, by identifying existing prejudices that remain firm, despite the existence of contradictory data.

Kendi (2019) articulates the differences between bodily racism, “Perceiving certain racialized bodies as animal-like” (p. 69), and bodily antiracism as, “Humanizing, deracializing and individualizing nonviolent and violent behaviors” (p. 69).   He outlines that each position is exemplified by media messages, certain types of policies and social practices, specifically propagated information, and both attitudes can systematically serve to feed the frenzy in one pole or the other.  Kendi offers clarifying examples of when antiracism looks and sounds radically different from being ‘not racist.’  Lastly, he cautions against taking the actions of individuals and generalizing these behaviors to entire populations. 

Kendi illustrates how descriptive and metaphoric messaging over time has served to perpetuate ongoing fears about Black bodies.  He offers a progression from Blacks being described as “devilish” as early as 1631, to “ruthless creatures” in 1861, to “wild beasts” in 1903, and even “super predators with an unprecedented inclination to violence” in 1995 (Kendi, 2019, p. 75).  These depictions of Black bodies have been offered by clergy, politicians, Ivy League researchers, and various social group leaders. Kendi elaborates that continuing to describe an entire race using these phrases and depictions serves to justify the actions of lynching, deportation, incarceration, and segregation of thousands, even millions, throughout past centuries (p. 71). Kendi (2019) explains that contrasting bodily antiracism underscores the data illuminating socioeconomic status as a root cause of violence, not a particular race, in overcrowded, under-resourced, urban areas (p. 79).  Kendi presents the additional research findings of sociologist, Karen Parker, who highlights a decrease in violence within Black youth from 1990 and 2000, who are affiliated/employed by the increasing numbers of Black-owned businesses from that era (p. 79). Kendi points out in recent years, the University of Chicago Crime Lab found a 43 percent reduction in violent-crime arrests for Black youths who worked 8-week-long, part-time, summer jobs, compared to the violence observed in a mixed control group of teens who did not have access to regular employment (p. 79). 

Kendi describes how adept politicians and crime entrepreneurs manufacture fear and then profess to deliver messiahs who will liberate the rest from fear of [other] violent bodies (p. 76).   For decades the tactics (in policy and practice) for reducing violent crimes in America have included segregation, mass incarceration, and assimilation (Kendi, p. 80).  Politicians urge us to view Black neighborhoods as ‘war zones’ and call for ‘tougher policing’ in these areas to prohibit injuries and ongoing harms (p. 80).  Yet, the data suggests that unarmed Black bodies are killed at nearly twice the rate of their unarmed White counterparts, by fearing police offers (p. 73).  Kendi describes, “We are unarmed, but we know that Blackness arms us even though we have no guns.  Whiteness disarms the cops” (p. 73) and in an instant, it becomes the job of Black bodies to emotionally disarm the fearing police officers they encounter, rather than Black individuals feeling protection, commonly associated with increased police presence for White counterparts.

  Kendi argues that antiracists say, “Black people, like all people, need more higher-paying jobs within their reach, especially Black youngsters” (p. 80) to reduce the roots of societal problems: “Black bodies have the highest rates of unemployment of any demographic group, topping 50% in the mid-1990s” (p. 80).  Kendi points out that U.S. Presidents, like Bill Clinton (1995), tell Blacks that they, “need to be patient and understand the roots of White fear in America (1995), on the same day as the Million Man March” (Kendi, p. 70)!  Americans perceiving the faces of violence in America as Black faces is socially constructed, offered by the media. Even President Clinton acknowledged this is “at least” what people see on the news at night (p. 80) but he does nothing to debunk the overall sense of fearing Black bodies.  Rather, as in other similar instances, he and others ask Black individuals to make more allowances of White fear and be more tolerant of racist ideas.  Kendi explains that his parents taught him from early ages (as young as 8 years old, p. 71,) to fear his own kind, suggesting he be educated in more reputable school settings, with fewer Black individuals or minorities, and also requiring that he practice basketball in his own expensively made backyard court, rather than in the city parks with his Black peers.  

A touching tribute to the honesty of his work is illustrated each time Kendi recites his own stories and examples of internalized racism.  He wants us to grasp how living within an assigned social role or group does not exempt one from prejudice against one’s own kind.  In chapter six, Kendi narrates a memory of when he was riding the city bus as a teenager.  An acquaintance he refers to as “Smurf” (due to the bluish pigmentation of his blackened skin) is actively bullying another marginalized individual, sitting in the back of the bus.  Kendi woefully recounts how he wants to intercede, interrupt, or advocate for the affected person, however, he fails to do so because he is afraid for his own safety (p. 77).  Kendi reflects, “the responsibility of keeping myself safe followed me like stray dogs in my neighborhood, barking fear into my consciousness” (p. 77) and he humbly repents, “I did nothing” (p.77).  Kendi elaborates, “Fear defined me - I feared all darkness, up to and including my own Black body” (p. 77).  Kendi explains, “More than the times I risked jail, I am still haunted by the times I did not help the victims of violence.  My refusal to help them jailed me in fear. I feared Black bodies as much as the White body feared me. I could not muster the strength to do right” (p.73).  He astutely clarifies, “I believed violence was stalking me - but in truth, I was being stalked inside my own head by racist ideas” (p. 72). 

In his book, Kendi (2019) does an exquisite job of articulating how even unwittingly, we have come to live in fear of Black bodies.  Using numerous examples, he articulates how systemic bodily racism pervades our culture today, even our policies that are intending to reduce racist ideas are actually serving to strengthen racist attitudes and perpetuate the wrong fears.  We should not be afraid of black bodies, rather we should despise poverty and the trauma associated with living so marginally. We need to re-examine what our political agendas really are and begin tackling the socioeconomic injustices if we are going to become humans supporting bodily antiracism.  Humbly offering his remorse about his own lived experiences, Kendi urges us to expeditiously take hard, honest looks at our own systematically internalized racism and identify our own prejudices so we can begin to dismantle these paradigms.  Over and over, Kendi demonstrates how often we attempt to assume a “not racist” position, while inadvertently supporting racist policies, leaders, and ideas.    

 

(APA format) Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an Antiracist.  One World: New York.

 

(MLA format) Kendi, Ibram. How to be an Antiracist. One world, 2019. 

 

 

 

  

Chapter: 6 BODY

Date: Sept. 2, 2021

 

            The book jacket includes a quotation that permeates Kendi’s, How to be an Antiracist (2019): It reads, “The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it - and then dismantle it.” While this quotation seems simple and straightforward enough, Kendi consistently describes in detail the ways that systemic racism has infiltrated all aspects of our lives and culture, therefore living within us even when we are relatively unaware of our own racist views/experiences. As he posits, it is impossible to address that which we are unaware of.  In Kendi’s chapter 6, entitled Body, he offers a comprehensive timeline that illustrates the ways in which language, social constructs, leaders, and our media messages, over decades, have fed the conceptualization of fearing Black bodies. His conclusion is one that I share; that the social context of individuals, groups of individuals, and more importantly the socioeconomics, are what we should fear: Poverty leads to desperation and violence, not a genotypical or phenotypical composition.   Additional takeaways from Kendi’s chapter on bodily racism/antiracism include the need to quickly grow our social consciousness, ceasing to uphold racist policies camouflaging as ‘not racist,’ and challenging individuals and politicians alike to identify internalized racism, by identifying existing prejudices that remain firm, despite the existence of contradictory data.

Kendi (2019) articulates the differences between bodily racism, “Perceiving certain racialized bodies as animal-like” (p. 69), and bodily antiracism as, “Humanizing, deracializing and individualizing nonviolent and violent behaviors” (p. 69).   He outlines that each position is exemplified by media messages, certain types of policies and social practices, specifically propagated information, and both attitudes can systematically serve to feed the frenzy in one pole or the other.  Kendi offers clarifying examples of when antiracism looks and sounds radically different from being ‘not racist.’  Lastly, he cautions against taking the actions of individuals and generalizing these behaviors to entire populations. 

Kendi illustrates how descriptive and metaphoric messaging over time has served to perpetuate ongoing fears about Black bodies.  He offers a progression from Blacks being described as “devilish” as early as 1631, to “ruthless creatures” in 1861, to “wild beasts” in 1903, and even “super predators with an unprecedented inclination to violence” in 1995 (Kendi, 2019, p. 75).  These depictions of Black bodies have been offered by clergy, politicians, Ivy League researchers, and various social group leaders. Kendi elaborates that continuing to describe an entire race using these phrases and depictions serves to justify the actions of lynching, deportation, incarceration, and segregation of thousands, even millions, throughout past centuries (p. 71). Kendi (2019) explains that contrasting bodily antiracism underscores the data illuminating socioeconomic status as a root cause of violence, not a particular race, in overcrowded, under-resourced, urban areas (p. 79).  Kendi presents the additional research findings of sociologist, Karen Parker, who highlights a decrease in violence within Black youth from 1990 and 2000, who are affiliated/employed by the increasing numbers of Black-owned businesses from that era (p. 79). Kendi points out in recent years, the University of Chicago Crime Lab found a 43 percent reduction in violent-crime arrests for Black youths who worked 8-week-long, part-time, summer jobs, compared to the violence observed in a mixed control group of teens who did not have access to regular employment (p. 79). 

Kendi describes how adept politicians and crime entrepreneurs manufacture fear and then profess to deliver messiahs who will liberate the rest from fear of [other] violent bodies (p. 76).   For decades the tactics (in policy and practice) for reducing violent crimes in America have included segregation, mass incarceration, and assimilation (Kendi, p. 80).  Politicians urge us to view Black neighborhoods as ‘war zones’ and call for ‘tougher policing’ in these areas to prohibit injuries and ongoing harms (p. 80).  Yet, the data suggests that unarmed Black bodies are killed at nearly twice the rate of their unarmed White counterparts, by fearing police offers (p. 73).  Kendi describes, “We are unarmed, but we know that Blackness arms us even though we have no guns.  Whiteness disarms the cops” (p. 73) and in an instant, it becomes the job of Black bodies to emotionally disarm the fearing police officers they encounter, rather than Black individuals feeling protection, commonly associated with increased police presence for White counterparts.

  Kendi argues that antiracists say, “Black people, like all people, need more higher-paying jobs within their reach, especially Black youngsters” (p. 80) to reduce the roots of societal problems: “Black bodies have the highest rates of unemployment of any demographic group, topping 50% in the mid-1990s” (p. 80).  Kendi points out that U.S. Presidents, like Bill Clinton (1995), tell Blacks that they, “need to be patient and understand the roots of White fear in America (1995), on the same day as the Million Man March” (Kendi, p. 70)!  Americans perceiving the faces of violence in America as Black faces is socially constructed, offered by the media. Even President Clinton acknowledged this is “at least” what people see on the news at night (p. 80) but he does nothing to debunk the overall sense of fearing Black bodies.  Rather, as in other similar instances, he and others ask Black individuals to make more allowances of White fear and be more tolerant of racist ideas.  Kendi explains that his parents taught him from early ages (as young as 8 years old, p. 71,) to fear his own kind, suggesting he be educated in more reputable school settings, with fewer Black individuals or minorities, and also requiring that he practice basketball in his own expensively made backyard court, rather than in the city parks with his Black peers.  

A touching tribute to the honesty of his work is illustrated each time Kendi recites his own stories and examples of internalized racism.  He wants us to grasp how living within an assigned social role or group does not exempt one from prejudice against one’s own kind.  In chapter six, Kendi narrates a memory of when he was riding the city bus as a teenager.  An acquaintance he refers to as “Smurf” (due to the bluish pigmentation of his blackened skin) is actively bullying another marginalized individual, sitting in the back of the bus.  Kendi woefully recounts how he wants to intercede, interrupt, or advocate for the affected person, however, he fails to do so because he is afraid for his own safety (p. 77).  Kendi reflects, “the responsibility of keeping myself safe followed me like stray dogs in my neighborhood, barking fear into my consciousness” (p. 77) and he humbly repents, “I did nothing” (p.77).  Kendi elaborates, “Fear defined me - I feared all darkness, up to and including my own Black body” (p. 77).  Kendi explains, “More than the times I risked jail, I am still haunted by the times I did not help the victims of violence.  My refusal to help them jailed me in fear. I feared Black bodies as much as the White body feared me. I could not muster the strength to do right” (p.73).  He astutely clarifies, “I believed violence was stalking me - but in truth, I was being stalked inside my own head by racist ideas” (p. 72). 

In his book, Kendi (2019) does an exquisite job of articulating how even unwittingly, we have come to live in fear of Black bodies.  Using numerous examples, he articulates how systemic bodily racism pervades our culture today, even our policies that are intending to reduce racist ideas are actually serving to strengthen racist attitudes and perpetuate the wrong fears.  We should not be afraid of black bodies, rather we should despise poverty and the trauma associated with living so marginally. We need to re-examine what our political agendas really are and begin tackling the socioeconomic injustices if we are going to become humans supporting bodily antiracism.  Humbly offering his remorse about his own lived experiences, Kendi urges us to expeditiously take hard, honest looks at our own systematically internalized racism and identify our own prejudices so we can begin to dismantle these paradigms.  Over and over, Kendi demonstrates how often we attempt to assume a “not racist” position, while inadvertently supporting racist policies, leaders, and ideas.    

 

(APA format) Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an Antiracist.  One World: New York.

 

(MLA format) Kendi, Ibram. How to be an Antiracist. One world, 2019. 

 

 

 

  

“These were racist jokes whose point of origin -- the slave trade -- was no laughing matter. When Black people make jokes that dehumanize other branches of the African diaspora, we allow that horror story to live again in our laughs. Ethnic racism is the resurrected script of the slave trader.” Policies and practices of the slave trade allowed “...the supply- and-demand market for human products.” 

Several federal acts combined to provide the antiracist scaffolding of policies to allow the number of immigrants of color to increase multifold in the 1990’s. These included the “...Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the Refugee Act of 1980, and the Immigration Act of 1990.” People were able to leave areas of conflict, reunite with family members and engage in diversity visa programs. Kendi notes that the Latinx population blossomed from 4.2 million to 14.1 million between 1980-2000 while Black immigrants increased their representation in the US's Black population by three times between 1980-2015. 

These Acts did their part to counteract their strict predecessors which severely limited anything but white immigration to America. The names of these Acts are incredibly powerful and ugly and include the 1882 Chinese Restriction Act, the “Asiatic Barred Zone” in 1917, the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and the Immigration Act of 1924. 

Regardless of what countries black people came to America from or if they were the descendants of slaves, they were all racialized as Black. Kendi says “The fact is, all ethnic groups, once they fall under the gaze and power of race makers, become racialized.” Kendi further emphasizes the point; “The racializing serves the core mandate of race; to create hierarchies of value.” This lays the groundwork to behavior and associate it with a group instead of looking at the related policy(ies) as the problem. Kendi asserts; “To be antiracist is to view national and transnational ethnic groups as equal in all their differences. To be antiracist is to challenge the racist policies that plague racialized ethnic groups across the world. To be antiracist is to view inequities between all racialized ethnic groups as a problem of policy.

In this vein, I think we should be looking at our American policy (or lack thereof) of ensuring that every human being eligible for receiving the Covid 19 vaccine receives it before the general, privileged portions of the US population receive their 3rd Covid 19 vaccine. This is one area I do not think the Biden Administration is doing enough to move forward. I also think the US should drastically increase the number of Afghan citizens who want to come to the US to be provided safe passage and allowed to leave Afghanistan. These are two areas of critical and current need for policy infrastructure that would strengthen a proactive anti racist stance. 

Afghan Nationals who were able to leave Afghanistan and have been staying on US Military Bases and have been given Humanitarian Parole Special Status. This is insufficient to the need. Congress needs to create a quick policy pathway for these people to be granted full immigrant status and allowed to be resettled through the infrastructure currently in place for refugee resettlement. Again, a current and dire need that will impact all of these people newly in America, every community that they find their way to and will ease their process of healing and stabilizing as quickly as possible. There is bipartisan support for this initiative which should be immediately capitalized on. 

The question I am left with is why, as we were literally taking 1,000’s of human beings off a tarmac in Afghanistan, was the ground work not being immediately laid to offer them the best, most streamlined and supported path to finding their way in the US? 

     In this chapter, Kendi starts with his vivid memory of a “warm April day in 1990” as his parents takes him to a new school. He discussed his experience at the school, a conversation between his parents, the schoolteacher and the young Kendi, who at the time “entered racial puberty.” His black parents are looking for a better school or as he puts it “separating their children from poor black children in poor black neighborhoods, just like white New Yorkers were separating their children from black children” Kendi, (p. 37).

     The statement above, points to both the racial and economic gab most black parents’ experience. Well-to-do black families took their children to private schools in search of better education. The housing discriminatory policies did not allow black middle-class families to move to neighborhoods with good public schools. Therefore, they were forced to take their children to private school in a distant location. Kendi writes, “the dueling consciousness of white parents did not mind spending more money on housing in order to send their kids to public white schools- and keep them away from purportedly bad schools and bad children” Kendi, (p. 38).

     He then moves to the discussion on the history of race, slavery, and the motivation behind the construction of categories of race. “Race is fundamentally a power construct of blended difference that lives socially” Kendi, (p. 38). He further argues that there is historical relationship between power, wealth, and race construction. The main original motivation was to create a race that is most suitable for slavery. “The first global power to construct race happened to be the first racist power and the first exclusive slave trader of the constructed race of African people” Kendi, (p. 39).

     Kendi ends the chapter with powerful discussion on the impact of racism and slavery on black and other non-white populations. He provides historical facts and personal life experiences, as well as qualitative and quantitative data to support his argument. For example, discussing racial inequity and housing discrimination, Kendi writes, “71% of White families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014.” He argues that “do-nothing” response is racist and calls his readers to act and advocate for anti-racist polices or practices. Kendi’s experience as a child, as an adult and as a descendant of forced/enslaved African is a true testimony to the horrendous, horrifying, and terrible impact of racism. “It’s a racial crime to be yourself if you are not white (to be white is inherently normal, standard and legal). It’s racial crime to look like yourself or empower yourself if you are not white. I guess I became a criminal at seven years old” Kendi, (p.38).

     Taking us back to where it all began, Kendi ends the chapter with a sentence about his elementary school, making a point about his teacher and his level of consciousness on race: “I ended up attending a private Lutheran school closer to home, white third-grade teacher and all. I did not mind until I noticed”. 

 

Reference: 

Kendi, Ibrah X., How to be antiracist. One World, 2019.