Member-only story
I’m tired of being antiracist
How do you keep doing “the work” if it is emotionally unsustainable?
I remember first becoming well-acquainted with the term “antiracist” in the wake of George Floyd’s public execution.
A surge in public awareness about systemic racism was happening. Amidst the social media discourse, author Ibram X. Kendi’s book “How to be an Antiracist” rose to the forefront of the mass consciousness. In it, Kendi shares a vocabulary for how to understand and speak about injustice:
“There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.’ The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism […] One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist.”
The language of antiracism has been essential for evolving our collective awareness of what racism is and how it operates. Racism is not merely individual prejudice; it is a power system rooted in discriminatory policies that produce conditions of racial inequity. If we are not challenging that status quo then we are enabling it. Or, as Desmond Tutu simply puts it:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
To be clear, I agree wholeheartedly with this concept. Growing up among working class White people in suburban parts of Virginia, I never met anyone who I would have called explicitly racist. Certainly, I never met anyone who identified themselves that way. But signs of racism were all around me: the segregated neighborhoods, schools, and churches; the disproportionately Black mugshots published in the newspaper; the massive Confederate flag that was visible from the highway. As a young multi-racial Black woman, I didn’t have the language or historical context to explain it, but I sensed that there was much more to racism than blatantly wearing a white hood and calling people the n-word. “Antiracism” helped put these observations into words.
Yet, as much as I appreciate the term “antiracism” for how it advanced my sociopolitical consciousness, I find myself at odds with it. Embedded in its definition are the ideas of confrontation and opposition. Antiracism is a fighting word— the prefix “anti” means “against.” Granted, sometimes fighting…
