What does it mean to be antiracist? How do I become an antiracist?
These are the questions we should be asking ourselves every single day until we know the answers and put those answers into action.
In Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, he defines antiracism as the following:
To be antiracist is to think nothing is behaviorally wrong or right — inferior or superior — with any of the racial groups. Whenever the antiracist sees individuals behaving positively or negatively, the antiracist sees exactly that: individuals behaving positively or negatively, not representatives of whole races. To be antiracist is to deracialize behavior, to remove the tattooed stereotype from every racialized body. Behavior is something humans do, not races do.
So that’s the definition. But how do we, as human beings coexisting with one another in so many different ways, go about being antiracist?
Reading, watching, and listening are the first steps in educating yourself on how to be an antiracist. You have to remember that these steps are not finite, however. You will continue to read, watch, and listen all your life. You just have to start somewhere, and as soon as you start, you can begin to act.
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