Read How to Be an Antiracist Online

Authors: Ibram X. Kendi

How to Be an Antiracist (32 page)

BOOK: How to Be an Antiracist
13.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Chapter 14: Gender

Alice Walker’s
The Color Purple
:
Alice Walker,
The Color Purple
(Boston: Harcourt, 1982).

“The Negro Family
: The Case for National Action”:
Daniel P. Moynihan,
The Negro Family: The Case for National Action
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965).

“The reverberations” from the Moynihan report “were disastrous”
:
Deborah Gray White,
Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 200.

“immediate goal of the Negro woman today”
:
“For a Better Future,”
Ebony,
August 1996.

Racism had “clearly” and “largely focused” on the Black male
:
Charles Herbert Stember,
Sexual Racism: The Emotional Barrier to an Integrated Society
(New York: Elsevier, 1976), ix, 66.

For too many Black men, the Black Power movement
:
See Eldridge Cleaver,
Soul on Ice
(New York: Dell, 1991).

“has now reached 68 percent”
:
Charles Murray, “The Coming White Underclass,”
The
Wall Street Journal,
October 29, 1993.

married Black women having fewer children
:
Angela Y. Davis,
Women, Culture & Politics
(New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 75–85; and “The Math on Black Out of Wedlock Births,”
The Atlantic,
February 17, 2009, available at
www.theatlantic.com/​entertainment/​archive/​2009/​02/​the-math-on-black-out-of-wedlock-births/​6738/
.

Only Black feminists like Dorothy Roberts
:
Dorothy Roberts,
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty
(New York: Pantheon, 1997).

Kimberly Springer calls the “Black feminist movement”
:
Kimberly Springer,
Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968–1980
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).

the Combahee River Collective (CRC)
:
See Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, ed.,
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
(Chicago: Haymarket, 2017).

“double jeopardy” of racism and sexism
:
Frances Beal, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” in
The Black Woman: An Anthology,
ed. Toni Cade Bambara (New York: New American Library, 1970), 92.

“preoccupations of the contemporary Black woman in this country”
:
and “
evil Black bitch”:
Toni Morrison, “Preface,” in
The Black Woman,
11.

“high-tech lynching”
:
See “How Racism and Sexism Shaped the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill Hearing,”
Vox,
April 16, 2016, available at
www.vox.com/​2016/​4/16/​11408576/​anita-hill-clarence-thomas-confirmation
.

“In discussing the experiences of Black women”
:
Philomena Essed,
Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory
(Newbury Park, CA: SAGE, 1991), 31.

“Mapping the Margins”
:
Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,”
Stanford Law Review
43:6 (July 1991), 1242.

involuntary sterilizations of Black women
:
Roberts,
Killing the Black Body,
90–96.

Black women with some collegiate education making less
:
See “Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers, Fourth Quarter 2018,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, January 17, 2019, available at
www.bls.gov/​news.release/​pdf/​wkyeng.pdf
.

Black women having to earn advanced degrees before they earn more
:
See “Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers, Fourth Quarter 2018.”

median wealth of single White women being $42,000
:
“Lifting as We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth, and America’s Future,” Insight Center for Community Economic Development, Spring 2010, available at
insightcced.org/​old-site/​uploads/​CRWG/​LiftingAsWeClimb-WomenWealth-Report-InsightCenter-Spring2010.pdf
.

Native women and Black women experience poverty at a higher rate
:
See “Black Women: Supporting Their Families—With Few Resources,”
The Atlantic,
June 12, 2017, available at
www.theatlantic.com/​business/​archive/​2017/​06/​black-women-economy/​530022/
.

Black and Latinx women still earn the least
:
“The Gender Wage Gap: 2017 Earnings Differences by Race and Ethnicity,” Institute for Women’s Policy Research, March 7, 2018, available at
iwpr.org/​publications/​gender-wage-gap-2017-race-ethnicity/
.

Black women are three to four times more likely to die
:
“Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis,”
The New York Times,
April 11, 2018, available at
www.nytimes.com/​2018/​04/​11/​magazine/​black-mothers-babies-death-maternal-mortality.html
.

Black woman with an advanced degree is more likely to lose her baby
:
“6 Charts Showing Race Gaps Within the American Middle Class,” Brookings, October 21, 2016, available at
www.brookings.edu/​blog/​social-mobility-memos/​2016/​10/​21/​6-charts-showing-race-gaps-within-the-american-middle-class/
.

Black women remain twice as likely to be incarcerated
:
“A Mass Incarceration Mystery,” The Marshall Project, December 15, 2017, available at
www.themarshallproject.org/​2017/​12/​15/​a-mass-incarceration-mystery
.

as much about controlling the sexuality of White women
:
For a full study on the politics of women during the lynching era, see Crystal Nicole Feimster,
Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

were re-creating the slave era all over again
:
Rachel A. Feinstein,
When Rape Was Legal: The Untold History of Sexual Violence During Slavery
(New York: Routledge, 2018); and Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris, eds.,
Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas
(Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2018).

Casey Anthony, the White woman a Florida jury exonerated
:
“ ‘What Really Happened?’: The Casey Anthony Case 10 Years Later,” CNN, June 30, 2018, available at
www.cnn.com/​2018/​06/​29/​us/​casey-anthony-10-years-later/​index.html
.

the imprisonment of Black men dropped 24 percent
:
The Black male incarceration rate per 100,000 is 2,613, the White male rate is 457, the Black female rate is 103, and the White female rate is 52, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as shown in “A Mass Incarceration Mystery,” The Marshall Project, December 15, 2017, available at
www.themarshallproject.org/​2017/​12/​15/​a-mass-incarceration-mystery
.

Black men raised in the top 1 percent by millionaires
:
“Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys,”
The New York Times,
March 19, 2018, available at
www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2018/​03/​19/​upshot/​race-class-white-and-black-men.html
.

“Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider intersectional identities”
:
Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins,” 1242–43.

Chapter 15: Sexuality

32 percent of children being raised by Black male same-sex couples live in poverty
:
“LGBT Families of Color: Facts at a Glance,” Movement Advancement Project, Family Equality Council, and Center for American Progress, January 2012, available at
www.nbjc.org/​sites/​default/​files/​lgbt-families-of-color-facts-at-a-glance.pdf
.

their parents are more likely than Black heterosexual and White queer couples to be poor
:
See “Beyond Stereotypes: Poverty in the LGBT Community,”
TIDES,
June 2012, available at
williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/​williams-in-the-news/​beyond-stereotypes-poverty-in-the-lgbt-community/
.

“the question of sex”
:
Havelock Ellis,
Studies in the Psychology of Sex,
Volume 1 (London: Wilson and Macmillan, 1897), x.

a popular summary of Lombroso’s writings
:
Havelock Ellis,
The Criminal
(London: Walter Scott, 1890).

“As regards the sexual organs it seems possible”
:
Havelock Ellis,
Studies in the Psychology of Sex,
Volume 2 (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis, 1933), 256.

racist physicians were contrasting
:
Morris, “Is Evolution Trying to Do Away with the Clitoris?,” Paper presented at the meeting of the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, St. Louis, September 21, 1892, available at
archive.org/​stream/​39002086458651.med.yale.edu/​39002086458651_djvu.txt
.

“will in practically every instance disclose”
:
Perry M. Lichtenstein, “The ‘Fairy’ and the Lady Lover,”
Medical Review of Reviews
27 (1921), 372.

which “is particularly so in colored women”
:
Ibid.

Black gay men are less likely to have condomless sex
:
and
use drugs:
“What’s at the Roots of the Disproportionate HIV Rates for Black Men?,”
Plus,
March 6, 2017, available at
www.hivplusmag.com/​stigma/​2017/​3/06/​whats-root-disproportionate-hiv-rates-their-queer-brothers
.

“affirm that all Black lives matter”
:
“Black Lives Matter Movement Awarded Sydney Peace Prize for Activism,” NBC News, November 2, 2017, available at
www.nbcnews.com/​news/​nbcblk/​black-lives-matter-movement-awarded-sydney-peace-prize-activism-n816846
.

U.S. life expectancy of a transgender woman of color
:
“It’s Time for Trans Lives to Truly Matter to Us All,”
Advocate,
February 18, 2015, available at
www.advocate.com/​commentary/​2015/​02/​18/​op-ed-its-time-trans-lives-truly-matter-us-all
.

from the personal stories of transgender activist Janet Mock
:
See Janet Mock,
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015); Janet Mock,
Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me
(New York: Atria, 2017).

watching Kayla Moore defend her husband
:
“Kayla Moore Emerges as Her Husband’s Fiercest and Most Vocal Defender,”
The Washington Post,
November 15, 2017, available at
www.washingtonpost.com/​politics/​kayla-moore-emerges-as-her-husbands-fiercest-and-most-vocal-defender/​2017/​11/​15/​5c8b7d82-ca19-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html
.

“even though we had slavery”
:
“In Alabama, the Heart of Trump Country, Many Think He’s Backing the Wrong Candidate in Senate Race,”
Los Angeles Times,
September 21, 2017, available at
www.latimes.com/​politics/​la-na-pol-alabama-senate-runoff-20170921-story.html
.

Chapter 16: Failure

“our parental care”
and
Black “conduct must, in some measure”
:
See David Scholfield and Edmund Haviland, “The Appeal of the American Convention of Abolition Societies to Anti-Slavery Groups,”
The Journal of Negro History
6:2 (April 1921), 221, 225.

“The further decrease of prejudice”
:
“Raising Us in the Scale of Being,”
Freedom’s Journal,
March 16, 1827.

the judges of “uplift suasion”
:
See Ibram X. Kendi,
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
(New York: Nation Books, 2016), 124–25.

“Have you not acquired the esteem”
:
William Lloyd Garrison,
An Address, Delivered before the Free People of Color, in Philadelphia
(Boston: S. Foster, 1831), 5–6.

“accomplish the great work of national redemption”
:
“ ‘What we have long predicted…has commenced its fulfillment,’ ” in
The Boisterous Sea of Liberty: A Documentary History of American from Discovery Through the Civil War,
eds. David Brion Davis and Steven Mintz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 390.

fit his personal upbringing
:
For a good biography of Garrison, see Henry Mayer,
All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008).

astounding growth of slavery
:
Edward E. Baptist,
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
(New York: Basic Books, 2016).

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave”
:
Abraham Lincoln, “To Horace Greeley,” in
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln,
Volume 5, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 388.

“necessary war measure”
:
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, American Battlefield Trust, available at
www.battlefields.org/​learn/​primary-sources/​abraham-lincolns-emancipation-proclamation
.

“want nothing to do with the negroes”
:
See Leonard P. Curry,
Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress
(Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), 79.

The “White man’s party”
:
See Francis P. Blair Jr.,
The Destiny of the Races of this Continent
(Washington, DC, 1859), 30.

militarily defending the Negro from the racist terrorists
:
For an excellent study of the decline of Reconstruction, see Eric Foner,
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877
(New York: HarperCollins, 2011).

“Expediency on selfish grounds”
:
Mayer,
All on Fire,
617.

“For many years it was the theory of most Negro leaders”
:
W.E.B. Du Bois, “A Negro Nation Within a Nation,” in
W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader,
ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 565.

“astonishing ignorance”
:
Gunnar Myrdal,
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy
(New York: Harper, 1944), 48.

“There is no doubt, in the writer’s opinion”
:
Ibid., 339.

“Gunnar Myrdal had been astonishingly prophetic”
:
Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff,
The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of the Nation
(New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 406. Aside from this assessment, this is a stunning work of journalism history.

“discrimination against minority groups in this country has an adverse effect”
:
Mary L. Dudziak,
Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 100.

“in waging this world struggle”
and
Seventy-eight percent of White Americans agreed
:
Ibid., 185–87.

In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. admitted
:
Martin Luther King, “ ‘Where Do We Go from Here?,’ Address Delivered at the Eleventh Annual SCLC Convention,” April 16, 1967, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, available at
kinginstitute.stanford.edu/​king-papers/​documents/​where-do-we-go-here-address-delivered-eleventh-annual-sclc-convention
.

Look at the soaring White support
:
Lawrence D. Bobo et al., “The
Real
Record on Racial Attitudes,” in
Social Trends in American Life: Findings from the General Social Survey Since 1971,
ed. Peter V. Marsden (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 38–83.

Look at the soaring support for Obamacare
:
“Support for 2010 Health Care Law Reaches New High,” Pew Research Center, February 23, 2017, available at
www.pewresearch.org/​fact-tank/​2017/​02/​23/​support-for-2010-health-care-law-reaches-new-high/
.

wanted to free the Jena 6
:
For a good interview that details the case, see “The Case of the Jena Six: Black High School Students Charged with Attempted Murder for Schoolyard Fight After Nooses Are Hung from Tree,”
Democracy Now,
July 10, 2007, available at
www.democracynow.org/​2007/​7/10/​the_case_of_the_jena_six
.

used the Malcolm X line out of context
:
The full quote is, “When I was in prison, I read an article—don’t be shocked when I say I was in prison. You’re still in prison. That’s what America means: prison.” See Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,” December 10, 1963, available at
blackpast.org/​1963-malcolm-x-message-grassroots
.

“The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger”
:
Stephen Kantrowitz,
Ben Tillman & the Reconstruction of White Supremacy
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 259.

the Hamburg Massacre
:
Ibid., 64–71.

“The purpose of our visit to Hamburg was to strike terror”
:
Benjamin R. Tillman,
The Struggles of 1876: How South Carolina Was Delivered from Carpet-bag and Negro Rule
(Anderson, SC, 1909), 24. Speech at the Red-Shirt Re-Union at Anderson, available at
babel.hathitrust.org/​cgi/​pt?id=mdp.39015079003128
.

That day, thousands of us thought we were protesting
:
See “Thousands Protest Arrests of 6 Blacks in Jena, La.,”
The New York Times,
September 21, 2007, available at
/www.nytimes.com/​2007/​09/​21/​us/​21cnd-jena.html
.

quietly got the charges reduced to simple battery
:
“Plea Bargain Wraps Up ‘Jena 6’ Case,” CBS News, June 26, 2009, available at
www.cbsnews.com/​news/​plea-bargain-wraps-up-jena-6-case/
.

sustained those courageous Black women
:
For a fascinating firsthand account of the boycott, see Jo Ann Gibson Robinson,
The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson
(Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1987).

BOOK: How to Be an Antiracist
13.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Leaving the Comfort Cafe by Wilson, Dawn DeAnna
No Decent Gentleman by Grasso, Patricia;
Age of Druids by Drummond, India
Dragon's Ward by Newton, LeTeisha