A controversial review, maybe? Most people would say that this book is about one idea. But I want to say that it’s about two—

The first idea? A great one, very thoroughly explored, very well expressed:
✨that the opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist’—it’s antiracist

So if an idea, policy, action, etc isn’t specifically antiracist—racially equitable in its effects—then it’s racist (ethical ontology: utilitarianism, tho). This was all well explained and compelling to read. And as a card carrying member of the trying to be “not-racist” club, it challenged me in a good way.

The second idea in here? Also a good idea—but not at all thoroughly explored, not well expressed:
✨ that racist policies create racism, not the other way around

To be fair, this idea is explored in his earlier book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. But, about the tour for that book, he wrote in here:
👉 “I talked about racist policies leading to racist ideas, not the other way around, as we have commonly thought. I talked about eliminating racist policies if we ever hope to eliminate racist ideas. I talked and talked, unaware of my new hypocrisy, which readers and attendees picked up on. ‘What are you doing to change policy?’ they kept asking me in public and private.”

Yet this hypocrisy remained completely unresolved (and was perhaps further undermined by the memoir-ish structure of this book?). Because this was all sidelined and he moved on to another topic one paragraph later.

A part of me wants to say “Amanda, don’t be harsh—just recommend Kendi’s book along with a book that tackles racist policy (like Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire or White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy). It’s fine!”

Another part of me wonders if Kendi’s book is to racial justice what recycling is to environmentalism—which sounds harsh, but! By focusing on his personal choices and the individual actions and ideas of others without a more structural macro-political analysis….

The liberal individualism was liberal individualism-ing a bit too hard in here, for me.

Edited to add:
There’s a Jacobin interview with Catherine Liu (POC Marxist academic) about why Kendi’s ideas are popular with elites and other university educated types, that kinda kicked me in the butt while reading this. Liu pointed out that it requires a certain amount of privilege to find Kendi convincing because a personal antiracist journey is about an individual being “perfect in a bad world”—focusing on personal growth instead of materially improving that bad world. Even though Kendi himself acknowledges that this ‘bad world’ generates racism and you can’t antiracism your way out of it without addressing that badness…. that idea is almost entirely pushed out of frame in this book. And I can’t understand why he would diagnose a problem and then ignore it so thoroughly.