Easy to read but dense history of racist ideas in the United States. A long explanation of why "the master's tools will never destroy the master's house". Kendi delineates three schools of racial ideas: segregationists, assimilationists, & anti-racists: segregationists are against Black people (the "classic" racists), assimilationists attempt to use racist ideas for Black people's benefit (e.g. proponents of "respectability politics"), & anti-racists are against racism in all it's forms (including the "benevolent" racism of assimilationists). Kendi at one point summed up the differences between the three schools roughly by how they reacted to the Amos & Andy characters: segregationists laughed at them & used them as examples of Black inferiority, assimilationists deplored Amos & Andy because they were examples of Black inferiority, & anti-racists laughed with & identified with Amos & Andy. That the "middle ground" between racism & anti-racism constitutes its own school of thought is a new idea to me. So too is Kendi's idea that progress for anti-racism does not automatically equate to defeat or retreat for racism, with racism developing in parallel with anti-racism. Assimilationists' approach of attempting to refute racism on the racists' terms invariably creates new racist discourse, advancing racist ideas. At the same time, assimilationists sometimes produced anti-racist ideas, or found themselves evolving into anti-racists (the book shows with W.E.B. DuBois). In Kendi's view, only anti-racism can defeat racist segregationist ideas.