Recently, the term “antiracist” has rapidly gained prominence in our culture. A year ago few had even heard the term, but now it’s everywhere, including memes. The Smithsonian even has a page dedicated to the term, including the popular and often meme’d Angela Davis quote,

In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.

So what is meant by the term antiracist? On the surface, the layman would assume simply “against racism” but that is not the case, at least not with a traditional understanding. It takes a whole new twist to the notion of racism. There have been different understandings and uses of “antiracism” in history, but here we will deal with the most popular contemporary version, outlined in Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be An Antiracist. This is what the vast majority in the media and pop culture are referencing when they use the term.

This will examine and critique the concept of antiracism, which despite being heralded by many intellectuals, rests on surprisingly weak and contradictory foundations.

Defining Racism

Every concept, to be valid, must have a coherent definition that matches up with reality. All good philosophers must define their terms, as the ultimate validity of their argument rests upon it. To his credit, Dr. Kendi begins his book by defining his concepts of racism and antiracism. Unfortunately, this is where the book first stumbles.

Before presenting his definitions, think about how you’d define racism. I’d use something like this:

 Racism: Judging someone based upon their skin color or ethnicity.

One could expand on this, but as definitions go it captures the essence of the concept. Racism is a subcategory of judgement; an irrational one, where one uses skin color as the primary criteria as opposed to, say, individual merit. Keep this in mind, as all future arguments rest upon the definition of terms. When confronted with Kendi’s, ask yourself which definition is more coherent and matches up with reality better?

At the very beginning of the book, before any arguments are made, Kendi starts chapter 1 with the definition of racist, as he should. This is what he uses:

Racist: One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.

For critical thinkers, alarm bells should be going off. Defining a word using the same word is circular reasoning, Definitions 101! The purpose of a definition is to clarify the term and provide its essential characteristics, not to further muddy the waters. This definition provides no clarity, it basically says a racist is one who does racist things. Right out of the gate, literally before the book has begun, it raises a red flag.

Thankfully, there are more definitions several pages in, Kendi doesn’t leave us in suspense for long. First, on racism:

Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.

Again, there’s circular reasoning, using the same term to define itself! Racism is racist policies and ideas. So what are racist policies and ideas? One has to skip ahead several pages to get that definition:

A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups.

A racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.

Ok, we’re getting closer. Now for what racial inequity means, which we must backtrack a couple pages prior:

Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing.

Kendi uses the example that if more whites own homes than blacks, that would be racial inequity.

Now, after sifting through 4-5 different definitions, we can piece together Kendi’s definition of racism (this is my phrasing based upon his definitions and logic):

Racism is a marriage of policies which sustain racial inequity, and ideas which suggest racial groups are superior or inferior.

Contrast the unnecessary complexity and opaqueness here with what I put forth as a definition for racism above. Also, keep in mind this definition is how Kendi comes to extraordinarily bizarre conclusions in the book, like racism is less than 600 years old, originating with 15th century European exploration.

Defining Antiracist

At the beginning of chapter 1, Kendi defines antiracist as:

One who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.

I assure you I’m not making this up! Again, circular reasoning and a definition which clarifies nothing. An antiracist is someone who does antiracist things, is the extent of this definition. As with before, we must read further to glean the actual definitions of antiracist policies and ideas:

An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups.

An antiracist idea is any idea that suggests the racial groups are equals in in all their apparent differences—that there is nothing right or wrong with any racial group.

As with racism before, we can now piece together the actual definition of antiracist (again this is my phrasing, Kendi doesn’t actually do this for us):

An antiracist is one who supports measures that produce racial equity and/or who suggests racial groups are equals. (note: equal, in Kendi's view, means the belief that outcomes of racial groups should be equal, not the belief of equality under the law or in individual treatment)

Within Kendi’s framework, antiracist is indeed the opposite of racist. As he says, “there is no such thing as a not-racist idea, only racist ideas and antiracist ideas.” The only way to oppose racism under this philosophy is to actively be an antiracist, which is why you’ll sometimes hear activists say that not protesting is akin to supporting racism. In their self-contained linguistic scheme this is logically true. But in reality, antiracist isn’t the opposite of racist. In fact, it’s an explicitly racist concept.

Antiracist = Against Racial Inequity, not Against Racism

The essence of an antiracist is to focus on broad racial inequities, not individuals. Thus, it ends up hijacking the term for its own agenda. The original definition of racism, indeed the only way the word has any coherent meaning, is to target individuals. Judging someone by the color of their skin is racism, that’s why I included that definition at the beginning. As we saw by piecing together Kendi’s definition, he tries to define racism as racial inequity, which is a different concept entirely.

The effect of focusing solely on racial inequity and equality of racial groups, is that the individual is forgotten. Indeed, nowhere in any of Kendi’s definitions does he acknowledge individuals, everything is about groups. No longer is the importance placed on seeking to judge individual people based on the content of their character and talents, it’s now to make sure every group has “equity.”

In practice, this means explicitly judging and treating people differently solely by using race as the criterion. In other words, to be an antiracist is to be a racist, and enthusiastically so. The goal is to separate people into racial groups, create policies judging them accordingly, and seek to bring equity to these groups, individuals be damned. What could go wrong with that?

If this characterization sounds overblown, it’s not. Take the recent attempt by the California Legislature to strike down the equal protection clause in their constitution which reads:

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group, on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

This constitutional provision, which most would consider to protect against racism by the government, will now be sent to the voters to repeal. The reason? As assembly member Todd Gloria proudly announced, to “advance true racial and gender equity in this state.” These are the stated goals of the antiracists, and what their ideas look like in practice. An antiracist would actually consider the above section of the constitution to be racist.

The Antiracist Policy Contradiction

In its stated definition, antiracist policies are those which produce racial equity. But that means antiracist policies can only be judged ex post. We “have to pass the bill to find out what is in it” in regards to antiracist policies.

For example, take something like “ban the box” initiatives, which prevent employers from asking applicants about criminal records. Studies show these actually harmed blacks and Hispanics, particularly young men with low skills, the group they most intended to help. Researchers found it decreased young, low-skilled black men’s chances to get hired by 5.1% and Hispanics by 2.9%. Employers likely resorted to cruder, perhaps more racist, methods to determine if an applicant was a criminal. In this light, such policies would actually be racist according to Kendi’s definition, despite being championed by antiracists.

Or take affirmative action in universities. In UC Berkely, the number of black students graduating actually declined under the policy in the 1980s (despite more being admitted). When a ban on affirmative action was imposed during the 90s, the number of black graduates increased, and the number of Hispanics rose substantially. Those graduating with degrees in engineering and mathematics rose by 51%, and those with GPAs of over 3.5 rose by 63%. By using racial equity as a standard, one would oppose affirmative action given these realities. Yet, as shown above, CA is trying to reimpose these policies under the guise of racial equity.

Since laws often have unintended consequences, there can be no real antiracist policies by definition, at least not without a long trial period of observation and analysis. Yet, its advocates don’t acknowledge this, instead equating antiracist policies with what they think will work. By their own definition, that’s not antiracist!

Antiracism Ignores Other Causes of Inequality

Using equity between racial and ethnic groups as a standard ignores all the other factors, besides racism, that might influence unequal outcomes. As Dr. Thomas Sowell illustrates in his book Wealth, Poverty and Politics, factors such as geography, culture, demographics and politics all help to explain different outcomes between groups. The following examples and statistics come from that book unless otherwise sourced.

Generalizing about equity can be disastrous without looking at these factors. For instance, in the US, those of Japanese ancestry are more than 20 years older than Puerto Ricans on average. How could we simply compare the two without factoring this in considering age is highly correlated with income? Those aged 45-54 earn more than 3 times those in their early 20s. Obviously age demographics matter when analyzing wealth disparities. Yet, Kendi doesn’t consider this in the book.

How can we simply look at educational outcomes as based on racism without wondering why dirt poor Chinese Fujian immigrants in Brooklyn are vastly over-represented in the elite and highly sought after Stuyvesant High School, which selects based on academic testing? Or that Asians outnumber whites at that school? In 1938, black enrollment at Stuyvesant was roughly equal to their proportion in the city’s population. In 1979, they were 12.9% of enrollment, by 1995 4.8% and by 2012 just 1.2%. Why were blacks better able to compete during eras of vastly more racism and racist policies? Clearly there must be other causes at play.

Even within supposed racial groups, why are Nigerian immigrants among the best educated and performing group in America, far exceeding US born citizens? As are Indian immigrants. Why do whites in Appalachia’s “hillbilly” culture fare much worse than those in white suburban culture? Again, race cannot explain these disparate outcomes as even within racial groups we find huge disparities.

It’s obvious there’s many factors which might impact outcomes among racial groups, apart from systemic racism. Yet, Kendi holds that anytime there is inequities between racial groups, that’s de facto evidence of racist policies. This is simply not true, and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. The fact that there might be unequal outcomes between groups does not itself mean a particular institution, or even society, is unfair. As Sowell puts it,

We cannot tell where the unfairness occurred by where the statstics were collected.

Kendi brings up various statistics in the book to bolster his case, but these are generally shallow, nowhere near the depth Sowell reaches to analyze the nature of inequality among groups. Just read each book yourself. It’s simply a mistake to define racism as existence of racial inequities, it doesn’t hold up.

Is Antiracism the Opposite of Racism?

In Kendi’s framework, yes, but with a more careful look, no. Antiracism is just a different type of racism. In the effort to combat what were clearly harmful racist policies in the past, and correct the lingering inequality caused from that history, antiracism has us double down on race and use it as the primary consideration in implementing policies and judging outcomes. Even more than that, it seeks to redefine the term racism as racial inequity. It’s a step backwards into irrationality and prejudice, not a move forward.

We will always have little control over inequality, but what we do have control of, systemically and individually, is the ability to treat people based on their own merits. As individuals, not as members of groups based on their immutable characteristics. This means not having laws which explicitly discriminate or give privileges based on such things, and not consciously pre-judging someone based on the color of their skin in the private sector.

In other words, we can be against racism by acknowledging its correct definition and acting accordingly. This meme is right in one regard; there is no neutrality in the struggle against racism. But that means realizing the concept antiracist is really racism in disguise, and calling it out as such.