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How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi – review

A vital study offers a way out from the ‘tangled disingenuousness of mainstream narratives around racism’

I once considered outing a manager at work as a racist. I hesitated from the discomfort of embarking on such action, an unwillingness to fall into the category of victim, and because of the potentially serious consequences for the manager to be so labelled. I also knew that it was near impossible to prove; the racism was covert, though obvious to me. But in the end, I pulled back for a more prosaic reason: I realised that the boss to whom I’d have to report my assessment was more obviously racist than the offending manager.

It’s a mark of the transformative and unsettling power of Ibram X Kendi’s writing that I relaxed into How to Be an Antiracist with the comforting and self-righteous knowledge that the title was not addressing me. After all I am black; I couldn’t possibly be racist, could I? By the book’s end, I wasn’t so sure.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/342C7hF
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