Ibram X. Kendi: "Racism creates problems that end up impacting everyone"

Ibram X. Kendi in Washington DC in September 2019.Michael A. McCoy

It had been just a week since Donald Trump had imposed himself at the polls, against all odds, the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, when in November 2016, with Barack Obama still in the White House, Ibram X. Kendi (New York, 38 years) received the National Book Award in the category of nonfiction.

His book,

Marcados al nacer

(now translated into Spanish and published by Debate), proposed a rereading of the history of racism in the United States, based on the life and work of five historical figures.

From the role of Puritan inquisitor Cotton Mather in rationalizing slavery, to the struggle of activist and scholar Angela Davis, to one of America's founding fathers and president, Thomas Jefferson, as well as the brilliant African-American intellectual WEB Du Bois, and by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison,

Marked at Birth

advocates a new approach in which ideas and actions are racist or anti-racist, with no room for non-racism.

Either you are racist or you fight against, there are no half measures.

"There may be people who say that slavery is something bad, perverse, and that we have to end it, and this is anti-racist," Kendi explained, on March 29, in a videoconference that turned into talk when he did not connect, frequent chatter on televisions, his camera.

“Then those same people can say, like many abolitionists, that slavery was something horrible and so dehumanizing that it had turned blacks into beasts;

they could not be released and cast the vote.

This racist argument stopped the support of some for the Civil War and later prevented the promotion of blacks having full rights ”.

Ibram X. Kendi, in 2016 with the National Book Awards medal he obtained for 'Marked at birth' SYLVAIN GABOURY / PATRICK McMULLAN / GETTY IMAGES

Despite everything, the abolitionist Garrison, founder of

The Liberator

newspaper

,

has inspired one of the new projects of Kendi, director of the anti-racist research center at Boston University since 2020. In March it was announced that this year he will launch together with the Responsible for Opinion of

The Boston Globe

, Bina Venkataramen,

The Emancipator,

a website with reports, opinion articles and academic research on anti-racism, some of whose texts will be collected by

Globe.

Racism, Kendi argues in

Marked at Birth

, can be segregationist when it is supported by theories that defend the biological inferiority of one race over another, or it can also be assimilationist racism.

In other words, those who defend biological equality are not free to be racist if they use stereotypes when judging the behavior or customs of a certain race.

That too is racist, and black thinkers and leaders are not exempt from this, such as Du Bois, Obama or Kendi himself.

“Despite being a historian of African studies and having been trained throughout my life in egalitarian spaces,” he writes in the introduction, “before researching and writing these pages, I harbored racist notions about the inferiority of blacks.

Racist ideas are just that, ideas;

anyone can produce or consume them ”.

There are several opposing currents: one tries to combat racism, the other to perpetuate inequality

Ibram X. Kendi

Question.

Covid-19 has clearly shown the gap between races in the US In summer, the Black Lives Matter protests shook the country.

The trial for the death of George Floyd has just started.

What is your balance?

Answer.

Now, as throughout its history, in the United States there is a clash that confronts those who want to institutionalize policies that favor inequality with those who seek to do exactly the opposite.

We are the ones who want people like the cop [Derek] Chauvin to account for Floyd's murder, just as there are those who say that those of us who point to racism as a problem are the problem.

Q.

Is there no progress?

A.

Obviously it was a breakthrough to abolish slavery and the Jim Crow laws [which advocated racial segregation].

Today there is a growing number of Americans who recognize that mass incarceration is unjust and deeply racist.

People of color also manage to rise to positions they couldn't access 50 years ago.

Q.

Are you in that group?

A.

Yes, I am one of those individuals who being black has managed to do things and win prizes that I would not have chosen a century ago.

This is an anti-racist force of progress, but there has also been an opposite force, of racist advance.

There are those Republicans who present 250 bills in 43 states to make it difficult for blacks and Hispanics to vote.

In history there is not a single thread, but several opposing currents: one tries to combat racism, the other to perpetuate inequality.

P.

In the book

He explains that he had the idea that blacks are inferior.

How do you fight against that without falling to the other extreme and thinking about superiority?

A.

Two of the most powerful ideas that have circulated in the modern era have been that of the inferiority of blacks and that of the superiority of whites.

They have such strength that just as there are whites who think they are superior, there are blacks who think the opposite, or just that.

And I was one of them.

In my books I reject and replace these two ideas.

We are all the same.

P.

Many point out that behind racial inequality there is a huge economic gap.

There is no shortage of those who make a Marxist reading and point to the structures of power and money as keys, something that goes beyond identity.

R.

This has been discussed for centuries.

When there is economic inequality we must look for economic causes.

When there is racial inequality, it is necessary to look for racial causes, just as when there is gender inequality, it will be necessary to look for the cause in machismo.

If there is a gap between poor black people and rich white people, it will be necessary to look at the economic and racial causes and look for solutions at that intersection between race and class.

Blacks, like whites, not only have an identity of race, but also of class.

More and more academics speak of racial capitalism and the historical, empirical, and material connection between racism and capitalism.

P.

Point out that an anti-racist does not have to be altruistic or generous.

R.

There are those who are involved in this fight because they think it is horrible and, others, because the fact that Republicans are trying to pass these laws to make it more difficult for blacks and Hispanics to vote damages the democratic pillars.

There are whites who understand the collateral damage of racism;

how it creates wide-ranging problems that end up impacting everyone.

That is why they fight.

In 2016, receiving the National Book Award, Kendi spoke of her daughter born a few months earlier, Imani, (means faith in Swahili), to inspire encouragement, and also of her parents, the Rogers, a couple of Methodist ministers involved in the fight against racism.

When he married in 2013, the professor and doctor changed his surname to Kendi - it means the beloved, in Kenyan - and a few years earlier he also replaced his middle name, Henry, with Xolani (peace in Zulu), due to Enrique from Portugal and its relation to the slave trade.

Today in the US become one of the voices with the most echo on racism, Kendi speaks of his desire to transform the world and says goodbye in a hurry, launching one last message.

"I try to bring clarity to ordinary people so that they can understand not only the history of racism, but how they can be part of the fight against racism and create a more equitable world."