Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 24:2 (Summer 2020)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

SBJT 24:2 (Summer 2020) p. 165

Book Reviews

How to Be an Antiracist. By Ibram X. Kendi. New York: One World, 2019. 320 pp. $29.00.

Over the summer of 2020 as racial tensions began to heat up across the country, the entire nation began groping to understand what they were seeing on their television screens. During that time, two books in particular began flying off the shelves. The first is Robin Diangelo’s White Fragility, and the second is Ibram X. Kendi’s How To Be an Anti-Racist (One World, 2019). Both of these books are #1 New York Times bestsellers, and it is safe to say that their ideas and teachings have now been introduced into the American mainstream. It is not difficult to see the initial appeal of a book like Kendi’s. After all, the title purports to tell readers how to become an “antiracist.” Who isn’t against racism? We all are. So of course every decent person should be interested in the contents of such a book, right? In the face of controversial police shootings and protests, ordinary readers are looking for some guidance on how not to be a part of the problem but a part of the solution. As it turns out, however, Kendi’s book is not a treatise about racism in the conventional sense of that term. For Kendi, being an antiracist is a project in Cultural Marxism. It is an attempt to bring about racial justice, but it does so on terms that are completely antithetical to scripture.

Summary

Kendi’s book is not an academic treatise on Critical Race Theory. Rather, it is a popularized application of Critical Race Theory to our current moment. It is a project to transform theory into “social justice.” Kendi is very concerned that social justice not get lost in the ivory tower of theory. In his own career, that involved moving to Washington, D.C. to take up a teaching post at the American University. Kendi wanted to be closer to the action so that he could impact the policy of the nation. And that is the basic exhortation of his book. He wants readers to focus on changing public policy, not on persuading majorities to accept their theories. He believes that if a minority

SBJT 24:2 (Summer 2020) p. 166

of activists can change policies, then popular opinion will eventually follow. In the meantime, some policies may have to be changed over the will of the majority (p. 230ff).

Kendi argues that one can either be a racist or an anti-racist. There is no in-between position. There is no such thing as being race-neutral. Race-neutrality or “colorblind” approaches are nothing more than thinly veiled racism. Racism is so endemic to the American project that one has to make conscientious daily decisions to oppose racism (and thus be an antiracist