[driveway]

I got Corsi to put me on ignore and I'm still living in his head... fantastic.

It's not that racism has nothing to do with beliefs, it's that what matters is how beliefs influence actions, and that it's actions which need to be called out and addressed. The idea that "racist" should be a descriptive term instead of a perjorative one is coming straight from the work of prominent modern anti racists like Ibram X. Kendi, Layla Saad, and Michelle Alexander. If we continue to use the word 'racist' and 'racism' exclusively to describe motivations or internal biases, we're never going to be able to overcome it as an aspect of our society.

No one is born racist or antiracist; these result from the choices we make. Being antiracist results from a conscious decision to make frequent, consistent, equitable choices daily. These choices require ongoing self-awareness and self-reflection as we move through life. In the absence of making antiracist choices, we (un)consciously uphold aspects of white supremacy, white-dominant culture, and unequal institutions and society. Being racist or antiracist is not about who you are; it is about what you do.

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Kendi goes further, defining the word racist as: "One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea." This incisive definition forces the reader to hold themselves accountable for their ideas and actions.

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Venkataraman: When you call people either racist or antiracist, when you wrote, “It’s not a tattoo that you wear for life. It’s a peelable sticker that you can take on or put on or take off, depending on what you’re doing at any moment. Why do you think that’s important for people to see it as the peelable sticker and not the tattoo? Why is that an important distinction?



Kendi: I think it’s an important distinction because it’s reality. I think we should consider concepts based on the evidence. And for instance, we talked a little bit about white abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison who believed, on the one hand, the deeply antiracist idea that slavery is evil and it shouldn’t live another day and spent his career sort of expressing those antiracist ideas. But what Garrison also said at times is that slavery has separated Black people from humanity, that slavery has literally made Black people into groups, that basically slavery has made Black people subhuman. And so, therefore, he questioned during the Civil War, whether Black people were ready for the civil and voting rights and whether they needed a period of civilization. And so when he was challenging slavery and demanding its immediate abolition, he was being antiracist. In the same essay or the same op-ed or the same speech, he was also saying these people are bruised. He was being racist. Most people who express both racist and antiracist ideas support both racist and antiracist policies. So then we can’t essentially call them racist or antiracist. We have to state that this is what you are being in any given moment as opposed to who you are.

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“My constant invitation to people is to be doing the work within themselves first. There’s a little of this energy right now. With so many businesses and brands being called out, there’s this feeling that once those are toppled, then we’re free; we’re in this post-racial society. It’s like, no, but you’re still racist. You need to examine the ways in which you hold these racist thoughts and beliefs, because that’s the only place where you have complete control. That is what your actual job is, to start with yourself first.


“The thing about allyship is that you don’t get to name yourself an ally. Black and brown people get to name you an ally, and you can’t be an ally to all the Black people. You may be an ally to one particular person who has said, “Because of the way you consistently show up for me, you are an ally for me.” We’re seeing this rush to say “This is my Black Lives Matter statement, and these are the changes we’re going to be making,” but it’s also about slowing down — because you’re just catching up to something that isn’t new. It’s new to you, but it’s not new. When you move too fast and you’re moving with these still unexamined unconscious racist thoughts and beliefs, you’re actually going to do more harm because you don’t yet know what you don’t know.”

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