Unlocking Us with Brené Brown - Brené with Ibram X. Kendi on How to Be an Antiracist
Episode Date: June 3, 2020I’m talking with professor Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist and the director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. We talk ...about racial disparities, policy, and equality, but we really focus on How to Be an Antiracist, which is a groundbreaking approach to understanding uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hi everyone, I'm Brené Brown, and this is Unlocking Us. Today I'm talking with Professor
Ibram Kendi. He's a number one New York Times
bestselling author and the director of the Anti-Racist Research and Policy Center at
American University. He's also an ideas columnist at The Atlantic and a correspondent with CBS News.
He is the author of four books, including Stamped from the Beginning, The Definitive History of Racist
Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction. He has another book called
Stamped, Racism, Anti-Racism, and You, which he co-authored with Jason Reynolds. And it's a remix of the Stamped from the Beginning book that is meant for YA teen readers.
An incredible, incredible book.
And he's got a new book coming out called Anti-Racist Baby, which is a board book that
will be published this month in June.
Completely evidence that it's never too early to start talking about anti-racism. He's also the author of How to Be an Anti-Racist. And that's what we're going to
talk about today. We're going to talk about all of his books, but we're going to really focus on
how to be an anti-racist, which is a groundbreaking approach to understanding and uprooting racism
and inequality in our society and in ourselves. It's an incredible conversation.
I welcome you to the table to sit with us, talk, think, feel, ask, question, and lean
in really, really far to what we need to learn about ourselves and the world.
I want to start this conversation
with a quote from Professor Kendi. By not running from books that pain us, we can allow them to
transform us. I ran from anti-racist books most of my life, but now I can't stop running after them,
scrutinizing myself and my society, and in the process, changing both.
Let's jump in.
All right.
First, let me say that I am incredibly grateful for you joining us on Unlocking Us.
Thank you for that.
Of course.
I'm so happy to be on.
I always start these podcasts with not the perfunctory, but the honest,
how are you? How are you doing right now? I'm okay. I mean, this is quite the time in
American history. And as someone who studies anti-Black racism, I'm simultaneously enraged to see the deathly effects of all of this, as the underscore to all of this?
I think that that has been difficult for me, partly because my colleagues and I, we partnered with the COVID tracking project to build this COVID racial data tracker. And so it's like the premier tracker of racial data on COVID. And so I'm seeing the data coming in and the disparities all over the country. And so that's been difficult. Sadiqa, her family is, and her hometown is Albany, Georgia, and Albany, Georgia, and that
general area of Southwest Georgia has one of the worst outbreaks in the country. And simultaneously,
it's a trauma desert, or it doesn't have a tremendous amount of high quality healthcare,
you know, in contrast to New York City, which also, of course, has been a major
outbreak. And so seeing and hearing those stories firsthand of people suffering,
obviously, it's been difficult. And this is a primarily Black area.
I want to get into, I want to talk a lot about How to Be an Antiracist, your book that I think
is life-changing. I want to talk about your new book that's coming out in a couple of weeks. Tell us the title of that new book.
Anti-Racist Baby. It's a board book.
It's a board. I mean, I can't wait. I want to start because when we talk about the pandemic,
when we talk about what's happening right now in the world with the rebellion,
the protest, you wrote an article that went up on The Atlantic this morning.
Yes.
It's called The American Nightmare. To be black and conscious of anti-black racism
is to stare into the mirror of your own extinction. I want to, can I read a piece of this to you and
ask you about it? Sure. Yeah. Would you rather read it or would you, can I read it to you?
Yeah, you can read it. That's fine. Yeah. Okay. You're using as an epigraph, a quote from Malcolm
X from 1964. We don't see any American dream,
we've experienced only the American nightmare. And then you write, a nightmare is essentially
a horror story of danger, but it is not wholly a horror story. Black people experience joy,
love, peace, safety. But as in any horror story, those unforgettable moments of toil,
terror, and trauma have made danger essential to the black experience in racist America.
What one black American experiences, many black Americans experience. Black Americans are
constantly stepping into the toil and terror and trauma of other black Americans. Black Americans are constantly stepping
into the souls of the dead because they know that could have been them. They are them because they
know it is dangerous to be black in America because racist Americans see blacks as dangerous.
To be black and conscious of anti-black racism is to stare into the mirror of your own extinction.
This is not just about the police brutality.
This is not just about Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.
This is about the tens of thousands of black victims of COVID.
Talk to me about this article.
What do we need to understand? who basically was a book of statistical tables and racial data that showed not only racial disparities in crime rates,
but also racial disparities in infection rates and racial disparities in mortality or I should say death rates. massive amount of racial sort of data to proclaim that Black people were not subjected to racist policies. That wasn't the cause of Black disease, of Black death, and even Black people being
disproportionately arrested and incarcerated. He made the case that this data shows that Black people are headed towards gradual extinction, and it's their fault. They are by nature or behavior a dangerous, diseased, dying people. else is to not recognize the facts. And so this idea, normalizing Black sort of pain and suffering
and death has only continued to this day. And so essentially when you normalize, when you just
believe that Black people should be disproportionately dying of police violence or even COVID-19,
you're thereby not going to challenge, let alone look for the policies that
are actually behind this disproportionate Black death. And so then those who are experiencing
those policies that are then leading to that trauma and terror and even toil, they're going
to be experiencing the American nightmare. And the reason why I use the term the American nightmare is because Black people are constantly told that America is this land of equal opportunity, that police officers really, as Malcolm said 50 years ago, experienced the American nightmare. devastating reminder to me, and because I see this a lot right now, of how
statistics, academics, science can be dehumanizing tools as much as kind of the language that we use.
Yeah, without question. And let me give an example. So when we first were able to start getting states in early April to release racial data, and then we saw these racial disparities, was to say Black people are not taking the virus
seriously. Black people are not socially distancing. There's something wrong with Black
people. And then we were able to disprove that. Basically, survey data in mid-March had already
proven that actually Black people were taking the virus more seriously than white people.
So then it's zeroed into, well, it must be the result of Black
pre-existing conditions. And then those pre-existing conditions are caused by Black people
making disproportionately bad or unhealthy behaviors. So it just always, essentially,
you take these racial disparities, and we've been arguing over their existence even before
Frederick Hoffman. Is it because there's something wrong with Black people or is there racist policy? And those who believe we live in a nation that's post-racial, that there's equal opportunity, they're not going to ever see the racist policies that are even in many cases hard to see. Instead, they're just going to blame Black people. It's almost, and I don't think it's almost, it is the confirmation bias of racist beliefs.
It is. Yeah, it is. And that's what's striking about Frederick Hoffman,
because he opens his book arguing that I am free of bias.
I am free of prejudice or sentimentality. Which should be our first flag, right?
Exactly, right. And then, you know, ends the book stating that the gradual extinction of
Black people is only a matter of time. And it's based on the data. And to give another example, you have many people
arguing that police violence or disproportionate police violence is the result of Black people
being disproportionately violent. And Black people are disproportionately violent, they say,
because we'll just look at the violent crime data. There's this widespread belief that Black neighborhoods
are more dangerous because of violent crime data, the same violent crime data that Frederick
Hoffman in this book in 1896 really popularized. But what Americans don't realize, and this is
what I've been trying to get people to see, is that there's no relationship between
the violent crime in those neighborhoods and the Blackness of the people. In other words,
people believe that the reason why those neighborhoods are violent is because there
are Black people there. And that's why when they see Black neighborhoods, they assume that those
neighborhoods are violent because the Black people and their culture and their behavior and even their genetics are predisposed to violence.
But if that was the case, then all Black neighborhoods would have the same levels of violent crime.
In other words, higher income.
Because that would be the, yeah, that'd be the consistent variable.
Precisely. So higher income Black neighborhoods would have the same levels of violent crime as extremely
impoverished Black neighborhoods.
That is not the case.
And it's not the case in white America.
It's not the case in Asian America, Native America, Latinx America.
In every America, if we want to split up America racially, you have higher levels of poverty,
long-term unemployment. You're going you have higher levels of poverty, long-term unemployment,
you're going to have higher levels of violent crime. Whether you're talking about a white community, a neighborhood with higher levels of violent crime, a Latinx, a Black. So we know
statistically that actually what is the consistent variable is poverty and unemployment. But people
still want to call these dangerous
black neighborhoods as opposed to dangerous unemployed neighborhoods.
One of the things that I find so powerful about your work, there are many things,
but one of the things I find so powerful is your ability to unpack things, lay them out,
and the steps always lead back to policy.
I mean, it always leads back to systemic policy.
And I think that's one of the things I'm trying to get people to realize.
And especially, I think one of the things that happens with our discussions on race
is we personalize groups, meaning we make groups
into individuals. And even though every group is made up of individuals, we say, oh, you know,
well, this group is, you know, disproportionately obese. So therefore, why can't this group, quote, diet or exercise more in the way I used to do when, you know, I weighed a little bit more?
But that's actually, we can't think of groups as individuals.
When we think of, especially, we can't think of disparities as the result of the personal choices of the individuals in groups,
because I think that's what happens. That's how we've sort of been misled into believing.
But when we actually, all of the data points to, and all of the analysis points to,
is that when you have two groups, there's going to be all different types of behaviors in both
groups. Complete variance, right. Precisely. So
you take white people and black people. You have white people who eat unhealthy. You have white
people who are vegans. You have black people who eat in an unhealthy manner. And then you have
black people like me who are vegans. And then you have vegans who are white who don't really eat vegetables. Right. And so it's just so much variable. And so we emphasize the negativities that we see among those individuals who are black and then ignore the negativities among the individuals who are white.
And so we say, oh, those black folk and their soul food, that's why they're unhealthy.
As if you don't have white people who gathered this weekend and had hamburgers and hot dogs only on their barbecue menu. So I think that it's
critically important for us when we think of groups and group inequality to recognize that
what changes communities, what changes groups, it's not their individual behaviors. It's policy change.
I want to slow down here and go into slow motion for a moment because what you're saying is so profoundly important at the crux of, I think, your entire book, and for me as a researcher, it's, it's, we, we take groups and we take stereotypes and characteristics of groups.
And what it seems to me that we do, and I, and I think you write about this, but I want to check
in with you to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. Cause this is what I see. We see the most kind of negative,
socially agreed upon, not good characteristics of groups of color and we assign it to the entire
group. Then we take the best characteristics of one or two people in the white folk group
and assign it to that entire group.
That's true, right? I mean, you see that. Exactly. So that's what I sort of talk about,
how we generalize the individual negativities of people of color while we individualize
the individual negativities of white people. And you know what keeps coming back to me, and I'm going to date myself with this
because this was a huge raging issue
as I was in school and in graduate work.
The bell curve is such an example
of the manipulation of statistical data
to confirm a racist hypothesis. I mean, okay. Yeah, I just, you know what?
We do that. We do that. I can think of times when I do that, maybe not about race, but I do do that with,
I'll tell you where I do it. I do it with political identity. I take the best part of
the people I see in my group and assign it to everyone in my group and the worst part.
And it's so self-protective and self-destructive at the same time, isn't it? It is. It is. And I know, you know, how to be an anti-racist in particular. I remember
giving a talk about this book. I believe I was in Gainesville, Florida.
And this woman who was obviously a Republican or a conservative, you know, got up during the Q&A and basically
challenged me basically by saying, you know, you're just another liberal who is just criticizing
conservatives completely and never being able to sort of look back on the problems of things that
liberals do. And I was like, did you read the book? Because, you know, obviously, you know,
you didn't read the book because the book was just as critical of people who identify as liberals or
Democrats as people who identify as conservatives and Republicans. I want to read something
from the book early on pages. Is it weird when I read to you? Is it okay?
It's fine. Yeah.
Okay. The good news is that racist and anti-racist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and be an anti-racist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race in each moment
determines what, not who we are. And you write, I used to be racist most of the time. I am changing.
I am no longer identifying with racists by claiming to be not racist. I am no longer speaking through
the mask of racial neutrality. I am no longer manipulated by racist ideas to see racial groups
as problems. I no longer believe a black person cannot be racist. I am no longer policing my every action around an imagined white or black judge trying to convince white people of my equal humanity, trying to convince black people I am representing the race well.
This book is incredibly vulnerable in terms of you sharing your own experiences.
Why was that important to you as
you were writing this? So I remember when I was thinking about this book and I was sort of
thinking about the pulse of the book, even the heartbeat of the book, I recognize that the heartbeat historically of racism has been denial,
has been to deny that one's ideas are racist, one's policies are racist,
and certainly that oneself and one's nation is racist.
And so then I was like, okay, by contrast, the heartbeat of
anti-racism is confession, is admission, is acknowledgement, is the willingness to be
vulnerable, is the willingness to identify the times in which we are being racist, is to be willing to diagnose ourselves and our country
and our ideas and our policies. And the reason why that's the heartbeat is because,
like with anything else, the first step is acknowledging the problem. We can't even begin
the process of changing ourselves, of acting in an anti-racist fashion, if we're not even willing to admit the times
in which we're being racist.
And so I realized that essentially to be anti-racist
is to admit when we're being racist.
And so I realized that in order to really give voice to that,
in order to really model that for people,
I had to do that to myself and for myself.
And you do it and you do it throughout the book and you move forward a bunch and you slide back
and you share that with us. To me, that is the heart of the book, that there is such deep humanity
in this book. Was that intentional on your part? Did you write it from a perspective
of this is what it means to be in the human struggle? I think so. And I mean,
I think that, to be honest, the first few chapters were a huge struggle for me to write precisely because of how vulnerable I had to be and how Black people, to be able to have to write about those
times in which I did not value or love Black people, let alone other groups, you know, was
very, very difficult. And so it really wasn't, and so I think I struggled. And it actually,
I think the first few chapters, it took me almost like a year to write. And it really wasn't until,
you know, as I write about in the end of the book that I was diagnosed with cancer, that I just wondered whether indeed I
would even live to see the book come out. And I think because of that, in a way freed me to be
vulnerable and to be completely sort of open and naked in writing the book.
Yeah, there's just courage on every page.
I mean, really.
And you don't, I have to say, you don't see that very often in books.
You don't see that very often in the world.
So thank you for that. I think the central message
is that the opposite of racist isn't not racist. The true opposite of racist is anti-racist.
Can you break that down for us and help us understand how the opposite of racist is
not racist is not the opposite of racist? Sure. So I think, let me say it in this way. So when you think of, so I define a racist as someone
who is expressing racist ideas or supporting racist policies with their action or inaction.
I know we're not supposed to use terms in the definition, but the reason, but I think what's critical about understanding what it means
to be racist is understanding what a racist idea is and what a racist policy is. And once you
understand what a racist idea and racist policy is, you begin to realize that there's a fundamental contrast to that, and that
contrast is not some sort of neutrality. And so if a racist idea is any idea that suggests a racial
group is superior or inferior to another racial group, in other words, a racist idea connotes
racial hierarchy, then what's the opposite of that?
The opposite of that is ideas that connote racial equality, that challenges directly
that idea of racial hierarchy and says, no, all the racial groups are equals.
And there's no in-between racial hierarchy and racial equality.
Either all the racial groups are equals or certain racial groups are better or
worse than others. And so there's no not racist idea. There's only a racist idea and an anti-racist
idea. And the same thing with policy. If a racist policy is leading to racial inequity,
then an anti-racist policy is leading to racial equity. There's no in-between inequity or equity.
And if racist policies lead to injustice, then by contrast, anti-racist policies lead to justice.
There's no in-between injustice or justice. And so then when you take the person, you have people
who are either expressing racist or anti-racist ideas.
So in any given moment, they're either being racist or anti-racist.
There's no not racist sort of category.
And then I should also add very quickly that when people typically say I am not racist, it is in response to someone challenging something that they just did or said that indeed probably was
racist. And so again, I mentioned how the heartbeat or in order to be anti-racist, we have to be
willing to admit the times in which we're being racist. By contrast, in order to be racist, we
never admit the times in which we're being racist. And instead, we say we're not racist.
I have a couple of questions. So what do you say to the person when you say we're either racist
or anti-racist to the person who says that's a false dichotomy? There can be neutrality between
anti-racist and race. There can be neutrality between
unjust and just, between inequality and equity or equality. I can't find what that neutrality is,
but I would really love to know how you answer that because I get that a lot,
especially when I quote you, but I can't think of a single example because the systems are already in place.
And so if we were at net zero, how does that, I mean, it may be so, but we're not. So like,
what do you answer? So I state that, are you, I would, you know, so people have, have actually
asked that. And typically what I state is, are you stating that because from a defensive posture?
In other words, you don't want to identify as racist and you view those anti-racist in some way
that you don't want to sort of identify with. So this is fundamentally defensive. So you can
create a category for yourself. And typically, we know when people are creating categories for
themselves because you can't define your category. And so are you creating this category for us,
or are you creating this category for yourself? And if you're creating it for us,
then define it for us so we can understand it. What does it mean to be not racist?
I know what it means to be racist. I know what it means to be anti-racist. What does it mean to be not racist? I know what it means to be racist. I know
what it means to be anti-racist. What does it mean to be not racist? And if you can't provide a very
clear and consistent definition, then that shows me that you're fundamentally being defensive
and you're fundamentally seeking to create a category for yourself.
That is so powerful. And starting with the defensive posturing that I think there
are people that don't want to be in the racist category, of course, because there's so much
shame attached to that. Yeah. And they don't want to be in the anti-racist category because
there's so much fricking work attached to that. Yes. Do you know what I mean?
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Like anti-racism work is no joke exhausting and vigilant. And there's shame in it too. Cause it's so,
it's interesting because can we dig into something that is kind of at the intersection
of your work and my work to help me figure out something? You don't seem to be, and I've only
read this book in a couple of articles that you've written, or maybe three or four articles
from the Atlantic, but I will be getting the baby board book for sure.
And it'll become my new go-to.
I'm looking at Barrett, who's in here with me.
She's like, this will be the new.
Every baby we know will be getting this book.
You don't seem to be a proponent of shame as a social justice tool.
No.
So let me ask you this question because I think this goes to the creating categories
out of defensiveness.
One of the things that I've seen, I see it a lot in my social feeds.
I see it a lot when I have really difficult Q&As when I'm on book tours. Let's say you and I are talking and I,
I share a racist idea or I make a racist statement and you hold me accountable for that.
Right. Which is fair. You, you know, you question, we dig in, but you say, you know, I am going to feel shame about that
for, you know, most, I think most, maybe not all, but most white, I hope most white Americans,
or maybe Americans in general will feel shame about being held accountable for some race,
for racist thinking or thoughts or speaking. Then I go into shame. But what I, what I'm struggling
helping people understand, and maybe you can share your thoughts on it with us, is being held
accountable for racism and experiencing shame around that is not the same as being shamed about
racism. Yeah. Does that make sense to you at all?
Or am I off?
I don't know.
No, I think it makes sense.
And I think that, well, two things I'm trying to think of what to say first, because I feel
like I'll forget the other.
You ever feel that way?
I mean, all the time. So I think one thing is that, so if we talk about racist ideas because the racist ideas themselves cause you to imagine that you're dry.
Right. And then someone comes along and says, you know what, you're wet and these ideas are still raining on your head.
Here's an umbrella. You can be like, thank you.
You know, I didn't even realize I was drenched.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then, you know, with all these ideas and then the question, this is why I don't think people should feel ashamed, is there were other people and very powerful people in a history
that was constantly raining those ideas on your head.
And so what that means is, for instance, if you're a white American who has racist ideas,
and then you've, let's say, perpetuated those ideas by, you know, let's say not hiring a Black
person because you thought they were lazy, you were simultaneously a victim and a victimizer. And so I think it's critical for
people to recognize that literally, and as I talk about in How to Be an Antiracist, there's a
specific reason why you had so many powerful Americans trying to convince white Americans
that Black people were inferior. It was out of their own self-interest.
And so then white Americans and other Americans were tricked into believing
that Black people should be enslaved in 1855. And then meanwhile, poor whites,
whose poverty was directly the result of the riches of white slaveholders
were like, yeah, it should be this way. And so then those people were able to get richer and
richer. And so me coming to that poor white person who believes Black people should be enslaved
and then who have even sort of worked on slave patrols and brutalized Black people trying to run away, I'm basically coming
to them and saying, here is the way you were a victimizer, and here is the way you were a victim.
And it's critically important, I think, for people to understand people have been tricked.
They've been manipulated. They've been hoodwinked. And that's why I think that's what I want people to realize.
Yeah.
Thank you for the umbrella.
I didn't know I was wet.
I think that might be where we lose people.
Yeah.
Wow.
Do you ever think about this?
You know, I think my background is in social work.
So I have my master's in social work and PhD in social work, and my bachelor's too. And so I've probably taken 20 classes on the nature of oppression.
I guess the thing that always strikes me about oppression as a construct, and I know I'm going to personify it, and I know this is probably not right, but I would love your thoughts on it,
because I've tried to figure it out for so many years is, God, it's so
hard to fight because it has an answer for everything.
Like it is such, do you know what I mean?
Like it's such a formidable foe.
It's like every time it, like when you said to me, I got goosebumps when you said it's raining on you, but part of what it's raining on you is the message that you're dry.
Like it is such a formidable foe, isn't it?
It is.
And I think that it's critically important.
What I'm trying to do is bring people back into reality, right? So they can realize that actually happening to you and what you're doing to other people.
And then you can also begin to see how and why you have people protesting all over this country and who are why people are enraged and why that that resistance, you know, is going to continue. I mean, literally, racist ideas literally separate people from reality,
and it prevents people even, too, from helping themselves. And so, you know, I've talked a lot
in my book about the ways in which even you have Black elites who believe ideas about the Black poor and who sort of reproduce racist
ideas about the Black poor, not realizing that racist policies against them are being justified
through ideas about the Black poor. Or you have white Americans who are believing in racist ideas that, you know, these people of color will just use and abuse and take advantage of so-called social entitlement programs like Medicare for all or increasing social security funding or basic income or other, you know, or paid leave or things that other countries have. And so therefore, I don't want none of that.
And then it results in them not having the social safety net when they fall, their friends not
having it, their family not having it. And then when they fall and become hurt, then they're told
it's immigrants fault. And so it's this constant sort, people being hurt. And then they're believing that
it's these other people who are the source of their pain, as opposed to the people who
they actually support, who are the source of their pain.
I'm a terrible podcast host because I'm sitting here with my hands over my mouth,
and that's not what, I can't do that. But that's my response to this. I read an article, I think it was during the 2016
election. All I can remember is an MD, PhD, public health person. And I think the name of the article
is racism is killing white people. And it's because they were voting against the very things, the services and the safety nets that they
themselves will need just because of the racist rhetoric that they attach to it.
Exactly.
Yeah, Jonathan Metzl, and that's based on his book, Dying of Whiteness.
Is he an MDP?
Is that the one I'm talking about?
MDPHT, yes.
Yeah.
My husband's a pediatrician.
I think I read it in, there was an excerpt of something in American Pediatrics or something.
So tell us who that was and what that book was and we'll put it on our show notes.
So yeah, it's Jonathan Metzl, who's a MD, PhD, I believe at Vanderbilt.
And his book was entitled Dying of Whiteness. And he looks at the white resistance to the extension of Obamacare or even the extension of Medicaid in particular states and how that not only harmed, obviously, people of color disproportionately, but even white people and how the resistance to creating more insurance and affordable health care
has harmed white people, let alone people of color.
Or even probably the most striking aspect of that book was, so he not only looked at
health care, but even the massive debate currently over gun control and gun safety and gun rights and how first and foremost, you've had white men who have been
advocating for the reduction or elimination of gun safety laws so that they can arm themselves,
so that they can protect their families against Muslim terrorists and Black criminals and
Latinx invaders, as they call them.
And what's fascinating is those very states where they've been able to successfully eliminate these gun safety policies, it's led to a massive surge in people being killed, white men being killed by handgun via suicide. So the very people, white men who've been pushing for the reduction in gun safety laws have then led to them, given them greater ability to accumulate guns,
and they've used those guns to kill themselves. So literally people are dying of whiteness.
Can I just ask you just like a no bullshit question here?
Mm-hmm. Why does that make so much sense
to some of us and no sense it seems to other people? Why do some of us see the through line and some of us don't see
the through line? Do you understand what I'm asking? It's a weird question.
Yeah. I think first and foremost, because, card-carrying members of the NRA
who are advocating for the accumulation of weapons by white men, they believe,
I should say, they've been made to believe that the cause of their own personal pain, the reasons why they're struggling
in society, or they don't have more than they already have, is because of these immigrants
and these people of color. They also generalize. When there's a Black person who commits murder or a Latinx immigrant or, you know,
a terrorist who commits murder, in their mind, those are the central sort of problems that are
harming America and threatening them. And so they're in tremendous amounts of fear because
they're constantly told by their politicians, by the
people they listen to, that these are the people you should fear. And then they're told your rights
are being taken away. You know, white men are being chastised and criticised and demeaned by
women, by people of colour, by everybody. And so we are your defenders and
you need to defend yourself through these weapons. But then what's happening is they're
actually getting these weapons and killing themselves. And then all of those individual
suicides are individualized. So there's not this collective national outcry about the incredible level of white men who are committing suicide.
Because, again, if something bad happens to white people, it's individualized.
I've just been thinking a lot about your book around how to be an anti-racist book. And I've been thinking about how there is a very short distance in my mind
between the dehumanizing dog whistle language from this administration to calling the cops on a birdwatcher to George Floyd.
And it's my training, again, I think in social work systems theory that these things lie
on a continuum, but that the walk is very short between these things.
Do you agree with that or disagree with that?
Oh, yeah, I agree. I mean, I actually tweeted out last week, you know, after we heard about
what happened to George Floyd, that we should be seeing that. I think I said something to the
well, let me just sort of say the idea. And that is when it comes to police violence, oftentimes the beginning of police violence
is someone, and in this case, a white woman, calling the police saying, a Black male is
threatening my life. I need your help. Come help me. When indeed, she is actually the person who's
threatening the other person. But anyway, she calls up the police and then the police come imagining that there's this so-called black super predator who's preying on this innocent white woman and that it is their job principally to protect them.
And so then they come, you know, imagining the need for force.
And then Christian Cooper ends up as George Floyd in Minneapolis.
In a split second.
In which an unarmed person is now dead.
And so there's a very straight line from Central Park to Minneapolis.
And we understand because that was essentially the lynching era, but that lynching era has
continued.
And I think I would back the line up because, you know, I think for me, a big part of my
studies was dehumanization and the process and the very invisible process of dehumanizing,
which every genocide in recorded history starts with
dehumanizing and starts with language. So when we hear things like, when we hear things like,
you know, when we talk about immigrants and we use words, the White House uses words like
infestation. And when we talk about, when we use words like, I don't even think I've ever heard white people referred to as thugs in my life.
It's people have a very hard time understanding that once we move people outside of what we believe is humanity, that it's possible to do anything to them.
It is. And I think that is the reason why when you have those racist ideas
that cause you to demonize people of color,
and then that is combined with racist policies
that are over-policing their neighborhoods,
are allowing police officers who kill them to not
be prosecuted or to get off. It only sort of continues this cycle that not only do they not
matter to me, they don't even matter to the state. Right. You wrote something, I think this was a
quote from the New York Times. And I feel like I could
talk to you for, I hope you come back again and we can talk more about all the great policy change
that's happening. That's what I'm hoping. That's what I'm hoping too.
But I want to read this quote because, and it says, by not running from the books that pain us,
we can allow them to transform us.
This is a quote from you.
I ran from anti-racist books most of my life, but now I can't stop running after them,
scrutinizing myself and my society, and in the process, changing both.
That's what we need to be doing. I think mean, I think that this is, I think many of us have learned, you know, even from your work, we have to be constantly sort of growing. We cannot harden ourselves and certainly our children into they're stupid or we're stupid. We have to say, you know what, that was not a smart thing that I did or
said. That was a racist sort of act. But I am not essentially a racist. No one is. Everyone has the
capacity to change. Everyone has the capacity to be anti-racist. Everyone has a capacity to grow.
And if we're not sort of growing as human beings, then what are we?
I mean, what distinguishes humans from other beings?
It's that capacity for self-awareness and growth.
That's right.
Meaning making.
Yeah.
I always go back to that quote from the Shawshank Redemption, get ready, get busy living or
get busy dying.
And I think if you're not learning and growing, which can be painful, stretch marks, bruises, you're dying in a way. Okay.
Ibram, walk me through, because I really want to get one of your books for my soon to be 15
year old son. And so tell me about the sequence of Stamp from the Beginning.
Is there a YA version?
Yes.
So how does it work?
So when I wrote Stamp from the Beginning, which again, chronicle this history of racist
ideas, literally from their origins to the present, so upwards of 600 years of history,
people would come up to me and say, you know what? I wish I would have learned this in middle school and high school.
You know, I wish I didn't understand and know this history.
And so people kept telling me that, you know what, we I wish I this this book needs to be before every middle school or in high school.
And and so we decided that let's create one.
And Stamped from the Beginning is upwards of 500 pages.
And so we decided, you know, we needed a specific book.
And so I asked Jason Reynolds, who's probably one of the more gifted YA novelists
who historically has written on race and racism.
And, you know, he has his own voice and his own style. And I asked him a couple of times,
he said no a couple of times, but, you know, eventually, you know, he agreed. And so he
sort of took a stamp from the beginning and completely rewrote it for young people and in their voice and his sort of patented sort of lyricism. And yeah, they've fallen in love with it. It actually debuted number one, New York Times. So it's, too early to talk to our kids about this. And now you've given us the gifts of a board book, a YA book, and then books for adults.
And that's, you know, I want, I mean, especially in this moment when there are a lot of people who want tools for not only understanding racism themselves, but even teaching and instructing
their kids. And I'm hoping also that people realize that they should be having these
discussions with their children. Their children are not colorblind. The data shows that children
as early as six months recognize race and children as early as two to three years old have begun to consume racist ideas.
And if you're not teaching those children anti-racist ideas, if you're not challenging those racist ideas and they're only going to grow up and then one day say something, you're going to feel completely embarrassed because, you know, like with anything else,
people have to be taught to be anti-racist just as they're taught indirectly by so many things
they see and experience and hear to be racist. And I think it's been also my experience that
when you don't, the biggest mistake a lot of people I see making is we don't talk about race,
but we've raised nice and kind kids.
So we assume that that's going to translate to something and it translates to nothing except
the messaging that it's scary and not okay to talk about race. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, if the
modeling, I mean, can you imagine there are adults and many adults, you know, who struggle to talk about race and racism.
And, but could you imagine if those adults were talking about these issues as early as two or
three or one, or as soon as you can speak? I mean, then, and I think part of this also is,
you know, as I'm learning on sort of thinking through how to parent my child, of course, we've learned
from you. And, you know, one of the things we're trying to model for her is how to have difficult,
uncomfortable conversations and how necessary those conversations are for her having a healthy,
happy, and productive and impactful sort of life. And, and, and so this is these, this talking about
race and racism is one type of difficult conversation we need to teach her how to have.
Yeah. And God, I mean, I just don't think there's a bigger gift that we,
on top of knowing that you're loved and worthy of love and belonging. I don't know if there's
a greater gift that we can give our kids than the ability to lean into difficult conversation and to be vulnerable.
Yeah.
Okay.
I have this last 10 rapid fire and it's really important.
It's more lighthearted, but it's about getting to know you as a person.
And I think sometimes one of the hardest things about being an activist is not being seen
as a person and can be sometimes dehumanizing in its own way. So if you would allow
me, I'd love to ask you these 10 questions. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Ready? Number one, fill in the blank.
Vulnerability is? Courageous. Number two, your call to do something brave, but your fear is real
and it's stuck right in your throat, what's the first thing you do?
Think about what the right thing to do is and focus on that rather than my fear.
What is something that people often get wrong about you?
That I'm very, very serious and angry all the time.
Okay. What's the last show that you binged and loved that we binged um let's see
probably oh god what's the the show that was the probably the lead show on hbo
that just ended.
I'm forgetting the name of it.
Game of Thrones?
Game of Thrones, yes.
Okay, got it.
Game of Thrones.
So literally, my wife and I, we hadn't seen it at all, any of the episodes, and we just
binge-watched it late last year, and we both really liked it, except the ending, of course.
Now, that's a binge.
That's a hella binge right there if you watched it all.
Okay, a film that you a binge. That's a hella binge right there if you watched it all. Okay. A film that you really love. and his son, in which they are sort of lost on this mysterious sort of planet. And they,
you know, he's hurt and they have to figure out a way to elude people, or I should say beings and
beasts that are trying to kill them. And Will is seeking to really get his son and speak through
his son to get his son to essentially get them both to safety because
he's hurt. And I remember at one point he's trying to encourage him to face this
dangerous or horrible sort of villain beast that sort of makes up the movie. And he says something
to the effect that, you know, fear is not real. Danger is real, but fear is a choice.
And he obviously wanted him to make a different choice.
God, what a quote.
Yeah.
Okay. A concert that you'll never forget.
Probably. So I, one of my favorite groups in the nins when I was growing up was Jagged Edge, this R&B group.
And so I was able to not only see them in concert, but even meet them.
And when I was a freshman, well, not a freshman, when I was at FAMU where I did my undergrad in Tallahassee, Florida.
Favorite meal?
So I say my favorite food now is probably avocado. And it's fascinating because
I only really started eating avocado probably in the last five years. And one day, and I'm the type
of person, if it doesn't look good to me, then I'm not going to want to eat it. And so since it was
like green, I'm like, how could, like, how could, it just looks weird.
But then one day I tried it and I haven't looked back since.
The rest is history, avocado history. Okay. What's on your nightstand right now?
Where, oh.
He's literally looking at it. What the Eyes Don't See, which is a story of crisis, resistance, and hope in American
City by Mona Hanna-Attisha, which essentially is the story of the Flint water crisis and
how this pediatrician was very critical in not only sort of breaking the problem or demonstrating
the problem, but even seeking to lead its recovery.
Okay. A snapshot of an ordinary moment in your life that brings you real joy.
Ordinary moment is, you know, my four-year-old daughter. I'm home after being somewhere and she
just jumps into a massive sprint. She'd come and say hello and hugs me
around my legs. That always brings me joy. Yeah. Last one. What's one thing that you're
deeply grateful for right now? I think I'm deeply grateful for being surrounded by people who sort of practice love with me and who, you know,
show their love as I seek to sort of show my love to them. And so, you know, people,
I believe people choose to love and I'm sort of deeply grateful that people have chosen to love me.
Well, your work is life affirming and-changing. Professor Ibram Kendi,
How to Be an Anti-Racist. We just have a couple of short weeks to wait for Anti-Racist Baby,
the board book, to come out. I'll make sure that we profile that on all of our channels,
and we'll put it up on brennabrown.com. I think danger is real. To go back to your quote, I haven't seen that movie, but that quote's amazing.
Danger is real, but fear is a choice.
And I am grateful for you for choosing courage.
Thank you for making us braver.
Well, thank you.
And of course, thank you for all your work.
And I'm glad we had a chance to sit down and talk about this.
Me too.
Thank you. racism and everything he has to teach us. If you want to follow Dr. Kendi on Twitter,
he's Dr. Ibram at D-R-I-B-R-A-M, Instagram at I-B-R-A-M-X-K. You can also go to our show page
on brennabrown.com and you'll see all of his books, links to all of his books, and how to find him on social media,
his website, and learn more about the work he does. I always sign these podcasts, I sign off
on these podcasts by saying, stay awkward, brave, and kind. And I would add to this one,
in addition to awkward, brave, and kind, I know we have to make choices.
We have to use our voice in service.
And for me, that doesn't always, that rarely means giving voice to the voiceless.
I think the voiceless have voices and they've been screaming for centuries.
I think our work is to show up, be brave, give ears to the earless.
And that's not easy.
But right isn't easy very often.
Take good care of yourselves.
Unlocking Us is produced by Brene Brown Education and Research Group.
The music is by Carrie Rodriguez and Gina Chavez.
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