Ibram Kendi is not Robin DiAngelo

 DiAngelo's Approach is Conservative

White people in America often confront racism in a conservative way by treating the confrontation as an occasion for personal growth rather than social conflict. One source of this attitude is Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility, which I have argued is a profoundly conservative book because it leads its readers to treat racism as a private sin rather than a social issue just as popular, Protestantism has frequently done. I said,

Protestant Christianity generally focuses on salvation from sin through faith in Jesus Christ, but what is sin?  We can divide sins into two categories. There are public sins like oppression of the poor or corruption in public business, and there are private sins like fornication, gambling or drinking. American Protestantism has recognized both, but popular Protestant religiosity has focused much more on private sin than on public sin. Those like the 19^th century abolitionists who have insisted on social justice have faced widespread opposition from religious groups. 

 

The focus on private sin encourages individuals to work for personal development, self-understanding, psychological growth and repentance rather than to engage in social action, and White Fragility fits neatly into this tradition.  Just as Protestantism insists that sin is the inescapable condition of mankind, so White Fragility insists that racism is the inescapable condition of our society. Just as Protestantism says that we should look into our hearts, find the sin there and turn away from it, so, White Fragility says that we should look into our hearts, find the racism there and turn away from it. In both cases, “salvation” comes from personal improvement, not from social action.

 

Kendi is Different

How to be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi is quite different. Kendi insists that racism begins with racist policies that are adopted out of economic or political self-interest. Racist ideas and attitudes are developed and promulgated later to justify the policies. Moreover, Kendi says that changes in attitudes follow rather than precede changes in policies. Therefore, antiracists work directly to change policies. They do not worry much about what is in people’s hearts, because changes in beliefs and attitudes follow policy changes.

What is a “racist policy” in Kendi’s view? He says,

A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations and guidelines that govern people.

Racist policies may exist at any level of society. For example, “redlining” was a racist policy that existed at a societal level and was supported by major political and economic institutions, but racist policies may also be local. For example, a private business in a particular community might recruit its managers from among members of the church to which the owner of the business belongs. Since churches in our society are highly segregated by race, the effect would be to exclude anyone who is not of the same race as the owner.

Then, there are subtle, cultural “policies” that can have the effect of making people from a different culture uncomfortable in a certain group.  For example, an organization’s members might talk to one another in the style of a certain social class, and that might make people of a different social class feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.

Kendi Demands Political Action

Such local practices might be characterized as racist policies, but they are not the focus of Kendi’s interest. Kendi is interested in the policies that create “racial inequity,” which he defines as follows,

Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. Here’s an example of racial inequity: 71 percent of white families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to … 41 percent of black families.

We can see here that Kendi is interested mainly in policies like redlining that have the effect of creating substantial racial inequity. In his view, the job of antiracists is to work to eliminate that inequity. Thus, antiracism for Kendi is fundamentally political. It demands social struggle and political action. However, because of the breadth of Kendi’s definition of “policy,” it is possible for his readers to avoid political action and focus instead on changing their own, individual behavior and on changing the processes in the local organizations to which they belong. People taking this approach can work on “inclusion” rather than equity. This approach is convenient because it avoids social conflict, and in addition it fits well with the ideas advanced in White Fragility. Racism becomes again a private rather than a public sin, and in this reading the book demands not political struggle but personal growth.

I think, however, that this approach misreads Kendi’s intent. Ibram Kendi is not Robin DiAngelo, and How to be an Antiracist is not White Fragility. To be antiracists in Kendi’s sense, we must really support policies that reduce the gap that Kendi calls “racial inequity.” Being more “inclusive” is not enough.