A year after George Floyd’s murder, where does the work of dismantling systemic racism in America stand, and what took so long? Ibram X. Kendi, the founding director of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research and co-founder of the forthcoming outlet The Emancipator, joined Jim Braude to discuss his hope that America can become an antiracist country.
“I don’t believe that we can create [a] nation without racial inequality and injustice if we don’t believe it’s possible,” Kendi said about why he’s hopeful. “Abolitionists in Boston believed that we [could] eliminate and abolish slavery. People thought they were crazy. But it was that belief that really drove them. And that belief that we can create an antiracist nation has to drive us today.”
In his book “How to Be an Antiracist,” Kendi shares his own journey of overcoming racist thoughts and assumptions as proof that it’s possible. “Part of my belief in the capacity for people to change is because I know I have changed,” he said.
Kendi, a colon cancer survivor, said that this year of a pandemic has further highlighted how disparities in healthcare damage Black people, even as much of the discussion around racial justice has focused on policing. “What we haven’t spoken about as much is how medical providers also have the power to harm and kill people,” he said. “Medical providers — some of them can train for a dozen years and come out of that still thinking that there’s Black blood and white blood… or people need to be treated differently.”
“I’ve lived all up and down the East Coast… and I actually have yet to live in a city that did not have racial disparities or inequities,” Kendi said about launching an antiracist movement here. “One of the reasons I chose to come to Boston is because my memory of Boston extends back to the 19th century. At one point, it was a cradle of anti-slavery — why can’t we become the cradle of antiracism? Especially when people do not think that’s possible.”
WATCH: Creating an antiracist country
