Yes! Yes! Yes! Kendi! Kendi! Kendi!

I originally started this blog because I feel that it's important to be able to call out examples of systemic racism, name them and explain them, before it will be possible for me to do anything in the way of working toward policy changes needed to end systems of racism. End them? Reform them? Improve them? Eradicate the inequity. The original problem was that I had benefited from systemic racism all my life and I wasn't able to explain any examples. I couldn't put my finger on any of it. I'm still learning. That's why I'm still here. 

I just finished reading How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi in which the author explained it the same way I have been thinking it: 

"All forms of racism are overt if our antiracist eyes are open to seeing racist policy in racial inequity" (p. 221).  

I learned that before this book he wrote another one called Stamped from the Beginning, in which he reveals three years worth of research he did to collect as many examples of racist ideas as he could find. Obviously that's now on my reading list.

First, though, I have to read Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. This is the history book I have been dreaming about and I can't wait to get started.    

What I really need to get to is writing about examples of systemic racism. Obvious ones. Not-so-obvious ones. Ones that I can relate to. Or not. It's all important. There are so many stories. I'll never be able to explain this to other people and help them learn what I have learned if I don't understand it deeply. I can read until I'm blue in the face, but part of my learning is about my writing about what I have learned. Connecting to the knowledge. That's why I'm here. 


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