How to Be an Antiracist, Annotated: Behavior
Behavior, Deconstructed
Every time someone racializes behavior — describes something as “Black behavior” — they are expressing a racist idea. To be an antiracist is to recognize there is no such thing as racial behavior. To be an antiracist is to recognize there is no such thing as Black behavior, let alone irresponsible Black behavior. Black behavior is as fictitious as Black genes.
How do White people behave? Is there a common thread of behavior to which we can reasonably point that is indicative of behavior shared by the entire White race? Are we all sarcastic or narcissistic or charming or selfless?
All it takes is a simple look at the friction between White Americans — between political ideologies, religious beliefs, socioeconomic statuses — to acknowledge immediately and unambiguously the diversity of behavior that exists among people whom we identify as White. Much like you, I’ve known countless White people who were nice and who were cruel, who were passive and who were violent, who were selfish and who were generous.
Especially given the cultural, ethnic, and genetic diversity represented within the White race, the idea of any shared racial behavior is in fact absurd. And if we can accept that there is no common White behavior, then we have to accept that there is no common Asian, Black, or Latinx behavior, because there’s just as much cultural, ethnic, and genetic diversity represented within those races.
Granted, culture can effect specific behaviors. One cannot deny cultural norms that exist, both at a macro level within America as well as within distinct regions and communities. But, as Kendi writes, “Antiracism means separating the idea of a culture from the idea of behavior. Culture defines a group tradition that a particular racial group might share but that is not shared among all individuals in that racial group or among all racial groups.”
As we as a society have created this notion of race to establish hierarchies in the self-interest of the people in power, so too have we slid into the trap of assigning observed behaviors to the races, often in ways that confirm our biases. If someone were to believe Black people are unintelligent relative to White people, every interaction with an unintelligent Black person would reinforce this behavioral racism, whereas every interaction with an intelligent Black person would be written off cognitively as an exception to the rule.
Except the rule never existed in the first place. What exists instead is the lie our brain tells us to help us maintain our worldview, something very likely constructed in the first place on a foundation of fantasy perpetuated by racist policies crafted upon that very same foundation.
The Oatmeal does such a great job describing why these rooted beliefs about racial behavior can be so hard to dislodge. It’s long, but it’s worth a read to the end:
Testing as Racial Hierarchy
Intellect is the linchpin of behavior …
Kendi spends a lot of this chapter on formal education and its role in racism. Specifically, he decries the idea of a racial “achievement gap” demonstrated by standardized testing.
Before reading this chapter, I didn’t know that the SAT was originally conceived of by Carl Brigham, a man who championed eugenics and was presumably crafting the foundations of the SAT at the same time he was writing a book about the intellectual superiority of the “Nordic race” based on the results of standardized testing. To Brigham’s credit, he later walked back his own findings on the basis of the circumstances surrounding the tests putting other races at a disadvantage; in other words, the testing itself was inequitable.
The inequity of standardized tests persists to this day. On his own experience with a GRE prep course, Kendi writes (emphasis mine):
It revealed the bait and switch at the heart of standardized tests — the exact thing that made them unfair: She was teaching test-taking form for standardized exams that purportedly measured intellectual strength. My classmates and I would get higher scores — two hundred points, as promised — than poorer students, who might be equivalent in intellectual strength but did not have the resources or, in some cases, even the awareness to acquire better form through high-priced prep courses.
Rather than offering training on the content of the test, the prep course instead focused on the mechanics of the test. And if only some are privileged enough to receive training on the mechanics of the test, then the results cannot possibly be equitable. If the policies around standardized testing — the policies that define the tests, evaluate test results, and prescribe test-taking mechanics — are racist, then the hierarchies of value created by standardized testing results are inherently racist.
Coupled with even deeper systemic issues related to school funding, all of this confounds into an illusion of some racial hierarchy of intelligence or natural ability.
It’s not the Black people somehow lack the ability that White people have to take standardized tests; rather, the long shadow of racism within our institutions have affected Black individuals to such an extent that measures of academic achievement can appear racially consistent. It says nothing about the race of the individuals themselves but rather how our overwhelmingly White society has defined academic achievement in the first place.
Next up: Color
This is not intended to be a Cliff’s Notes excuse not to read the book yourself. I’m a white guy with literally zero lived experience of being affected by racism, and my lens should not be the one through which you learn about this topic. Buy or borrow a copy and read it yourself. Maybe we can compare notes.
