Dismantling Racism
In “How To Be an Antiracist,” by Ibram X. Kendi, he argues that an idea, action, or policy is either racist, contributing to a history that regards and treats different races as inherently unequal, or it is antiracist, because it is trying to dismantle that history. There is nothing in between. In chapter 8, Behavior, he says “The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies” (101). I can agree with this statement as I have felt like I am not smart enough to get a high score and that only ‘White’ people get high scores. “The idea of an achievement gap between the races — with Whites and Asians at the top and Blacks and Latinx at the bottom — creates a racial hierarchy, with its implication that the racial gap in test scores means something is wrong with the Black and Latinx test takers and not the tests” (101–102). I was speaking to one of the students I am with at Canal Alliance and I asked her why her grade in math was going down, and the first thing she told me was, “Oh I’m not smart enough to understand it. My family says it runs in the family which is why I will never get a good grade.” This statement connects with the quote above and it struck me so much because I had been told the same thing growing up and over the years, I had forgotten about it because I was able to prove that statement wrong until my junior year in high school. Many kids nowadays place themselves in these societal class statuses where they sometimes are at the bottom and do not understand that everybody learns at their own pace and way and there is no such thing as someone being smarter.
Kendi describes how it is misleading to say people’s conditions are the results of their own choices and their own personal responsibility. Focusing only on individual responsibility and agency ignores the larger unjust contexts and structures that impact people’s choices and opportunities. The structural issue that I researched is the impact parental deportation has on immigrant children. I can relate the idea of personal responsibility versus societal responsibility to the structural issue that I researched, by what really determines these families’ choice to migrate and how they have to face barriers and have less opportunities because of the determinant which took them into making the decision to migrate. The lesser known truths about the ways in which Canal Alliance does take personal responsibility to better their conditions and those of others is by constantly keeping up to date with the news and the technology being used in the school system to serve the students in their programs better. Also, they are very consistent in making sure the community is very well informed about current news regarding immigration which I find is also a huge characteristic of being anti racist it holds. “When we racialize classes, support racist policies against those race-classes, and justify them by racist ideas, we are engaging in class racism. To be anti-racist is to equalize the race-classes. To be anti racist is to root the economic disparities between the equal race-classes in policies, not people” (153). Something that really stands out about Canal Alliance is that they choose those students’ whose families are in most need of support to be able to succeed in the school system and attend college. They do not base off their program in only choosing the smartest or wealthiest students but rather the students which they believe will thrive with the help they give and support low-income families. The research that I did about the structural issue impacting the community I am working with deepened my understanding because I was able to connect why some students can be very unmotivated at times in completing school work or in general. I would always wonder why this was and now, I have been able to notice that many of these students have been exposed to traumatic events while being children of immigrant parents. Many of them rarely get to see their parents because they are working more than what is considered full time and are in need of a parents love and affection but they do not have it.
Being antiracist for me means to be able to see things from different points of views no matter who or what it is about. In other words, I like to put it this way, not being color blind. Action also has to be taken when being anti racist in my perspective which can be portrayed through my involvement in Canal Alliance which is an organization who is constantly fighting policies that create racial disparities. I also believe that teaching these young kids in the programs about the awareness of identifying these social inequalities would benefit them when faced by someone who is still color blind to see that there is no such thing as being more privileged or smarter than anybody else in this world. I also take pride in being able to call myself anti racist.
