"The book is ultimately about the basic struggle we're all in," writes Ibram X. Kendi in "How to Be An Antiracist" (One World, $27), "the struggle to be fully human and to see that others are fully human." To say that Kendi's new book is timely may be the understatement of the year.
Kendi, director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C., advocates for, among many other things, a fundamental change in the kind of language we employ to think and talk about racism. In some ways, the seeds of the book began to take shape when 17-year-old Kendi competed in a Martin Luther King Jr. oratorical contest. He delivered the speech to much acclaim, but years later, recalls it with shame. The speech, he says, was racist against Black people. The book explains why and in doing so, offers an insightful, expansive and more practical definition of racism.
In a recent phone conversation with Newsday, Kendi talked about the book.
