I distilled my understanding of Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist into a note on my refrigerator door for daily reflection:
Anti-racism = Anti-hierarchy
Take it in. Take it all the way in. This empire, our entire culture, is built on the foundation of hierarchy: the concept of better-than. But it’s a concept - an invention of the human mind. Concepts seem real because we tacitly agree to accept them as real - but concepts can always be examined, discarded, replaced. It has happened throughout human history, and it will continue to happen. Seeing hierarchy clearly as an empty concept -- oh, it’s like the child calling out the emperor's nakedness! Only now the emperor has a military force protecting him; but he's still naked.
Anti-racism = Anti-hierarchy
Take it in. Take it all the way in. This empire, our entire culture, is built on the foundation of hierarchy: the concept of better-than. But it’s a concept - an invention of the human mind. Concepts seem real because we tacitly agree to accept them as real - but concepts can always be examined, discarded, replaced. It has happened throughout human history, and it will continue to happen. Seeing hierarchy clearly as an empty concept -- oh, it’s like the child calling out the emperor's nakedness! Only now the emperor has a military force protecting him; but he's still naked.