“Racist policies forcing free Blacks into menial jobs were being defended by racist claims that lazy and unskilled Black people were best… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“Others channeled—or were led to channel—their economic and political frustrations into racist ideas, which then led to more hatred of Black people.… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“most probably consumed the racist ideas, distancing themselves from Black people.” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“King Kong was stunningly original for showing images of racist ideas—without ever saying a word about Black people,” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“Did Jefferson really believe Black people were smart in slavery and stupid in freedom?13 Notes” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“The confines of enslavement were producing Black people who were intellectually, psychologically, culturally, and behaviorally different, not inferior. Benjamin” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“the only thing wrong with Black people is that we think something is wrong with Black people.” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“If Black people make up 13.2 percent of the US population, then Black people should make up somewhere close to 13 percent… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“the discrimination was ignored or discounted, and the fiscal habits of Black people were blamed for the growing fiscal inequities and segregation… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“A group we can call segregationists has blamed Black people themselves for the racial disparities. A group we can call antiracists has… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“Americans reading early colonial newspapers learned two recurring lessons about Black people: they could be bought like cattle, and they were dangerous… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“The more antiracist W. E. B. Du Bois became, the more he realized that trying to persuade powerful racists was a waste… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“It is one antiracist thing to say discriminators treated Black people like they were barbarians. It is yet another racist thing to… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“That is what it truly means to think as an antiracist: to think there is nothing wrong with Black people, to think… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“The system's acts are covert, just as the racist ideas of the people are implicit. I could not wrap my head around… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“Young Black males were twenty-one times more likely to be killed by police than their White counterparts between 2010 and 2012, according… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“One of racism’s harms is the way it falls on the unexceptional Black person who is asked to be extraordinary just to… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“All these self-serving efforts by powerful factions to define their racist rhetoric as nonracist has left Americans thoroughly divided over, and ignorant… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“With Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson emerged as the preeminent American authority on Black intellectual inferiority. This status would… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“With every Black first, the blame shifted to those Black people who failed to break away. Du Bois’s The Crisis tried to… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“When men oppress their fellowmen, the oppressor ever finds, in the character of the oppressed, a full justification for his oppression.” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“assimilationists constantly encourage Black adoption of White cultural traits and/or physical ideals.” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“Enlightenment ideas gave legitimacy to this long-held racist “partiality,” the connection between lightness and Whiteness and reason, on the one hand, and between darkness… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America.” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“From the beginning, it has been a three-sided battle, a battle of antiracist ideas being pitted against two kinds of racist ideas at the… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“newspaper reports of rape constructed white defendants as individual offenders and black defendants as representative of the failings of their racial group,” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“Donald Trump’s economic policies are geared toward enriching White male power—but at the expense of most of his White male followers, along with the… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“individualizing White negativity and generalizing Black negativity.” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“Racially discriminatory policies have usually sprung from economic, political, and cultural self-interests, self-interests that are constantly changing. Politicians seeking higher office have primarily created… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“The vicious housing cycle had already begun. Racist policies harmed Black neighborhoods, generating racist ideas that caused people not to want to live next… — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
“For Jefferson, power came before freedom. Indeed, power creates freedom, not the other way around—as the powerless are taught.” — Ibram X. Kendi Copy Share Image
