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  • Published: 15 August 2019
  • ISBN: 9781847925992
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $35.00

How To Be an Antiracist

THE GLOBAL MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER




A radical new way to think about racism and an inspiring treatise for what to do about it from the Winner of the National Book Award 2016 and founding Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center.


**SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**

'Could hardly be more relevant ... it feels like a light switch being flicked on' OWEN JONES

Not being racist is not enough. We have to be antiracist.

In this rousing and deeply empathetic book, Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Antiracism Research and Policy Center, shows that when it comes to racism, neutrality is not an option: until we become part of the solution, we can only be part of the problem.

Using his extraordinary gifts as a teacher and story-teller, Kendi helps us recognise that everyone is, at times, complicit in racism whether they realise it or not, and by describing with moving humility his own journey from racism to antiracism, he shows us how instead to be a force for good. Along the way, Kendi punctures all the myths and taboos that so often cloud our understanding, from arguments about what race is and whether racial differences exist to the complications that arise when race intersects with ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality.

In the process he demolishes the myth of the post-racial society and builds from the ground up a vital new understanding of racism - what it is, where it is hidden, how to identify it and what to do about it.

  • Published: 15 August 2019
  • ISBN: 9781847925992
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $35.00

About the author

Ibram X. Kendi

Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is the author of many books including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and three #1 New York Times bestsellers, How to Be an Antiracist, which was also a Sunday Times bestseller; Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, co-authored with Jason Reynolds; and Antiracist Baby, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. In 2020, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Also by Ibram X. Kendi

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Praise for How To Be an Antiracist

Groundbreaking, brilliant, fearless

David Olusoga (on Stamped from the Beginning), Observer

You should read it for its arguments about what racism is. Nor should you dodge it on the basis that you knew all this already – like me, you almost certainly didn't

David Aaronovitch (on Stamped from the Beginning), The Times

Lucid, accessible, unyielding. Kendi’s most important insight might help rethink anti-racist activism

Sadiah Qureshi (on Stamped from the Beginning), New Statesman

Transformative and revolutionary ... offers us a necessary and critical way forward

Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility

So vital. As a society, we need to start treating antiracism as action, not emotion - and Kendi is helping us do that

Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race

No less than a road map for social change through a remarkable, personal and deeply touching journey. If you take the business of fighting oppression seriously and want to make a difference, this is something you need to read

Leslie Thomas, QC

Gives us the tools to make changes in our own lives and society at large. A must-read

June Sarpong, author of Diversify

Makes clear how we all must engage in the essential soul-searching to understand our own racism and the personal action required to become antiracist

Lord Herman Ouseley, former Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality and of Kick It Out

This is no guidebook to getting woke ... Never wavering, Kendi methodically examines racism through numerous lenses: power, biology, ethnicity, body, culture, and so forth. This unsparing honesty helps readers, both white and people of colour, navigate this difficult intellectual territory. Essential

Kirkus

An electrifying combination of ethics, history, law and science, bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative … an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step

The Voice

Could hardly be more relevant ... it feels like a light switch being flicked on

Owen Jones

Vital... Whether you're an institution ... or an individual in moral paralysis, dumbfounded by the febrile emotions now at large ... you are not alone; hope is on its way

Colin Grant, Observer

Shocking and provocative … he uses his personal story to make his arguments so skilfully that the book is both a memoir and a strident call to arms

Irish Times

One of the pre-eminent intellectuals on race

Owen Jones

Everyone should have a copy of this important, poignant and timely book

Christofere Fila, Amnest International UK

The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind

New York Times

A work of immense moral authority, brilliantly told, it's deeply humane, revolutionary, essential

Thomas Penn, History Today

An incredible book

Gina Rubel, Techregister

One of the US's most respected scholars of race and history... Kendi's argument is brilliantly simple ... His honesty ... is one of the most powerful elements in this compelling book

Afua Hirsch, Guardian