“I had planned to just go on with my life without trying to educate people on why it’s important,” she said. “I didn’t want to cause an unwinnable argument with family and friends.”
Then, Johnson heard the statement “white silence is violence” and she said it made her realize that turning her back on the issues was “just allowing it to happen.”
Instead, Johnson said she did her best to educate others. Some people she knew on Facebook had changed their profile pictures to “BLM: Burn, Loot, Murder,” and she tried to explain to them why the riots were happening. It’s why she joined the book club, she said: To be more prepared for those types of situations.
Book club member Benjamin Nash, who’s studying information technology mobile application development, said the book shows how racism is heavily tied with racist policies that need to change for a society to become antiracist.
Nash, 40, who’s white, said the book has taught him “how broadly racism is embedded in our culture.” It’s helped him see what type of work needs to be done to overcome it.
In almost every chapter, Kendi gives an example of racist ideas, followed by what antiracism would look like in the same case, Nash said.
For instance, Kendi writes that every time someone describes something as “Black behavior’ they are expressing a racist idea.
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