Top 200 Ibram X. Kendi Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals. But policies determine the success of groups. And it is racist power that creates the policies that cause racial inequities.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

2. “To know the past is to know the present. To know the present it to know yourself.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

3. “What’s the problem with being “not racist”? It is a claim that signifies neutrality: “I am not a racist, but neither am I aggressively against racism.” But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” It is “antiracist.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

4. “Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

5. “The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what – not who – we are.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

6. “Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It’s a pretty easy mistake to make: People are in our faces. Policies are distant. We are particularly poor at seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles of people.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

7. “One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

8. “What if we realized the best way to ensure an effective educational system is not by standardizing our curricula and tests but by standardizing the opportunities available to all students?”

— Ibram X. Kendi

9. “Racial discrimination” is an immediate and visible manifestation of an underlying racial policy. When someone discriminates against a person in a racial group, they are carrying out a policy or taking advantage of the lack of a protective policy.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

10. “I do not use “microaggression” anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts – “micro” and “aggression.” A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term “abuse” because aggression is not as exacting a term. Abuse accurately describes the action and its effects on people: distress, anger, worry, depression, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

11. “If there’s one thing we know about humans, it’s that most of us are followers. Looking for something to be part of to make us feel better about our own selfishness.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

12. “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”20.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

13. “Racist” and “antiracist” are like peelable name tags that are placed and replaced based on what someone is doing or not doing, supporting or expressing in each moment. These are not permanent tattoos. No one becomes a racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be one or the other.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

14. “Critiquing racism is not activism. Changing minds is not activism. An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change. If a person has no record of power or policy change, then that person is not an activist.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

15. “To be antiracist is to view national and transnational ethnic groups as equal in all their differences. To be antiracist is to challenge the racist policies that plague racialized ethnic groups across the world. To be antiracist is to view the inequities between all racialized ethnic groups as a problem of policy.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

16. “Racist ideas love believers, not thinkers.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

17. “Racist policy” says exactly what the problem is and where the problem is. “Institutional racism” and “structural racism” and “systemic racism” are redundant. Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

18. “Definitions anchor us in principles. This is not a light point: If we don’t do the basic work of defining the kind of people we want to be in language that is stable and consistent, we can’t work toward stable, consistent goals.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

19. “Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

20. “Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

21. “To be antiracist is to think nothing is behaviorally wrong or right- inferior or superior- with any of the racial groups. Whenever the antiracist sees individuals behaving positively or negatively, the antiracist sees exactly that: individuals behaving positively or, not representatives of whole races. To be antiracist is to deracialize behavior, to remove the tattooed stereotype from every racialized body. Behavior is something humans do, not races do.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

22. “Racial-group behavior is a figment of the racist’s imagination. Individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

23. “The most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a White ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a ‘race-neutral’ one. The construct of race neutrality actually feeds White nationalist victimhood by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non-White Americans toward equity is ’reverse discrimination.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

24. “The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist.’ What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of ’not racist.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

25. “Instead, they define policies not rigged for White people as racist. Ideas not centering White lives are racist. Beleaguered White racists who can’t imagine their lives not being the focus of any movement respond to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter.” Embattled police officers who can’t imagine losing their right to racially profile and brutalize respond with “Blue Lives Matter.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

26. “One of racism’s harms is the way it falls on the unexceptional Black person who is asked to be extraordinary just to survive – and, even worse, the Black screwup who faces the abyss after one error, while the White screwup is handed second chances and empathy.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

27. “Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America. And this fact becomes apparent when we examine the causes behind, not the consumption of racist ideas, but the production of racist ideas.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

28. “One of the fundamental values of racism to White people is that it makes success attainable for even unexceptional Whites, while success, even moderate success, is usually reserved for extraordinary Black people.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

29. “The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

30. “I know that readers truly committed to racial equality will join me on this journey of interrogating and shedding our racist ideas. But if there is anything I have learned during my research, it’s that the principal producers and defenders of racist ideas will not join us. And no logic or fact or history book can change them, because logic and facts and scholarship have little to do with why they are expressing racist ideas in the first place.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

31. “Racist policies harmed Black neighborhoods, generating racist ideas that caused people not to want to live next to Blacks, which depressed the value of Black homes, which caused people not to want to live in Black neighborhoods even more, owing to low property values.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

32. “But one day, Skinner realized that he’d gotten Jesus wrong. Jesus wasn’t in the Rotary Club and he wasn’t a policeman. Jesus was a “radical revolutionary, with hair on his chest and dirt under his fingernails.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

33. “White racists do not want to define racial hierarchy or policies that yield racial inequities as racist. To do so would be to define their ideas and policies as racist. Instead, they define policies not rigged for White people as racist. Ideas not centering White lives are racist.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

34. “Ordinary White racists function as soldiers of racist power. Dealing each day with these ground troops shelling out racist abuse, it is hard for people of color not to hate ordinary White people. Anti-White racist ideas are usually a reflexive reaction to White racism. Anti-White racism is indeed the hate that hate produced, attractive to the victims of White racism.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

35. “Black behavior – not the wrenching housing and economic discrimination – was blamed for these impoverished Black enclaves.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

36. “To be antiracist is to emancipate oneself from the dueling consciousness. To be antiracist is to conquer the assimilationist consciousness and the segregationist consciousness. The White body no longer presents itself as the American body; the Black body no longer strives to be the American body, knowing there is no such thing as the American body, only American bodies, racialized by power.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

37. “Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

38. “Time and again, racist ideas have not been cooked up from the boiling pot of ignorance and hate. Time and again, powerful and brilliant men and women have produced racist ideas in order to justify the racist policies of their era, in order to redirect the blame for their era’s racial disparities away from those policies and onto Black people.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

39. “White supremacists love what America used to be, even though America used to be – and still is – teeming with millions of struggling White people. White supremacists blame non-White people for the struggles of White people when any objective analysis of their plight primarily implicates the rich White Trumps they support.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

40. “No one becomes racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be one or the other.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

41. “Since the 1960s, racist power has commandeered the term “racial discrimination,” transforming the act of discriminating on the basis of race into an inherently racist act. But if racial discrimination is defined as treating, considering, or making a distinction in favor or against an individual based on that person’s race, then racial discrimination is not inherently racist. The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

42. “As long as the mind thinks there is something behaviorally wrong with a racial group, the mind can never be antiracist. As long as the mind oppresses the oppressed by thinking their oppressive environment has retarded their behavior, the mind can never be antiracist. As long as the mind is racist, the mind can never be free.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

43. “And the slaveholding producers of racist ideas had convinced legions of Americans to see slavery as a necessary evil to pay off their debts and build their nation. Besides, it seemed better than the supposed horrific barbarism bound to arise, they argued, from Black freedom.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

44. “The saying “Black people can’t be racist” reproduces the false duality of racist and not-racist promoted by White racists to deny their racism. It merges Black people with White Trump voters who are angry about being called racist but who want to express racist views and support their racist policies while being identified as not-racist, no matter what they say or do.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

45. “Frankly speaking, for generations of Americans, racist ideas have been their common sense.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

46. “Antiracism means separating the idea of a culture from the idea of behavior. Culture defines a group tradition that a particular racial group might share but that is not shared among all individuals in that racial group or among all racial groups.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

47. “The Black child is ill-treated like an adult, and the Black adult is ill-treated like a child.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

48. “The history of racist ideas is the history of powerful policymakers erecting racist policies out of self-interest, then producing racist ideas to defend and rationalize the inequitable effects of their policies, while everyday people consume those racist ideas, which in turn sparks ignorance and hate.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

49. “Racist policies forcing free Blacks into menial jobs were being defended by racist claims that lazy and unskilled Black people were best for those positions.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

50. “When men oppress their fellow-men, the oppressor ever finds, in the character of the oppressed, a full justification for his oppression.” Douglass, amazingly, summed up the history of racist ideas in a single sentence.”

— Ibram X. Kendi