How to Be An Antiracist Ep. 10

00:10

Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the #CauseAScene Podcast Book Club series, “How to be an Antiracist,” Chapter 10. Woo, that’s a lot to say!

So, today’s episode: just bear with me, I’m not sure—it’s gonna have kind of the same format—but there’s some things I need to talk about that have been happening to me personally and publicly that I need to address. So I don’t know if they will be interwoven in this conversation, or I will do it after this conversation. That’s the plan, but if I find a—if I’m having this conversation, and I have a—I see a place to stop and have this, then I will do that and then get back to it.

But we will get started. And so this chapter is called “White.” And this chapter—before I even start—gave me a lot of pause and a lot of opportunity to evaluate how I define racism, how I define, how I view whiteness. And I’m good with what I came up with, so…

01:28

So, the definition—and we always start with that—at the beginning of the chapter:

Anti-white racist: One who is classifying people of European descent as biologically, culturally, or behaviorally inferior or conflating the entire race of white people with racist power.

Okay, so, I ticked off right here—I’m on page, we’re on page 122—I just highlighted:

Racist ideas love believers, not thinkers.

And I’m just gonna say, wooo! Do we not see that—I’ve experienced that a lot this past week, over the past few weeks, but definitely in this past week—the intensity of the believer and not the thinker has been shown, it has shown itself.

02:18

On page 123:

Racist ideas suspend reality and retrofit history, including our individual histories.

Again, let me repeat that, because this is very important:

Racist ideas suspend reality and retrofit history, including our individual histories.

We see this time and time again when individuals refuse to evaluate reality. When they refuse to—this is why that “both sides of the story are equal,” and “let’s have this debate,” and, you know, the libertarian idea is full of bullshit—because I can’t have a conversation with a person who fundamentally will suspend reality in the conversation.

03:15

And how do you have—how do you do that? How do you move forward when one or several parties in a conversation refuse—now, there’re times when I don’t like what the reality is, I would rather ignore it. But for me, I have to figure out where it fits. Does it change what I’m thinking? Does it only… can it be used to, or is it something that validates what I’m thinking? That’s how my brain works.

But I refuse to get into any discussions with individuals who have the ability to suspend reality and retrofit history. There is—that’s not the place I’m going. That’s, that’s not a conversation I’m having.

So on page 122, I mean 124, he talks about:

Earlier in the year, Florida purged fifty-eight thousand alleged felons from the voting rolls. Black people were only 11 percent of registered voters but comprised 44 percent of the purge list. And about twelve thousand of those people purged were not convicted felons.

04:33

So what did I write in the margin here? I wrote, “This is an example of how the systems of racism work together to institutionalize and compound harm.”

So this was about, again, this is why I like to stay on the system’s level. This is why I use the word, the term “whiteness.” This is the way when I say white dudes in tech, I’m not specifically speaking to individual white dudes, I’m talking about the group of white dudes in tech who aren’t doing shit, who are in the way—and not just in the way— but many are actively working against inclusion. This is what I mean when I say this. If I want to choose or talk about individual people, trust me, I have no problem with doing that. But when I’m talking about antiracism / racism, when I’m talking about these, I’m talking about the systems that white people benefit from.

Then further down there says:

Blacks were ten times more likely than whites to have their ballots rejected.

05:38

And so that’s—this is a conversation about the election that the second Bush won over Gore. And in the state of Georgia, we just experienced that with Kemp and Stacey Abrams. We just had that same experience in 2018 where the Secretary of State—who was also running for governor, who has also been spending the last I don’t know how many years purging the rolls of African American and brown and Black people in the state—was the one who got to choose what the rules were.

And so it’s not—that was in 2000—it wasn’t… I mean, that’s what? 18 years later and it’s still happening.

They amassed the courage…

At the bottom of the page:

They amassed the courage I did not have, that all antiracists must have. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the strength to do what is right in the face of it,” as the anonymous philosopher tells us.

06:40

So, your first assignment for this chapter is from this page, page 124:

If your goal is to live and function as an antiracist, do you honestly have the courage to do what is right in the face of fear?

Again, let me repeat that—and this is gonna be tied into the conversation I’m gonna have later.

If your goal is to live and function as an antiracist, do you honestly have the courage to do what is right in the face of fear?

So now we’re gonna go to page 125:

Racist ideas often lead to this silly psychological inversion, where we blame the victimized race for their own victimization.

07:22

So in the margin I wrote, “This is why I will no longer question the motives of marginalized folx.” Because—I use this jokingly, as an example—and this is for Omarosa; this is for Candace Owens; this is for Diamond and Silk or whatever their names are; this is for… the more I know about and learn about white supremacy and evaluate it and research it and pull back the onion on it—and I talk about Blacks having their own internalized white supremacy and anti-Blackness that they have to deal with—I can not condemn these individuals for the choices they make. Now, that does not mean that I want to be in the space with them, because they would, being in a space with them would ensure that I’m not safe.

So no, I don’t have to be in a space with them. I don’t have to agree with them. And yet, with how these systems of oppression are, I will not question them. They can go ahead and do whatever they need to do—’cause it doesn’t impact what I’m doing—because the bottom line is they’re Black, and at some point they’re gonna have the same experiences we are.

And Omarosa saw that, when she left, how she really realized that they did not see her as their equal. And it’s also telling that a Black woman could go in the Situation Room, which is supposed to be electronic-free, and not only be able to go in and record audio and video, it’s telling how they underestimated her. It’s telling how they did not see her as a threat.

And so, you know, that’s the shit they gotta deal with, and I’m gonna let them deal with it. But I will not—I will no longer judge. And so I have people sending me stuff about Black people, and I’m like, “Yeah, you know, that’s some shit they gotta deal with. I gotta deal with my own shit.” ‘Cause this is some real stuff. Internalized… I mean, this is some deep, deep self-evaluation that I’m undertaking just to, you know, stand up straight; just to keep this work going; just to—and based on this chapter, we’re gonna talk about it—just to not hate white people. And I don’t. And I never have. But I can see how people do. And I can’t question it. So, and this is why I talk about whiteness as a construct and as a part of a system.

10:09

So I go to page 127, where it says:

White people showed me they did not actually care about national unity or democracy, only unity among and democracy for white people!

And then my note is, “Same that we see today.” Then he talks—so I’m going to read this little bit—so on page 128, ’cause this is the part that also had questions in the beginning about his statement about Black people can be racist. So I’m gonna talk about this a little bit and take you through how I—my process and what I came to, the conclusions I came to for this for myself.

Okay, so it says:

“I totally reject…

So it was following Elijah Muhammed, who—or was studying Elijah Muhammed, ‘cause he was dead that point—who was the founder of the Nation of Islam. And so, midway in chapter one—I mean, paragraph one on 128—what I’m about to read is a quote from Malcolm X from 1964, after he’d spent his time following Elijah Muhammed, who was the founder of nation Islam:

“I totally reject Elijah Muhammed’s racist philosophy, which he has labeled ‘Islam’ only to fool and misuse gullible people, as he fooled and misused me,” he wrote. “But I blame only myself, and no one else for the fool that I was, and the harm that my evangelic foolishness in his behalf has done to others.”

11:47

And then he said—then he talks about:

Months before being assassinated, Malcolm X faced a fact many admirers of Malcolm X still refuse to face: Black people can be racist toward white people. The NOI’s white-devil idea is a classic example. Whenever someone classifies people of European descent as biologically, culturally, or behaviorally inferior, whenever someone says that there is something wrong with white people as a group, someone is articulating a racist idea.

Okay, this is how I make the distinction. And I’m gonna go back to where, at the beginning of Chapter One, on page 13, when he has the definitions; there’s a definition of what “racist” is and what “antiracist” is. So:

Racist: One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.

Antiracist: One who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.

And then on page 17, he talks about:

To be a racist is to constantly redefine racist in a way that exonerates one’s changing policies, ideas, and personhood.

[…] What is racism? Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produce and normalize racial inequities.

13:23

Okay, I’m gonna pause here because I really want to break this down. Because there’s a distinction that I am getting from this that he’s not making. And this is where I love about social sciences and theories and, you know, academic theories, because they can align and still be different. This is why—the value of inclusion and diversity—because you get people from different perspectives saying different things.

How Dr. Kendi, as I interpret his reading, is any individual who… so one who is supporting a racist policy through their actions and inaction or expressing racist ideas. So for him, to be antiracist is to see nothing about the races that is different.

So let me, let me go out a little bit on this. If for me to be antiracist—and if I’m Black—if I have any thoughts that say that there’s something inherently wrong with whiteness or white people, then that is a racist idea. I, and other—and people have been doing this research in social science—ascribe to a different turn on this.

So for me—and this is why it’s about, to me, about prioritizing the most vulnerable—because what he speaks of there comes… umm. I’m tryna—’cause I don’t… I’m just gonna tell you my interpretation is about equality. It’s not about equality for me, it’s about equity. And it kind of goes back to his statement before, where he says, “Racist ideas often lead to this silly psychological inversion where we blame the victimized race for their own victimization.”

15:14

And that is where, for me, that statement causes harm. The statement of Black people can be racist towards white people. Because we are victims of racist white policies. How we choose to assert, how we choose to empower ourselves, how we choose to address these issues on an individual level, have absolutely nothing to do with or impact how these racist policies impact our lives as a system on our individual lives. Or in our community lives.

So it’s not a balance. It’s not an equal. It is not an equation. One plus… you know, this is not a strict equality, and this is where you get racists who will take these words and use them against those of us who are working to be antiracist. Because, yes, a Black person can have, espouse racist ideas. They cannot be racist because to have—to be racist—is to not only have racist ideas, but access to and have the ability to leverage racist policies. And Black people, collectively, individually, cannot do that.

So that’s how I—’cause I really thought about this—and I’m glad we’re having this chapter, this read, because this is the thing that kind of, I don’t want us to lose because it’s very important. So basically, he just went on his own journey of trying to just understand why whiteness, why is it so destructive? Why does it hoard wealth? Why is it the way it is? And many Black people, in their struggle to understand what the fuck is going on, have been there. I’ve been there. It wasn’t until I understood the systematic part of this where I could say, “Oh, this is not about individual white people, because they themselves are—and he goes into this and it’s in the chapter as well—they themselves are victims of white supremacy.”

17:41

So at the bottom of 129:

Racist power, hoarding wealth and resources, has the most to lose in the building of an equitable society. As we’ve learned, racist power produces racist policies out of self-interest and then produces racist ideas to justify those policies. But racist ideas also suppress the resistance to policies that are detrimental to white people, by convincing average white people that inequity is rooted in “personal failure” and is unrelated to policies. Racist power manipulates ordinary white people into resisting equalizing policies by drilling them on what they are losing with equalizing policies and how those equalizing policies are anti-white.

And that speaks a lot to what we’re seeing every single day—and I’m just going to say this in the tech space, this is what we’re seeing in the tech space—where, when we’re talking about inclusion and diversity, white folx see it as a zero sum game. And when I talk about let’s prioritize the most vulnerable because if the most vulnerable feels safe, that means we have addressed as much as we can in a system that oppresses us all. To remove as much as that as possible, or to mitigate for it, to plan for it, whatever you—we—have to do, so that if the most vulnerable feel safe than the rest of us by default feel safe, and that—it—will even the alleviate a lot of anxiety, and we know where we stand in our jobs, all these other kind of things.

And so this is why the book “Dying of Whiteness“—I really want to get Jonathan Mertz? [correction: Metzl] I think that’s his last name, M-E-R-T-Z, I think that’s his last name—on this show to really talk about how white folx in the US have damned themselves to reality based on racist principles, racist ideas that make them lose, whereas if they align with those who have similar issues, but from different “races,” they would have a better—they would prevail—they would have a better experience.

20:00

So, on page 130:

Claims of anti-white racism in response to antiracism are as old as civil rights. When Congress passed the (first) Civil Rights Act of 1866, it made Black people citizens of the United States, stipulated their civil rights, and stated that state law could not “deprive a person of any of these rights on the basis of race.”

Well, that was the reason we had Jim Crow and all that other stuff. So your question number two, homework number two from this page is:

I want you to do some research, because on the 13th of November, there was a case put before the Supreme Court, and it was Comcast versus National Association of African American Owned Media. And I want you to write about your thoughts about this.

So, I’m not gonna give you any background, ’cause this is your work to do. So your homework is to do some research on this recent Supreme Court case—and it was this week; it was Wednesday, November 31st, I mean, excuse me, November 13th—do some research on the Supreme Court case of Comcast Versus the National Association of African American Owned Media, and I want you to write down your thoughts.

21:18

All right.

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.

So your third question of this week is:

List 10 ways in which you commonly, regularly, center whiteness, your interests, and your comfort.

And I need you to be honest about this. No one has to see this [but] yourself, but I want you to:

List 10 ways in which you commonly, regularly, center whiteness, your interests, and your comfort.

22:03

All right, on page 131:

Ordinary white racists function as soldiers of racist power. […] 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.

And yet racist power thrives on anti-white racist ideas—more hatred only makes their power greater.

So I wrote in the margins, “This is why I speak in generalities,” and I talked about that already. This is why when we’re gonna talk about Blackness, we’re gonna talk about whiteness. And this is why I say white folx, white guys, white women. I’m not speaking in specific people. If I’m speaking of specific people, I will say that. And I will say that if these specific people are pulling the levers of white supremacy in certain ways.

Going after white people instead of racist power prolongs the policies harming Black life. In the end, anti-white racist ideas, in taking some or all of the focus off racist power, become anti-Black. In the end, hating white people becomes hating Black people.

23:24

And I so agree with that. This is why I don’t hate white people. Now I don’t trust you; that’s something totally different. And I—and for some people, people like to conflate those same things—I don’t hate white people. I don’t have an opinion about many white people like you don’t have an opinion about many Black folx. But what I do know is, based on my experiences, I will no longer default trust you without consistent demonstrated antiracist behavior. I don’t owe you trust. Trust is something that has to be earned.

And that is the problem. White supremacy says that whiteness is trusted by default, it is good by default, it is the hero or the victim; it’s never the villain. Well, I’m here to say that white supremacy is always the villain. And because I am a victim or a target of this villainry, I do not trust white people by default. That does not mean I’m gonna be nasty to you; I just may not say shit to you. And I have every right not to speak to you. I don’t have to speak to people I don’t want to speak to. I… doesn’t mean that I’m gonna go out of my way to ruin your life, as people have said. No, I’m gonna bring up some shit. And if you have to deal with the consequences of your actions, then that’s what it is. It’s not about ruining your life.

We’ve always—I’ve, I’ma speak for me—I’ve always had to deal with the consequences of my actions professionally and it’s the first time the white folks have ever had to do that. And so it’s jarring. I get it. But I don’t give a fuck because we’ve always dealt with not only the consequences of our actions, but the consequences of made up actions, things that we haven’t done, the consequences of actions of other peoples who have who have blamed us for their actions, all kinds of stuff. So, no, I just don’t have any empathy for that. I can’t put myself in your shoes—and I refuse to put myself in your shoes on that—I have no sympathy for it. I understand it, but—and, I’ma put a period on that.

I understand it. Yes. I’m not gonna make myself a target; I’m not gonna make myself uncomfortable; I’m not going to make myself a victim; I’m not gonna lose out for me just so—because you feel the way you do. It’s not happening anymore.

25:31

And then there’s… on the same page, 131:

ANTI-RACIST IS A CODE WORD FOR ANTI-WHITE.

This is how they’re framing it.

White supremacists are the ones supporting policies that benefit racist power against the interests of the majority of white people.

I need y’all to notice: I don’t have no fucking power. We don’t have the power to do this.

White supremacy is a code for anti-white and white supremacy is nothing short of an ongoing program of genocide against the white race.

26:06

And then, I’m gonna end this part of the conversation with these two thoughts. It says, on page 134:

Why do you spend…

He was talking to his friend Clarence; he says:

“Why do you spend so much time trying to figure out white people?”

And then:

“Because figuring them out is the key! Black people need to figure out what they’re dealing with!”

And I wrote down at the end, “This is why I prioritize the most vulnerable.” So, that is the lesson from that.

26:33

And let me get into this conversation that I really want to have. And it’s because of what has been happening, this long, entrenched issue that started with Amy’s comment, which led to John jumping in being an asshole, which led to Chuck, who decided he was gonna defend his friend. But in defense of his friend, Chuck decided to make… call me out individually and make me a target. He creates a video that doesn’t go as well as he thinks he should. So now he wants to play the game of, “Oh, let’s have a meeting.”

I’m not having a sit down with anybody—him or anyone else—because I create enough content that tells you exactly where I feel on these issues. I don’t need to justify ’em; I don’t need to debate them; I’m not doing that with anybody. I don’t care if it was anybody who came—’cause there were like two other people came to me—I’m not doing that. I don’t owe anyone any explanation.

I started #CauseAScene, March of 2018, because of my desire, my needs, the things that I need it to… and the challenges I saw within the community. The fact that people follow me, believe in me, whatever; that’s kudos, that’s gravy. But it’s not why I did this. I needed a platform for me to say and do how I wanted to say and do what I needed to say and do. So I don’t have to explain myself to anybody.

28:14

And that’s also a problem with white supremacy. It is pissed off that I refuse to debate it, that I refuse to acknowledge it beyond—why would I debate an individual about a system?—that makes absolutely no sense to me. You are not the system. You are an individual that benefits from it unfairly. But I’m not gonna debate you about a system. No, no. It’s particularly if you’re not a person who’s under the—well, I’m not gonna debate anyway—but I’m not even going to have a discussion with you. Even… it’s—particularly if you’re not a person who understands that you benefit from the system.

So this past week, there was an “article”—quote unquote “article”—that came out from an individual who wanted me to participate. But if he was genuine and wanted me to provide some quotes for his article when he posted this piece of shit, he would have sent me the link. I only came across this link when I was going through my timeline and other people who I trust’s timeline, who are engaging with individuals, and I just started blocking people. And it was one of the people that I blocked; I saw this article.

So I’m looking at the article, and it has all this stuff. First of all, this issue with Chuck and this conference had nothing to do with a MAGA hat. It had everything to do with the fact that there are some people in the community who were gonna attend this event who felt unsafe or questioned their safety based on this. They weren’t being heard as I thought they were. They were being dismissed and I amplified it.

29:47

And actually Linux Foundation didn’t even respond to my tweet; they responded to somebody else’s tweet who quote-tweeted my tweet. So, but here we are that I’m the target of all this. And I caused all this—this individual, this Chuck person—to be disinvited. And I’m gonna pause here and say, many of you have not understood that we are moving into a more inclusive and diverse agenda in tech because we have to, and you’re still holding on to the status quo.

Many more of you will be disinvited. And I have no problems with that at all. None. I have absolutely no problems with that. Start your own conferences. I could care less. I will not be attending. But things that are—but conferences that are saying they’re welcome for everybody?—then, yes we have a problem. If they don’t…

So they made a decision, based on whatever they felt was why he needed to be disinvited. But that’s not the narrative we’re—that’s out there now. So now there’s a narrative—and it’s also, again, let me let me also highlight—this is why I say 1 to 2 degrees away from you—these individuals you call friends—can cause me harm, because based on Uncle Bob’s tweeting—and he’s really good because he is… he knows, he’s been in this space long enough to know how to play this game where he has not targeted me or outed me specifically. But he’s given enough information for people to know it’s me, and he knows that how he’s done what he’s done does not violate any code of conduct.

31:20

So it’s the same thing I say about Trump. Trump can get on Twitter and say what the hell he wants to—and only now being held accountable, and we’ll see what happens with that—and you have followers who do the same thing and go out in real life and do stupid shit and then lose their jobs or whatever and they’re crying, because you don’t recognize that although you’re white, although you may be a white man, you do not have the same level of privilege as as the United States President we have.

So you have individuals who take Uncle Bob’s lead, and they target me. There’s somebody who’s tried to hack my Twitter account over 11 times. They have… so this video, this article that he wrote—again—is not even about this incident that I did not start… it’s so funny because it’s like I started all this; I’m just such a villain, I started all of this stuff. None of these incidents I started, not even the Amy incident. Someone brought it to my attention, and I saw it, and I amplified it. And so you have this person who creates this piece of—this document—that has tweets from months ago, all this other kind of stuff.

And I do not backtrack on anything I said. If I have errored, I will tell you I’ve errored. I would create a video, I would create podcasts, I would do everything. I would say, “You know what? I don’t have that belief anymore.” But what I have said in those things, I still stand by them. And so they want to talk about the fact that I created a video that says white men in tech ain’t shit. I stand by white men in tech ain’t shit, because if they had listened to the audio of it instead of being triggered by the title—and that’s why I created it—because I want to prove, I wanted to prove that I could talk about anything, I can talk about white women all day long and none of these assholes say shit. The first time I say something about white men, everybody’s up in arms; and this is also people of color.

33:20

There have been a lot of South Asian men who have targeted me because of this, because they’re trying to protect their—you know, they’re a model minority—and they’re trying to protect their proximity to whiteness and all the privileges that come with that. But the video that I created from the title of “White Men in Tech ain’t Shit” was, dudes! Y’all have all the privilege and leverage in the world, and you still won’t do anything. You’re so afraid to do anything!

And every time I talk to a white dude who says, “Oh my God, I was ‘fraid, but I did this thing and I had no consequences.” It’s that you have little, if any, consequences for anything. But yet you still expect people like myself and others who are doing this work, the people who are most vulnerable in this community to not only—again, when we prioritize the most vulnerable, everybody benefits.

So it’s the same thing of saying in the election, “Listen to white women. Vote like…” I mean, “Listen to Black women. Vote like Black women.” Yes, we do that because we know if we don’t protect our own interests, we are going to be the ones impacted. It’s a byproduct that everything we fucking do is a benefit to you. You benefit from it. So if you benefit from all of our hard work, the least you can do, the very fucking least you can do is lend your privilege to us in some way.

34:40

I’ve had so many white guys reach out to me in DMs, “Hey Kim, I want to help you, blah, blah, blah,” and there’s no follow up. I tell them what I need and there’s no follow up. Because oh my god, the work is too hard. I’m changing jobs. It’s always about their situations, as if the people who’re doing this work don’t have similar situations, but are at bigger disadvantage of getting the work done.

So yes, I’m gonna continue to say, until I see masses of white dudes standing up, protecting the people who are doing inclusion and diversity, challenging the status quo for the things that they benefit from—and I get it; it’s against your self interest. But again, if we prioritize the most vulnerable, your self interest will be taken care of. So you could see this as a job in self interest. By you doing this work, it will benefit you greatly. So again, I have been the target of these people. I’ve gotten vile emails, all of these things, and it’s funny that I guess I’m just… but I’m the villain.

And so, what I want to leave you with is, and so why everyone is upset—you know, not everyone—people who are upset when I share the stuff that’s happening to me. What you don’t know is, my team has been preparing for this for over a year. Because when I recognized, when we recognized that I was going to go down this path of challenging white supremacy, of challenging oppression, of challenging the harm that’s being done in tech; we knew, I knew from my lived experience that I would be a target.

36:23

So we put things in place a year ago to help protect my identity; from me getting doxxed; all kinds of stuff. Now there is no foolproof plan. And see, this is another thing that I think; you want to say, “Oh, that’s smart of you.” It’s not fucking smart of me! It is by design. This is why I don’t do CFPs anymore. This is why, if I’m speaking at a conference, you need to have provisions for my physical safety, because you don’t think about this. You think, “Oh, last minute. Oh, okay.” No! This is something I’ve put into place a year ago.

So I want you to stop. I want to end with this: the stuff that you’ve been seeing over the past month, I prepared for a year ago. If you’re not willing to put that kind of effort into this work, again I say I have absolutely no use for you. If you’re not willing to make yourself uncomfortable so that I can be—not just comfortable. Fuck comfort! I want to be safe—then I have absolutely no use for you.

So, in the #CauseAScene community, there is no such thing as reverse racism. Let me say that again. In the #CauseAScene community, and anybody who advocates for the rights, the prioritization of the most vulnerable in our community, we do not espouse reverse racism. And this is the danger I see in what he wrote, is that people will be able to use this to say, “Hey! A scholar, a Black man said this,” and they’ll be able to—without context about without what I’ve just broken down to you—and make an argument, make a case—or try to make a case—for reverse racism.

So, have a wonderful day.