I.X. Kendi’s ‘How To Be Anti-Racist’
A book has recently appeared on the market place entitled How To Be Anti-Racist. Written by Mr. Ibram X. Kendi, racism is described as a “duel” [Chpt. 2], a kind of struggle to the death between White and Black, Master and Slave, born in the advent of Capitalism.
After reading through Kendi’s book, I was left asking ‘what?’, then wrote down several counter-examples to capture the moment. Considering the fanfare, the book is receiving today, I decided to publish my disappointment and refutations here. To follow my critique, it is not necessary to have read Kendi’s book (though it may be worthwhile before or after reading my argument).
I refer to Kendi’s writing since his arguments are clear enough that they can be summarized and used to introduce problems of race and racism with a minimum of background. Supposing everyone knows what a totem pole is, I will show how one can be used as a model to refute Kendi’s argument on race and racism.
As a remedy to racism, Kendi proposes a project of anti-racism defined as an emancipation from the “dueling consciousness” [p.44] of Master/Slave where the White body no longer presents itself as the ideal American body, where there is no need to assimilate to White society and no need to accept its segregations.
Without once ever referring to any of the Hegelian overtones to accomplish his anti-racist project, Kendi attempts to found it on a philosophy of race comprising four assumptions:
1. There is no reference to Nature;
“Biological racial difference is one of those widely held racist beliefs that few people realize they hold” [p.60]
2. There is no symbolic basis for race in ethnicity or ancestry;
“there is no such thing as racial ancestry,” and “Ethnic ancestry does not exist” [p.65]
3. There is no purely imaginary dimension of race. Race is only a “mirage” effect of erroneous beliefs — racist — produced by real policy and power-relations.
“Race is a mirage” but “ that we do well to see.” [p.47] Race is a mirage, but one that humanity has organized itself around in very real ways” [p.67]; Race and racism are power constructs of the modern world. [p.278]
4. This racism is “inextricably linked” with the conjunction of Capitalism and Slavery. Marx recognized this.
“Marx recognized the birth of these conjoined twins’ [slavery and capitalism] [p.193] “It is impossible to know racism without understanding its intersection with capitalism.” [p.189] “There is an inextricable link between racism and capitalism” [p.195 ]
To be an anti-racist, for Kendi, is to fight against any discourse or group that would deny (1) by claiming there is a natural reference to race; or that would deny (2) by claiming there would be a cultural reference to race or deny (3) by claiming that race is merely imaginary. To be anti-racist, for Kendi, is to fight against the racist power-relations and policies (4), while militating against the historical and contemporary injustices of Capitalism and slavery.
I am going to use a totem pole as a model to refute propositions 1–4, then reference a recent archeological discovery of Neolithic tribe segregations to support these refutations further. I conclude with reference to texts of Marx’s analysis of Capitalism to show Kendi’s misreading in (4).
Though my refutations and proposals are opposed to that of Kendi’s project, they may be useful to show what is missing in the current debates on race and racism. Or as the old saying goes, ‘Water in water gives you water, but oil in water will give you a pattern.’ It is this pattern that I am searching to discern.
Refutation #1
(1) Kendhi: There is no reference to Nature;
Me: False, race is not without a reference to Nature; there is Nature in any reference to race.
Just look at a totem pole and notice the various plants and animals used in the construction of the mythological origins of a tribe, different races of beings, and their kinship structure.
To deny this reference to Nature makes it impossible to understand not only totemism (how something like a totem pole works) but modern biology which classifies different races — subspecies — of animals. To insist race only applies to animals, not humans, results in a paradox: then why are humans racist and not animals?
Refutation #2
2. Kendi: There is no symbolic basis for race in ethnicity or ancestry;
Me: False, race is not without a reference to a symbolic structure where signifiers determine differences of ethnicity: group distinctions based on a pure contingency of social conventions(ancestry, marriage, custom, etc.). Kendi reduces race and racism to ‘race relations,’ where inequalities, differences, and hierarchies are between people — not symbols. For Kendi, such differences should be “fought against” like a “disease” invading society from the outside — and are never included as a differences crucial to the symbolic origins of society itself.
Again, look at any totem pole, it not only uses elements of Nature to tell a myth but establishes Social inequalities by putting these natural elements in a linear order (up/down) and a symbolic hierarchical relation determining ancestry and kinship.
Refutation #3
3. There is no purely imaginary dimension of race. Race is reducible to a “mirage” effect of erroneous beliefs — racist — produced by real policy and power-relations.
Me: False. Race has always had a purely imaginary dimension that is never reducible to the beliefs and imagination of a population. On the contrary, race is productive of belief and imagination. For instance, Hesiod’s myth of the five races uses natural elements, gold, silver, bronze, iron, and fire to tell a story of the origin of Man and moral degradation through the various ages. Any depiction of race, ancient or modern, contains a myth — a structural imaginary –that is not simply reducible to unreal psychological effects produced by real power-relations and policy. On the contrary, power-relations and policy are not simply real, but often scandalous since they can be shown to be based on an imaginary and mythical dimension.
Referring to the totem-pole, each animal or plant is not only in a linear order but stylized into an image that is productive of a social structure.
Refutation #4
4. Kendhi: This racism is “inextricably linked” with the conjunction of Capitalism and Slavery. This was recognized by Marx.
False, racism began long before Capitalism and is not reducible to a fossil of slavery¹. In fact, Capitalism is anti-slavery since its economic form of industrial production is counter that of a more ancient slave economy (see analysis of Marx below).
Again, look at a totem-pole as it sets up a series of prescriptions subordinating one local group to another through the use of a symbolic structure. These are racial-ethnic segregations and discriminations that are not based upon Capitalism.
Let us, however, go further and use another set of references to refute proposition #5. This can be made in two times.
4.1 First, we document briefly how not only primitive tribes but ancient Greece practiced forms of racism.
4.2 Second, we show that Kendi’s use of Marx to conjoin Capitalism and Slavery is a misreading of Marx and cannot be seriously be considered as providing the basis for explaining modern racism.
4.1 Race and racism has a heritage that began well before the 15th-century Capitalism and chattel slavery. Racism occurred when the ancient Greeks called anyone, not Greek, a Barbarian — a chirper. Many primitive civilizations each have their forms of racism. For instance, there are documented racial structures that go back at least as far as the Neolithic Age when plants and animals began to be manipulated, cultivated, and hybridized. A recent research paper in Nature shows that not only in Neolithic times were inequalities cultivated in the difference of races between plants — wheat, barley, corn, etc. — but inequalities between people — priests, farmers, warriors, slaves, etc. Well before there where any Capitalists or so-called ‘White People.’
4.2 [p.249]Kendi wants to conjoin capitalism with slavery, then show how the conjunction of these “evil twins” found the basis of modern racism. To do so, he hopes to draw the support of Marx:
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of aboriginal people, the beginning of the conquest and the looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.
K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1. Part 2, New York, Cosimo Classics (2007); p. 823
Me: This is a misreading of Marx. Not only can it be shown that race and racism emerged long before the 15th century, but that what is crucial for Marx is to DISJOIN slavery from capitalism, not conjoin them.
The reason for this disjunction? Within the Master/Slave dialectic and a Feudal economy, there is no market of labor, i.e., labor power.
No doubt, there is slavery at “the rosy dawn” (see Marx quote above) of capitalism, and slavery can be recognized in commercial interactions from the 15th to the 19th century. Yet, the use of slavery in commerce does not determine the conditions of capitalism, on the contrary, slavery is only, what Marx would call an ‘antiquated mode of production’ and an ‘anomaly’:
The fact that we now not only call the plantation owners in America capitalists, but that they ARE capitalists, is based on their existence as anomalies within a world market based on free labor.
K. Marx, Grundrisse, Middlesex, Penguin Books, (1973); p.464 p. 513
Antiquated Slave Economy
≠
Modern Capitalist Machine Economy
Marx describes the survival of this archaic slave economy within a modern capitalistic system as an anomaly of the southern plantation itself:
in plantations where commercial speculations figure from the start and production is intended for the world market, the capitalist mode of production exists, although only in a formal sense, since the slavery of Negroes precludes free wage-labor, which is the basis of capitalist production. But the business in which slaves are used is conducted by capitalists. The method of production which they introduce has not arisen out of slavery but is grafted on to it.
Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part II, Moscow, Progress Publishers, (1971) p. 302–303
To conclude, Kendi’s use of Marx to conjoin slavery and capitalism leaves out what is most important: Marx explicitly DISJOINS slavery from capitalism. The result of this disjunction is non-trivial: Marx begins to explain the correspondence, not between Capitalism and RACISM, but a more radical form of discrimination: Capitalism and ANTI-SEMITISM.
What should be distinguished in Marx’s reading of Capitalism is the difference between RACISM and ANTI-SEMITISM in a movement that goes from the Black Question to the Jewish Question. I only landmark this argument here, for a treatment in a separate article.
Note
[1] Traditionally, it has been objected that the kind of racism Kendi is referring to originated in chattel slavery where people were treated as commodities and de-humanized in Capitalism and is, therefore, opposed to the older type of natural slavery as it was recognized by Aristotle and the Greeks or in other more archaic societies. This argument, now standard, requires re-thinking since it bypasses several significant problems that I only landmark here until my article ‘From The Black to the Jewish Question”. First, for Aristotle and other writers of the time, slaves were not considered people but identified with animals and tools. As far as I know, it is only with Christianity, in particular, the work of St. Thomas, that the slave becomes human and has a soul which, oddly, leads to a type of treatment of the slave that can become worse than that of an animal. Opposed to the traditional reading of chattel slavery as a slave being treated like a commodity and de-humanized, I propose it is the opposite: the slave was humanized in the theology of the Middle Ages, given a soul as having human rights like everyone else in a ‘society of souls.’ But once this theologization is accomplished, it is worse precisely to the extent that a slave, now human, has sinned and maybe worse than just an animal. It is not the modern dehumanization of the slave as a commodity that begins with chattel slavery and Capitalism that is decisive; it is a forgotten chapter: the problem of how the slave became human — becomes part of the human race — to begin within a more ancient slave-economy of the feudal ages. If this can be shown true, if the humanization of the slave results in the determination of its race, then we must look long and hard at the dominant way of speaking of racism as de-humanization leading back to chattel slavery. Until then, for this paper, the distinction between archaic and modern racism-slavery is considered moot. I only begin to indicate why in reference to refutation 5.2. when I call for the difference between racism and anti-Semitism to be made.
Santa Monica
Summer 2019
