It is no longer sufficient not to be racist in this country. Each one of us must commit to being anti-racist.
Beto has deployed some version of this statement at several campaign stops.
He said it in August in Norman, Oklahoma. He made a similar statement in Los Angeles, CA in October.
He was adamant about this at the Rally Against Fear he organized to protest Trump’s hate-mongering rally in Dallas. (Note the right-wing site Daily Caller thought they embarrassed Beto with this story but he embraced the statement.)
Finally he reiterated the point during a trip to Montgomery, Alabama, where he emphasized the spate of police shootings of unarmed African-Americans in their own homes in Texas in the Trump era extending from Botham Jean to Atatiana Jefferson.
With the exception of the stop in LA, all of the events mentioned above occurred in the former Confederacy. Beto’s been fearless about addressing America’s racist past AND present throughout the campaign and he’s looking to win the South not by diluting his message but by amplifying it.
What is Anti-Racism?
The term was coined by the historian Ibram X. Kendi in two groundbreaking works: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and How to Be an Anti-Racist. Beto is an avid reader, especially of American history, so it’s no surprise that he would be influenced by Kendi’s scholarship.
Kendi turns the tables on how we normally discuss racism. In lieu of looking at it psychologically as a set of beliefs, he argues that we should look at it as a set of practices that advance the economic and political interests of a few and preserve existing power relations. A recent Washington Post profile of Kendi summarized his argument as follows:
Power, he argues, devises racist policies for economic self-interest and then justifies the racist policies with racist ideas of hierarchy, inferiority, necessity, greater good and otherness. These racist ideas are consumed and reproduced at large, giving rise to ignorance and hate. Stop focusing on people, Kendi advises: The smart anti-racist identifies racist policy and attacks the racist ideas justifying it.
The idea that economic and political self-interest would motivate racist ideology rather than the reverse (i.e., the ideology motivating an economic and political system) is a controversial position, and Kendi has taken heat for it. Nevertheless the popularity of his work shows just how much he has changed the conversation on race and racism in America.
If one accepts Kendi’s thesis that it’s the existing power structure that generates racism to justify and perpetuate itself, then none of us is free of racism. Instead we’re all on a spectrum. We all participate in social and political systems that promote the interests of some over others. In How to Be an Anti-Racist, Kendi turns the spotlight on himself owning up to his sexism, homophobia and racism vis-à-vis the black community which at various points in his life he chastised for failing to live up to white standards. He calls this the “oppression inferiority thesis” and “uplift suasion.”
What would anti-racism look like?
It begins with the acknowledgment of one’s own racism, as Kendi notes in an interview in The Progressive:
[T]here is no such thing as a nonracist, but there is such a thing as an antiracist. Nonracists, historically, are people who defend policies that create racial inequity and express ideas of racial hierarchy. When those policies and ideas are challenged as racist, their response is, “I’m not racist.” An antiracist is someone who deliberately is confessing the racist ideas that have been nurtured within them while trying to be better, trying to be different, and trying to support policies that create equity.
In a political arena this means recognizing the social inequality, economic inequity and countless other disparities that one has either tacitly accepted or explicitly endorsed and from which one has benefited. It also means changing a system that relies on racism to preserve existing hierarchies.
Beto’s campaign has taken the lessons of Kendi’s work to heart.
In a speech at the Third Annual Clinton Dinner in Little Rock, Arkansas – a place with as dark a racist history as any in the US – Beto tackled not only the history of racism in, say, 1957 when the National Guard had to be called in to protect 9 African Americans attempting to attend an unintegrated high school, but also the inequities that persist to this day.
This country, though we would like to think otherwise, was founded on racism, has persisted through racism, and is racist today. And if you don’t want to accept that phrase or that word, look at this. There is ten times the wealth in white America today as in black America. There are 2.3 million people behind bars tonight…disproportionately comprised of people of color, the largest prison population on the planet bar none. In a kindergarten classroom, a 4 or 5 year-old child of color is five times as likely to be disciplined or suspended or expelled as a white child in front of the same teacher for the same infraction…But this racism, though foundational, literally kidnapping people from West Africa and bringing them here to build the greatness of this country on their backs and then denying their ancestors the meaningful opportunity to enjoy in the wealth they had created. For so long it had flown under the surface, at least for people like me – a white guy from Texas – borne everyday by those who do not look like me and have had a different experience. But it was only with this administration and this President that that racism was invited out into the open.
Anti-racism requires intersectional policy
Given how systemic racism is, every policy has to account for racial disparities. What is, in fact, most striking about Beto’s proposals is how intersectional they are. The following is a brief list of just some of his anti-racist initiatives.
- Beto’s small business initiative contains numerous planks to root out racism and sexism in the small business lending market and to provide capital for minority owned businesses.
- In his policy on equality for women, he notes that maternal mortality disproportionately affects women of color and offers a host of solutions from ensuring access to maternal healthcare in every zip code to home visitation before and after birth.
- Beto’s recently released housing plan also goes full bore YIMBY (Yes in my backyard) by proposing an astonishing number of federal incentives to pressure states and municipalities into eliminating zoning laws designed to restrict public housing (i.e., NIMBY, Not in my backyard).
- His education plan calls for unprecedented investment in minority schools and “a new program funded at $500 million per year designed to create-world class teacher academies at MSIs and HBCUs.”
- His climate plan tackles environmental racism: “Climate change has a distressingly disproportionate impact on poor and minority communities across the United States and around the world. Race is the number one indicator for where toxic and polluting facilities are today.”
- He has called for a complete reconstruction of our criminal justice system that would include ending the war on drugs.
Coda
In August Beto visited the Greenwood District in Tulsa known as Black Wall Street where in 1921 100-300 African Americans were killed in a race massacre and over 10,000 homes and businesses were destroyed. A few days after the visit, the Executive Editor of The Black Wall Street Times, Nehemiah D. Frank, wrote an op ed. The significance of the title escaped me at the time. Only now do I appreciate what he meant when he wrote “Beto O’Rourke is the Anti-Racist Presidential Candidate.”
Since the beginning of his quest for the White House, I have seen Mr. O’Rourke demonstrate that he can be an anti-racist advocate. And I think that’s a big deal… His message resonates with me because seldom have I seen presidential candidates be so publicly vocal about fighting white supremacy.
Please check out Beto’s vision and plans at BetoORourke.com and donate to his campaign, which is powered by people, not PACs or special interests or corporations.
Volunteer for Beto: act.BetoORourke.com/signup/volunteer
Sunday, Oct 27, 2019 · 5:53:02 PM +00:00 · tobie
**UPDATE**
At a campaign stop in Iowa yesterday, Beto was asked about gun violence and police violence and he delivered on the spot what I hope will be a new law enforcement policy. The policy he sketches is anti-racist. It is also inclusive, grounded as it is in a new sense of ‘we’ and what it means to have accountability and justice. The three main planks are:
- The DOJ will review cases local DAs turn down and decide if it wants to pursue them.
- Federal grants to local law enforcement will be contingent on transparency in reporting the use of force.
- Violations of the public trust by officers will be prosecuted.