Congressman George H White opted not to seek re-election in 1900. North Carolina’s brand-new poll tax, literacy test and grandfather clause – the forebears of today’s voter ID law, voter purge and felon clause – ensured the defeat of the last black congressman.
When the all-white, male 57th Congress sat in 1901, America had been made great again after decades of dueling, after “all the forces that made for civilization were dominated by a [southern] mass of barbarous freedmen,” according to the nation’s leading Reconstruction historian, William Archibald Dunning. Racist progress seemingly overtook antiracist progress, like when Donald Trump overtook Barack Obama. Powerful white men were colonizing and disenfranchising, convict leasing and lynching, pillaging and selling land and labor, segregating public spaces and raising up Confederate statues. They were writing literature to “demonstrate to the world that the white man must and shall be supreme”, as attested by the bestselling novelist Thomas Dixon.
Serving up hope for an antiracist America seemed unhealthy in those days. Nearly all the fresh hope from the jubilant end of slavery in 1865 had seemingly molded over. Sound familiar?
All these years later, some historians consider the turn of the 20th century as the “nadir” of America’s racial story. Historians also remember the anti-lynching journalism of Ida B Wells, the organizing of black clubwomen and black colleges and black towns, the early decolonization stirrings, the early strivings of the civil rights movement, the spiritual stirrings and strivings of all these souls of black folk, as recorded by WEB Du Bois.
We do not see the early 20th century as the end, but the beginning. Likewise, we should not see our era of resurgent white nationalism as the racist end, but the antiracist beginning.
Look behind and beyond the daily news of voter suppression and voter fraud fables, the daily news of “invading” Latinx immigrants and Muslim bans, the daily news of mass deporting and incarcerating and impoverishing and enriching, the daily news of defending Confederate monuments like racist policies, the daily news of police shooting black bodies sitting in their apartments or doing their jobs, the daily news of the white president berating black women journalists, the daily news of the white president identifying as a nationalist, the daily news of white nationalists terrorizing Americans with their cop calls and guns, inspired by their president.
Look behind and beyond the daily news of racist power at the people thinking and organizing, stirring to uproot racist policies and ideas, striving to lay the foundation for an antiracist world. They are there, like the most diverse incoming class of House Democrats in history. They are there, behind racism, stridently confronting racist power at nearly every turn, like Stacey Abrams. They are there, beyond racism, silently thinking and organizing in its shadows, like Colin Kaepernick. We have assembled some of them here, in Antiracism and America: A Series, a collaboration between the Guardian and The Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington DC.
The times when all seem lost are the times when we most need to see the people and ideas trailblazing the way out of the muck. This series provides the hope and direction essential for change. It previews the future, or what future generations, perhaps, will most adore about what we began in our racial era.
Antiracism and America: A Series stands as an alternative to the daily news of racism, to the daily reactions to the daily news of racism. We take a step back from the news cycle and offer essays and reporting that are reflective rather than reactionary, ambitious rather than restrained, looking forward as we look back, treating as they diagnose. We want to set out a vision for some of the policies and ideas that can usher in an antiracist society, while addressing some of the old and new policy and ideological impediments. We plan to showcase those people imagining and building an antiracist society where antiracist policies are common practice, where antiracist ideas are common sense.
What about an antiracist society where racism is no longer intersecting with other bigotries to manipulate people away from their self-interests? Where we reframe the achievement gap as the opportunity gap? Where love and hope guide us, instead of fear and white fragility? Where we recognize biological and behavioral group sameness? Where we level color and cultural group difference? Where native and immigrant become one? Where we all can be fully human through embracing humanity fully?
What about an antiracist society where instead of standardizing our tests or closing our schools we standardized school resources and open first-class schools for all? Where we honestly share our racial history? Where free, high-quality healthcare is as universal as basic incomes and fresh food? Where instead of stocking prisons with poor and mentally disabled people of color, we stock those people’s communities with high-paying jobs and mental health services? Where instead of enslaving and traumatizing prisoners, we are healing and restoring them? Where guns are as controlled as police officers fearing for their lives? Where voting is easy and accessible?
Many Americans who say they oppose racism are not striving to build an antiracist society. People across the political spectrum have the same aspirations as Trump does: a “not-racist” society. They imagine, like the president, that the opposite of racism is “not-racism”, the opposite of a racist is a “not-racist”, without ever supplying a definition of not-racism.
“No, no, I’m not racist,” Trump said when asked about calling black nations “shithole countries” early in the year. How many of us say we are “not-racist” after expressing there is something wrong with one of the racial groups, after judging different racial groups from our own sociocultural standards, after refusing to believe equal opportunity will produce equal outcomes among racial groups, after supporting “race-neutral” policies that yield racial inequity?
We say Trump is in denial when he says: “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you.” What I can tell you is many of his detractors are in denial, too.
There is no such thing as a “not-racist” policy, idea or person. Just an old-fashioned racist in a newfound denial. All policies, ideas and people are either being racist or antiracist. Racist policies yield racial inequity; antiracist policies yield racial equity. Racist ideas suggest racial hierarchy, antiracist ideas suggest racial equality. A racist is supporting racist policy or expressing a racist idea. An antiracist is supporting antiracist policy or expressing an antiracist idea. A racist or antiracist is not who we are, but what we are doing in the moment.
In this moment, as we stare at the pervasiveness of racist power, it is hard not to deny the prospects for an antiracist future. That she will come. But if the writers in this series can aspire, if Congressman White could give a farewell address of confidence on 29 January 1901, then why can’t we?
“This, Mr Chairman, is perhaps the negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress,” he said, “but let me say, Phoenix-like he will rise up someday and come again.”
Ibram X Kendi is the contributing series editor of Antiracism and America: A Series and the director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. He is the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and the forthcoming How To Be An Antiracist