Just had the pleasure of watching an amazing interview with @DrIbram. I hope everyone will watch, and I’m going to share some highlights here. First is an easy-to-understand framing of racism, especially for doctors: he compares it to cancer.
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On writing “How to be an Anti-Racist,” he basically says he felt freedom to write after he was diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer, saying, “Nobody can get upset at me if I’m in my grave.”
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He goes on to talk about how important a diagnosis is to developing a treatment. “You cannot even, as a nation, begin the process of treating this metastatic racism if you continuously are in denial that it exists.”
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On denial, racism, COVID, and the excuses people used to explain away racial disparities before finally admitting the real root: “So the problem, all along...the reason why Black people are 2.5x more likely to die of covid-19 is racism and racist policies.”
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He describes one of his main goals as being the elimination of the phrase ‘not racist’ because people are either reinforcing and supporting racism, or they’re using their power to be anti-racist and tear it down. There’s no in between.
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On the historical importance of the current moment: “What we do now in this inflection point is going to determine what our grandchildren are saying about us. Did we use this moment to transform this country so that they’re not having to deal with what we’re dealing with now?”
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On what we need to teach children, he says, “You do not want a child of color to think that people of color have less because they are less, and you do not want a white child thinking that white people have more because they are more.”
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One of his final thoughts:
“We are at a critical moment, and these are the moments in which how we act are not only going to affect how our nation is for the next 50 years, but we’re gonna regret if we don’t do something now. We’re gonna regret it for the rest of our lives.”
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“We are at a critical moment, and these are the moments in which how we act are not only going to affect how our nation is for the next 50 years, but we’re gonna regret if we don’t do something now. We’re gonna regret it for the rest of our lives.”
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Again, I hope you’ll watch the interview (or any of his talks) or read his books. And commit to whatever it is you can do within your power to be anti-racist. It is going to take all of us to turn this moment into a durable movement. As they say, if not now, when?
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