Book Study Prompts/Questions by Chapter

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Questions evolving from the Book Club Kit for How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, in collaboration with the Learning Forward Ontario team. 

 

While we will be focusing on specific questions during each of our book study meeting, here are the questions we feel would best support our work from our educational contexts. 

 

In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi shares his own experience with racist thinking. How does his honesty help give us space to acknowledge and name our own racist behaviors and attitudes?

How do we create spaces in schools where we can name racist behaviours and attitudes in a safe but accountable way?

 

Kendi writes, “Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity”. 

    a) What policies/practices in your class, school, board or our ministry support or impede equity? 

    b) How can the policies and practices in schools produce and sustain anti-oppression work more effectively? 

    c) What are the possible implications for racist behavior in our discipline policies/practices? 

    d) How could the differences between policies and practices become more antiracist?

 

2.  a) Why do you think it is so hard for people to not assess other cultures from their own cultural standards? 

     b) How does doing this trap people in racist ideas?

 

3) If “denial is the heartbeat of racism”, what are the steps we take in schools to help teachers face their racist

    beliefs, words, actions? What about those of our students?

 

4) Kendi writes, “The only way to undo racism is to constantly identify it and describe it—and then dismantle it.” 

    a) Why does he believe we need to call out racism when we see it, even if it can be uncomfortable to identify? 

    b) What is the language that we need to help students become comfortable with when discussing issues of

        racism? 

    c) What learning do you need about this topic?  

    d) What does it mean to dismantle or disrupt curriculum to find the racist aspects in it? Essentially, what does

        it mean to decolonize the curriculum?

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5) Kendi writes, “The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If

    discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. . . .

   The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is

    present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

 

     How can we apply this thinking in our educational contexts?

 

6. Kendi writes, “People are racist out of self-interest, not out of ignorance.”

     What does that show in terms of the possibilities for education?

 

7. The book’s central message is that the opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” The true opposite of “racist” is antiracist. “The good news,” Kendi writes, “is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be racist one minute and an antiracist the next.” 

    a) As educators, what does it mean to have to constantly reaffirm your identity as an antiracist? b) Is there any          benefit to the fact that you can’t just decide you are “not racist” or an antiracist and be done with it? 

     b) What are some possible next steps for your practice? 

     c) How can you check yourself and hold yourself accountable if you notice you, or someone else, is being racist

         in a school context?

 

8. In Achieving Excellence , Ontario's vision for education, the ministry included “Ensuring Equity” as one of its core goals. ... It ensures that Ontario students have the opportunity to succeed personally and academically, regardless of background, identity or personal circumstances. Kendi makes the case that to be antiracist, one must stand against all forms of bigotry. 

a) What are other bigotries and forms of prejudice/discrimination that we see in our schools? b) How can we stand against them? 

 

9. Kendi closes the book comparing racism and cancer. What do you think of this comparison?

 

10. Kendi believes we can defy the odds, heal society of racism, and create an antiracist society.

 

a) Do you? 

b) Why is hope so central to the antiracist movement? 

c) Where are the opportunities to infuse more hope in our schools, in our students?  

d) What does it mean to have an antiracist school or school system?