Fight Voter Suppression.
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Democracy Book Club
Settle in with a cup of tea for a little chat about the February group read.
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi came out in 2019, with an updated and revised edition in 2023.* It was a New York Times #1 Bestseller in 2020.
Kendi (b. 1982) taught as a history professor at several east coast colleges and universities. Last month, January 2025, he was hired by Howard University in Washington D.C to direct a new Institute for Advanced Study.
Kendi was born in Queens and moved to Manassas, Virginia when he was fifteen. He attended Florida A&M University for undergrad, then earned a PhD in African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is the author of six books. In 2016 Kendi won the National Book Award for nonfiction, making him the youngest author to win the prize.
This book is a blend of a chronological memoir about his growing racial consciousness (fascinating and fun to read) and chapters about different subtypes of racism (often confusing and definition-heavy).
It wasn’t as easy to read as I thought it would be and it isn’t a handbook with concrete examples of how to take more antiracist actions, but I still learned things from it and took fifteen pages of notes.
What I learned:
Kendi makes a useful distinction between protests and demonstrations.
Protests are slow, long, organized and effective at creating policy change. They put a monkeywrench in the systems of exploitation (racist policies). They disrupt business as usual so much and for so long that it becomes financially advantageous for makers of racist policies to change the policies to more equitable and just policies in order to continue to make money. People who make racist policies are motivated by greed and capitalism, not racism. When they are losing money with a racist policy, they change the policy.
Demonstrations are fast, brief, mobilized and ineffective at creating policy change, but they are good at uplifting and empowering participants by making them feel good about themselves and create a sense of antiracist community, individual and collective antiracist power. They can go hand-in-hand with fundraisers (example: to pay for antiracist lawyers) that can help create real change.
Oh my gosh, VOTER SUPPRESSION, y’all.
Voter suppression of Black people, people of color, lower-income Americans and democrats is a HUGE problem. Republicans used voter suppression laws and policies to (ahem) steal the 2000 presidential election from Al Gore and give it to George W. Bush!
Can you imagine how different the world would be if climate activist Al Gore had been president?
Voter suppression also helped Mango Mussolini get elected in 2016, by flipping Wisconsin in his favor, suppressing 200,000 votes. (page 28) (Articles in Mother Jones and The Nation agree.)
Voter suppression is the biggest problem right now.
We all need to focus on this in 2025: fighting voter suppression laws and policies to promote free and fair elections in all 50 states.
An example of this that has been in the news this week is the proposed SAVE Act bill introduced by House Republicans as HR22 that could make it harder for 69 million married women who changed their last names to vote.
The League of Women Voters writes that the SAVE Act would suppress the vote because:
146 million American citizens do not have a valid passport (for context, 153 million Americans voted in the 2024 presidential election).
In seven states, less than one-third of citizens have a valid passport.
Lower income Americans would be dramatically affected: only 1 in 5 Americans with income below $50,000 have a valid passport.
83% of women change their last name when they marry: 69 million American women may not have a birth certificate with their legal name on it and would not be able to use their birth certificate to prove citizenship. The SAVE Act does not included proof of name change or marriage certificate as acceptable proof of identity.
Here is a link to an ACLU website where you can send an email against the SAVE Act to your elected officials.
According to a 2022 article in The Hill, the states where it is most difficult to vote are New Hampshire, Mississippi, Arkansas, Wisconsin, and Texas.
People need to check to see if they’ve been purged from the voter rolls in their state and understand their state’s laws on when they can and can’t register to vote.
Groups fighting against voter suppression include:
the ACLU
“Who's Affected By Voter Suppression? The short answer is all of us. Our democracy is debased when the vote is not accessible for all. But the fact is that some groups are disproportionately affected by voter suppression tactics, including people of color, young people, the elderly, and people with disabilities.” (link)
“But in recent years, more than 400 anti-voter bills have been introduced in 48 states. These bills erect unnecessary barriers for people to register to vote, vote by mail, or vote in person. The result is a severely compromised democracy that doesn’t reflect the will of the people.” (link)
“In 2013, the US Supreme Court removed key protections of the Voting Rights Act in the decision of Shelby v. Holder. Since then, a surge of anti-voter bills have swept across our nation– with many being legalized.
The League will not stand for this.” (link)
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund
The Southern Poverty Law Center
“The SPLC is aiming to lift up the voices of people who are directly affected by voter suppression across Southern states. The people who have navigated or are still navigating the waters to retake their constitutional right to cast a ballot have a voice in deciding who the leaders of their cities, states and nation will be.” (link)
Other organizations fighting voter suppression:
Common Cause Education Fund, Democracy Works, Inc., The Voter Participation Center, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, FairVote, VoteRiders, etc.
If you only take one thing away from this book:
The future of democracy depends on what we do now to fight racist, classist and ableist voter suppression laws and policies.
Racism is capitalism is racism, is tied to classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Get rid of the racist laws first, and racist ideas will gradually die away later. Racist laws are motivated by economic exploitation and greed, first and foremost.
It is the grift. Designed by the billionaires for personal gain.
We need Universal Public Healthcare. We need to fight against book bans. We need to protect trans people.
We are all intersectional beings. We can’t do antiracism without queer rights and trans rights, women’s rights, class justice, etc.
[*Controversy emerged recently around Ibram X. Kendi, after his new Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University was discontinued by the university after accusations of financial mismanagement.]
The March read-along book from the Antifascist Book Club will be On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder.
On Tyranny is VERY short. It is basically an essay. Very readable. I recommend purchasing a copy or checking it out of the library.
Writing news
Sapphic Work in Progress (WIP) is up to 60K words, with a personal goal of 90K words by the end of March. It feels impossible at the moment to close that gap and finish all the missing scenes in a month, but writing progress at different paces from day to day. Some parts of writing a new rough draft are slow, and other parts always surprise me at how quick they go.
I’m happy so far with how book two dovetails with book one. The main characters are more mature and grounded in book two as a result of what they went through together in book one. Yay character growth!
Still waiting to hear back from agents I queried in January. It can take months for agents to reply to queries.
It’s important to have another project to work on while you wait, to distract yourself from the helplessness/ randomness/ anxiety of it all.
Farm news
Warm days this week are slowly melting the snow and ice into slush. The barnyard will transform from snow to mud over the next few days. The sheep and goat do not seem to mind having cold or muddy feet, but we do add more hay to the barn floor as bedding so they have a dry place to sleep at night.
We start the first round of flower seeds in trays March 1st, which is coming soon! Usually we don’t have snow on the ground on March 1st, lol. Making the mud (potting soil mixed with water) in a giant bucket and filling the seed starting trays is something we try to do outside on a warm sunny day.
The mourning doves have been singing all morning. Some New Englanders affectionately call this part of winter ‘false spring.’