At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In this talk, based on his bestselling book How to Be an Antiracist (2020), Ibram X. Kendi examines a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—to elucidate the many forms of racism, understand their poisonous consequences, work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves, and ultimately to show how we can contribute to the formation of a just and equitable society.
Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. A contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News racial-justice contributor, he is also the host of the podcast Be Antiracist. Kendi is the author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Bold Type Books, 2016), which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and of five New York Times number-one bestsellers, including How to Be an Antiracist (One World, 2019), Antiracist Baby (Kokila, 2020), and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2020), co-authored with Jason Reynolds. In 2020, TIME magazine named Kendi one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021.
Moderated by:
Rose-Anne Clermont is a Berlin-based Haitian-American journalist and editor who has written about migration, integration, identity, and race for Berliner Zeitung, Spiegel Online, Die Zeit, Vibe, USA Today, and The New York Times, among others. She is also the author of a humorous memoir, Bushgirl: How I Got Stuck with the Germans (Random House Germany, 2011). In 2020, Clermont was an English editor at eu2020.de, Germany's official EU Council Presidency website, and previously served as lecturer in journalism at the University for Applied Sciences HMKW Berlin. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and MA from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
In cooperation with the American Academy and btb Verlag .
The event is fully booked.