A “Woke” Dictionary, Volume 2: A Guide to How the Left Uses “Antiracist” to Divide Americans

AMAC Exclusive

In the last edition of the “Woke” Dictionary, we covered how leftists are twisting the meanings of three crucial words beyond all recognition: “Racist,” “Racism,” and “Equity.” Today, we will cover the meaning of just one term, one that you had probably never heard of before last year, but which is now absolutely everywhere. The word: “Antiracist.” It doesn’t mean what you might think—being opposed to racism. When a leftist utters this word, it means so much more—and indeed, it often means quite the opposite.

“Antiracist”

We return once again to leftist professor and Critical Race Theory impresario Ibram X. Kendi and his 2019 bestselling book How to be an Antiracist. Here is how he defines the term “anti-racist”: “One who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.”

That’s good so far as it goes—conservatives could theoretically sign up for that. But that’s where the common ground ends. Kendi goes on to define an “antiracist idea” with respect to what we previously described as the lynchpin of modern leftist theory, namely “equity”:

Antiracist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities…Antiracism is a powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracist ideas. [Emphasis added]

Let’s examine Kendi’s difficult-to-understand definition with an example he himself cites. He asserts the following about white and black life expectancy rates: “White lives matter to the tune of 3.5 additional years over Black lives in the United States, which is just the most glaring of a host of health disparities…”

According to Kendi’s own definition, this 3.5-year difference in life expectancy is the direct result of “racist policies.” These policies, he says, are “designed to shorten their [African Americans’] lives.”

Yet this ridiculous notion is refuted by even a cursory glance at the numbers. In the United States, the average life expectancy of white Americans is 79.12 years. However, the average life expectancy of Hispanic Americans is 82.89 years. The gap is even bigger for Asian Americans, whose average life expectancy is 86.67 years.

The idea that differences in life expectancy are the result of intentional policies designed to shorten the lives of minorities makes even less sense the more you investigate the numbers. Asian life expectancy in New Jersey is 89.37 years. But in Hawaii, it’s 82.04. Asians make up only about 10% of New Jersey’s population, but almost 40% of Hawaii’s, according to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

If being a racial minority is bad for your health, as Kendi claims, we would expect to see the opposite.

Of course, deriving conclusions about life expectancy only from knowing skin color would not only be illogical but racist itself. And yet, Kendi has managed to dress up such non-thinking as “antiracism.” What he stubbornly refuses to recognize is that he is analyzing these differences on the most superficial level possible while rejecting any other possible explanation for the data.

When it comes to life expectancy, for example, and the fact that the average Asian life expectancy is higher than Hispanic life expectancy, which in turn is higher than white life expectancy, one might ponder whether such differences might be related to diet, exercise, and a host of other factors that all of us in daily life know affect how long our friends and family live.

All of these and a million other questions would be asked by a true scholar pursuing truth. That’s not what Kendi is. He’s a political activist—and his movement is pursuing only political power.

The flaw in their argument was succinctly defined by the true scholar, Thomas Sowell. Sowell once said, “If you can’t get equality among people born of the same parents and raised under the same roof, why in the world would you think you’re going to get it among people who’ve had such different histories and cultures around the world?”

Yet that’s exactly the task the “antiracists” have set for themselves—and they are demanding absolute power to do it.