Scholar of racism Ibram X. Kendi is spearheading Boston University’s new Center for Antiracist Research. BU announced his appointment June 4. In an interview with The Daily Free Press Wednesday, Kendi said discussions of the Center arose around this time last year.
Kendi described four prongs of the Center’s work — research, policy, narrative and advocacy — and said the academic activities that already exist at BU can be implemented to bring about change and equality in the greater community.
Read the transcript of our interview with Kendi below. Excerpts have been edited for clarity.
What does anti-racism research look like? Will the Center for Antiracist Research primarily focus on racism against Black people, or against minority groups in general?
We live in a society where there’s racial inequities and disparities between groups. Racist research typically asks the question, what’s wrong with these people? And then those researchers try to figure out what is genetically or even culturally or behaviorally wrong with a particular racial group, which, for those researchers would then explain these disparities. So if Black people are dying more COVID-19, it must be because there’s something Black people are doing wrong.
Well, anti-racist research asks a different question, which is what is wrong with society? What’s wrong with our policies? What’s wrong with conditions? What’s wrong with practices? And so if Latinx people are being infected at a much higher rate than white people, the question isn’t what’s wrong with Latinx people, the question is, how can we figure out what in society is causing this?
Black people are not the only group of people who are facing forms of racism. And so we’re going to be studying all groups of people who are facing and historically have faced racism in this country.
How do you plan to be different from other research programs at BU?
Essentially, our research apparatus is going to have three different prongs. One is we’re building a racial data tracker. And just as we as a Center have been tracking COVID racial data through our COVID racial data tracker, which is a collaboration with the COVID Tracking Project, so, too, do we plan to track racial data in every sector.
We want to track in real time all racial health disparities, we want to track educational disparities, racial wealth disparities, housing disparities, disparities in police violence and incarceration, environmental disparities. The reason why we want to do that is just like with COVID, we want to know in real time where the hotspots are, where the problems are. Hopefully, that will not only guide larger public discussions and awareness, and thereby research, but then also guide the Center’s researchers.
We’re building an affiliates program that will allow and provide for BU faculty and graduate students the ability to affiliate with the Center, and we hope to build programming around these affiliates, as well as provide them with other services. What we’re hoping our affiliates will do is each year design what we’re calling research and policy teams.
These research and policy teams will start with a problem, typically a racial disparity, formulate a multidisciplinary team of researchers who will not only track and understand that disparity and all of its manifestations and intersections but then also seek to understand the racist policies behind those disparities or practices.
And then as part of that team, they would also have a policy expert, who can then design policy correctives that could reduce that disparity or eliminate it. They would also have an artist, as well as a journalist who can sort of humanize the research and the policy innovation. They would have an advocate who can literally work toward seeking to implement those policy correctives. So what you see from that is really the four prongs of the Center, which is research, policy, narrative and advocacy.
In what ways would you like to see journalists improve our coverage of and response to racial issues?
First and foremost, I think it’s important for journalists to realize that there are different groups of people, and so they shouldn’t really be seeking to standardize the lives of, let’s say, white people.
I think journalists should be able and willing to use the dictionary, which has terms like racist and racism, and when those terms apply they should use them like they would any other term in a story.
And I think journalists should, like researchers, not seek to understand what’s wrong with people. Instead, when there’s an inequity and injustices, they should be reporting on what’s wrong with policy.
What is one step everyone can take right now to correct any racist tendencies they may have?
Everyone can be asking themselves why does fill-in-the-blank racial disparity exist? And if they answer that there’s something wrong with a particular racial group, or right about a particular racial group to explain that racial disparity, then they should recognize that those ideas are racist ideas, and they should begin to see that, indeed, the problem is policy. And they should figure out a way that they can be part of the struggle against those racist policies.
What are you excited for or see challenging about coming to a new school, a new city, and, frankly, a significantly different world due to the pandemic and frequent discussions about racism?
I think there are many challenges. I mean, you have people who are aware that racism is an issue, but they want to stop there: with awareness. And trying to bring them along to action is a challenge. Since our Center is so public and people are familiar with my work, it can be a challenge when people think that we should be involved in any and everything related to race, or people of color.
And when there are other entities, there are other organizations, there are other institutes and offices and people who are already engaged in that work. That can be a challenge, because we have a very simultaneously expansive mission, but also it’s very focused. And then also, it’s always a challenge when you’re getting to know a new community, a new campus community, a new community of students.
What do you want BU students to know about the Center for Antiracist Research and its importance on campus?
I think the Center is critically important. We have researchers here, and we have teachers here, and we have students here, all of whom are engaged in research, teaching and learning. And I don’t think it’s enough for us to research, teach and learn for the sake of researching and teaching and learning. We can be researching, teaching and learning to make a difference, to drive down racial inequity, to be a part of efforts to undermine racism, and we want to systematize that within the Center.
So we not only, of course, want to provide avenues for BU faculty to engage in research that can lead to policy change, but we also, through the Center, want to administer project-based courses that would be a part of those research projects that can then allow students to take those courses and through their learning, be involved in projects that hopefully lead to policy change.
And so I think that’s really the message that we should be focused [on]: We want to create a center that allows people to do what they’re already doing, which is researching, teaching and learning, but then also make a difference in anti-racism.
Caroline DeHaven contributed to the reporting of this article.
