Building an Antiracist World

National Book Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author Dr. Ibram X. Kendi powerfully explores the racist ideas underpinning America and offers a compelling pathway toward a more just society.
Mix & Match

Mix and match the perfect program for your team.

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi on CBS This Morning

The Solution for America’s “Metastatic Racism” | National Book Award winner Dr.  Ibram X. Kendi speaks on CBS’s This Morning about setting America on a new path toward becoming a just and equitable society.

Program Topics

  • How to Be an Antiracist

    When the first Black president headed into the White House, Americans imagined their nation as colorblind and went so far as to call it post-racial. With the arrival of Donald Trump and the continuing rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, many people are awakening and seeing racial reality for the first time. In this deeply personal and empowering lecture, Kendi helps audiences who are actively trying to understand racism by shifting the discussion from how not to be racist, to how to be an antiracist. He shares his own racist ideas and how he overcame them. Kendi also provides direction to people and institutions who want more than just band-aid programs, but actual antiracist action that builds an antiracist America.

  • Racist Ideas in America: From Slavery To Black Lives Matter

    Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is one of the nation’s most prolific and accomplished young professors of race, writing for and speaking to both scholarly and general audiences. This talk builds on Dr. Kendi’s firm belief that in order to understand racism in America today, we must confront the history of anti-Black ideas. Dr. Kendi traces this history of racist ideas; beginning in 15th century Europe when racist ideas were used to legitimize slave trade, up until modern-day America, when law enforcement officials killed unarmed Black individuals and #BlackLivesMatter was born. By shedding light on the history of racist ideas, he gives his audience the tools to expose them and reason to hope for the future.

How to Be an Antiracist

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a “groundbreaking” (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society—and in ourselves.

“The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.”—The New York Times

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Washington Post • Shelf Awareness • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly • Kirkus Reviews

Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. 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 How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.

Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

Available in hardcover, eBook, and unabridged audio.
320 pages; August 13, 2019

How to Be an Antiracist

“The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.

The New York Times

“Transformative… This vital book asks those same age-old questions: When does silence become complicity? Why do we fear taking action more than the devastating consequences of inaction? Kendi’s writing is a search for a language to enable the antiracist that resides in all of us.” 

The Guardian

“Kendi dissects why in a society where so few people consider themselves to be racist the divisions and inequalities of racism remain so prevalent. How to Be an Antiracist punctures the myths of a post-racial America, examining what racism really is—and what we should do about it.” 

TIME
Learn More

Interested in learning more?

Find out how Dr. Kendi’s work can transform your thinking to create a more equitable workplace and world.