IN-PERSON EVENT

American Academy Lecture

How to Be an Antiracist

In cooperation with BBAW and btb Verlag

Moderated by Rose-Anne Clermont, Journalist and Editor

Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, 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 this talk, based on his bestselling book How to Be an Antiracist (One World, 2019), published in German by btb in August 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.

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.