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How to Be an Anti-Racist Book Club Guide

This guide includes the curriculum you need to run a book club based on Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an Anti-Racist, as well as supplementary reading and videos.

Chapter 6

A downloadable copy of this guide can be found here.

Goals for Chapter 6

  • Identify ways in which pop culture reinforces racist ideas of Black bodies
  • Identify safe/unsafe aspects of the library, as it relates to your race, ethnicity and privilege
  • Evaluate strategies that have been used to reduce violent crime in Black neighborhoods

Discussion Questions

Go over the group agreements, then discuss the following questions:

  • How has it been for you since the last meeting? Did anything from the book stick with you during that time?
  • What were your “aha!” moments while reading this chapter?
  • What are places - in pop culture and elsewhere - where Black bodies are displayed, as Kendi writes, “larger, more threatening, more potentially harmful, and more likely to require force to control” (pg 71)? Does this change your usage of that pop culture/other item?
  • What makes the library space safe or unsafe for you? What are ways in which your race/ethnicity/privilege affects this?
  • Discuss the 3 strategies Kendi lists on how to reduce violent crime in Black neighborhoods (pg 80). What makes one strategy work better than others? What have you seen used in your own neighborhoods?

Wrap up: Depending on time, you may ask people to put these in chat

  • What is a specific action you can take in the next week that is anti-racist?
  • What worked today? What didn’t work?

Additional Materials