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NVC Student Shares Experience of Listening to Author Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

By NVC Student Haneen Rafati

On Nov. 4, I had the privilege of participating in a webinar where author and historian Dr. Ibram X. Kendi spoke about his New York Times best selling book “How to Be an Anti-Racist”. The conversation was very open minded and involved a lot of tough topics surrounding bigotry and systemic racism in America. Dr. Kendi delivered a phenomenal message to the community and left many of us thinking about how we can better ourselves to be anti-racist.

When asked about the difference between racism and prejudice/bias, Dr. Kendi thoughtfully responded stating that racism, prejudice and bias are all rooted in bigotry, “no one is born being biased or prejudice” he continued. These things are taught. Racism is rooted in bigotry, but is also fueled by power. Later in the webinar, he spoke about how power is policy. Which is why so many racist policies are essentially integrated into a system. This explains a lot. Historically, racist people have been the most powerful.

Another interesting point Dr. Kendi mentioned was, “denial is addiction”. Those who refuse to acknowledge facts but constantly are shown proof and evidence are addicted. I thought this was very relevant to the nation’s current state with the pandemic. COVID-19 has been consistently denied as some sort of hoax by many people despite the evidence by scientists and medical doctors.

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