New London — As part of the Conversation on Race lecture series, Connecticut College, in partnership with The Day and The United States Coast Guard (USCGA), hosted celebrated author Ibram X. Kendi to speak about race in the United States.
Kendi, famous for his New York Times bestselling work “How to Be an Antiracist,” discussed Americans’ propensity to denote themselves as “not racist,” and their failure to critically examine how their actions can perpetuate racism. Kendi challenged the audience to identify such acts and work to become “antiracist” by condemning them.
“The heartbeat of racism is denial, and the heartbeat of antiracism is confession,” Kendi said.
An organizer of the event, Dean of Institutional Equity and Inclusion John F. McKnight Jr. emphasized the importance of Kendi’s lecture, “I think he’s drawn an important distinction between [being ‘not racist’ and being ‘antiracist’] and I feel that we’ll have a better chance at deconstructing racism when we have more people actively engaged in doing self-work to understand how we might be upholding and perpetuating racist ideas.”
Last November, Connecticut College and The Day hosted New London Supreme Court Justice Richard A. Robinson as the first series lecturer to discuss his success as a Black man in the legal system. Kendi’s speech was the second in this series.
“We are partnering with The Day and USCGA because we’re neighbors and we live in the same community,” McKnight said. “My favorite aspect of doing this work in partnership is that we have been able to pull together an incredibly diverse group of people to consider these important issues together.”
In conversation with audience members, most agree and hope The Day, USCGA, and Connecticut College will continue these conversations.
“Conn is a PWI [Private White Institution] so we need to have these conversations to examine our ideas about other racial groups,” Connecticut College Professor Rashelle Litchmore said. “We’re all socialized into racism so having explicit conversations allows us to unpack and examine the effects of our assumptions when we interact with people racialized as other.”
Litchmore expressed that Kendi’s speech was incredibly moving and hopes students will remember that you are either antiracist or supporting racism. “If you are not actively working against racist actions, policies, or sentiments, then you are supporting and perpetuating a racist system.”
Dean McKnight notes that he is already working with The Day and the USCGA to brainstorm the next event to continue the lecture series.
“We are building a coalition in the New London region that is generationally, linguistically, culturally, racially, ethnically, politically, socioeconomically, sexually, and gender diverse,” said McKnight. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that movement!” •
