Durable antiracism requires seizing and holding institutional power, not merely protesting

Evidence

Any effective solution to eradicating American racism must involve Americans committed to antiracist policies seizing and maintaining power over institutions, neighborhoods, counties, states, nations—the world. It makes no sense to sit back and put the future in the hands of people committed to racist policies, or people who regularly sail with the wind of self-interest, toward racism today, toward antiracism tomorrow. An antiracist America can only be guaranteed if principled antiracists are in power, and then antiracist policies become the law of the land, and then antiracist ideas become the common sense of the people, and then the antiracist common sense of the people holds those antiracist leaders and policies accountable. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1260

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This completes the inversion’s positive half: ideas follow policy, so antiracist policy must come first to produce antiracist common sense — the policy-first logic applied to the solution as well as the problem.
• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s own governing question: where do antiracist leaders come from if ideas follow policy? Kendi’s answer is circular in a revealing way — power produces policy produces ideas produces accountability for power. — connects to: Antiracist movements are political struggles for self-determination and full political participation — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 112; Protest movements must become robust institutions to have lasting impact; Anti-capitalist movements inherited a party and union legacy they must reproduce to endure — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2207