Summary: Space, Gender, Sexuality: Chapters 13–15

Chapter 13, “Space,” focuses on Ibram X. Kendi’s work on his doctoral dissertation in African American studies. Black students gathered in a university space white students called the “ghetto,” a racist term that generally refers to a Black neighborhood considered violent and dangerous. Kendi notes that crime-ridden white neighborhoods are not similarly characterized by a derogatory racist term. He states that poverty and violence are found in some neighborhoods populated by people of all races. “Racist power racializes space” when it is primarily populated by a particular racial group, he says. Space racism leads to the under-resourcing—and therefore the impoverishment—of racialized spaces, such as Black neighborhoods.    

Kendi describes how some Black people put less value on historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) because they are unlike the “real world” that Black students will face when they graduate. But this is a judgment based on a worldview that sees reality as white. In fact, he says, there are many different worldviews.  

Kendi states that too often, white people see Black spaces as a statement of Black anti-white racism rather than as an expression of Black solidarity unrelated to racism. The 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education integrated schools based on the principle that separate is not equal. Yet as laudable as this ruling was, it could not enforce the provision of equal resources to majority-Black schools. To this day, inequities enshrined in state education policies keep predominantly Black schools less resourced than white schools and therefore inherently unequal to them.  

There is also a racist idea underpinning school integration. Black students are bused from Black neighborhoods to distant white schools because of the racist belief that white teachers and schools are superior and offer Black people a better education. Integration, therefore, facilitates assimilation of minority groups into white culture. Black culture is denigrated because it’s considered inferior. The antiracist position is supportive of “voluntary integration” of spaces and of policies leading to resource equity for all schools.   

Chapter 14, “Gender,” introduces Kaila and Yaba, both outspoken and confident feminists and Black lesbian graduate students. Kendi met them at the Black space at his university. He was awed by the women’s breadth of knowledge and their insights into feminism and gender racism.  

Kendi states that he entered university as a “racist, sexist, homophobe” and says he got his ideas about sexuality and gender from his parents, though they did not speak openly about these topics. His parents accepted traditional roles, with his father as head of the household, and he grew up believing in a patriarchal system. He notes that because many Black households are headed by single Black women, policies have been put in place to empower Black men to become their family’s head of household. In contrast, Black women who head single-parent households are looked down upon as being over-sexualized and are often blamed for problems experienced by poor Black communities. These ideas and policies reinforce patriarchy and undermine Black feminism. As the feminist movement spread in the 1970s, Black women rejected male patriarchy and the subservient role of Black women.  

The gay liberation movement, which began in the 1970s, galvanized LGBTQ Black men and women to fight widespread homophobia in the Black community. Gay Black men and women organized into groups that created their own Black spaces and fought gender and queer (homophobic) racism. The groups’ position papers hailed “queer liberation, feminism, and antiracism” based on gender or sexual orientation. The term gender racism gained traction, as did the fight against it. Gender racism occurs at the intersection of race and gender; Black women exist at this intersection. Antiracist feminists level the race-genders and see policies as the root cause of race and gender inequities.  

White women also suffer from the rejection of Black feminism and intersectionality. If Black women should be subservient to Black men, it follows that the “ideal” white woman should be weak and subservient as well. And men are also negatively affected by this rejection. The idea that “real men” are strong and the racist idea of Black men as not “real men” intersects with the notion of real men being strong white males. This renders Black men inferior to white men. Thus, sexism and racism intersect to shape Black male identity.  

Queer racism, as discussed in Chapter 15, arises from ideas and policies that lead to inequities between race-sexuality. Homophobic policies yield inequities between those in the LGBTQ community and heterosexuals. Antiracist policies, then, should promote equity between race-sexualities. Queer racism occurs at the intersection of race and sexual orientation. The racist idea that Black people are more highly sexualized than white people intensifies the oppression of Black LGBTQ persons, which Kendi calls “hypersexual race-sexuality.”  

Kendi offers his own experience on this issue as well. When he found out from another friend that his male best friend at university was gay, he wondered if he should stop being friends with him. Kendi worried about AIDS and imagined his friend having many (unprotected) sexual encounters with other gay men. Kendi had wondered if his best friend never told him he was gay because he sensed Kendi’s homophobia. After much reflection, Kendi had determined to become a queer antiracist. You can’t be antiracist, he came to understand, if you’re homophobic. Queer antiracism includes working for equality for transgender people and others with different sexualities and sees them all as equally deserving of respect. It supports policies that promote equity for all sexualities.

Analysis: Space, Gender, Sexuality: Chapters 13–15

Chapter 13 continues to explore the intersection of race and class, this time focusing on the link between race and space. Space racism arises from policies that produce resource inequities between racialized spaces, such as Black schools. Policies that promote space racism either eliminate racialized spaces or typically underfund them. In contrast, space antiracism promotes policies that support equity among racialized spaces and give all of them equal resources. Antiracists do not see Black spaces as racist but as places where Black culture can flourish without the influence of the dominant white culture. This idea follows from the idea that ignoring race, as the assimilationists of Chapter 4 would do, may be well-intentioned but has the end result of supporting racism. School integration is an example of this, as it is intended to equalize educational opportunities for Black people who attended under-resourced, majority-Black schools, yet it implies that being educated by white people to fit into the dominant white society is superior to being educated within a supposedly inferior Black cultural space.  

Chapters 14 and 15 confront intersectionalities between gender, sexuality, and racism. Kendi first explores the intersectionality between gender and race by describing the discrimination Black women experience because they’re Black (thus subject to oppression for their race) and female (thus subject to oppression for their gender). Then he discusses the intersection of race and sexuality by describing “queer racism,” noting that homophobia and racism work together to “intensify” oppression. Because Black people are seen as hypersexual, he explains, the intersectionality of race and homophobia is especially intense for LGBTQ Black people. Antiracism, then, works for equity among all persons at these—and other—intersections.