Behavioral antiracism as defined by Ibram X. Kendi in How to be an Antiracist, maintains that individual behavior is exactly that—individual, and not representative of an entire racial group. This requires distinguishing between behavior and culture, which is based on collective traditions that can be shared among a racial group, but is not necessarily reflective of everyone in an entire race. Dismantling the myth that race is responsible for individual behaviors or vice versa is critical to advancing health equity because it has often been used to distract from or support racist policies. For example, attributing the differential health outcomes of people of color to poor personal choices such as eating unhealthy food, fails to take into account the legacy of racist housing practices and socioeconomic disinvestment in communities of color that have resulted in food deserts and that have disproportionately narrowed affordable food options for certain communities.“Deracializ[ing] behavior” means acknowledging that behavior is individual because as Kendi says: “Behavior is something humans do, not races do." |
|