"One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist'" -- Kendi https://millennial-grind.com/30-quotes-from-how-to-be-an-ant...

That philosohy departs from popular understanding of MLK dramatically.

Inequities are results, so he's basically saying that you will forever be trying to manipulate outcomes to arbitrary standards of equity, or you are a racist.

Thanks. I've also found a definition of 'racial inequities' and an example from Kendi from the same chapter:

> Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. Here’s an example of racial inequity: 71 percent of White families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to 45 percent of Latinx families and 41 percent of Black families. Racial equity is when two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing. An example of racial equity would be if there were relatively equitable percentages of all three racial groups living in owner-occupied homes in the forties, seventies, or, better, nineties.

This idea of the presence of (certain) inequities as evidence of racism doesn't seem controversial to me: if we took large samples of White, Black, and Latinx households in USA, accounting for regional differences and other coincident factors in the samples, wouldn't we expect the deviation in home ownership percentages to be much, much lower?

Could you (or someone else) reference a definition of racism from MLK?

Groups are unequal for all kinds of reasons. It's the norm. Some are "meritocratic" reasons, some are cultural, some historical, some due to prejudice and a lot (most?) are just happenstance. And these reasons also take part in positive and negative feedback loops.

The idea that any difference is due to an "ism" is ridiculous.

That being said, we should respect and help whatever individuals need it.