We can all read like an antiracist.
Learn a step-by-step process for exploring your perspective.
At its most basic level,
antiracist reading slows down our reading process
by pausing that reading often
and asking certain questions in a cascading order
that drills deeper into our habits of language and judgment.
These habits make up our reading practice,
which has biases that afford and limit our judgments.
ASAO B. INOUE
Antiracist literacy encourages curiosity.
Asao B. Inoue has devised this four-step process that anyone can engage in while they’re reading.
The goal is to guide you through exploring and sitting with discomfort — a necessary skill in antiracist work.
You can use this process with anything that you read; think of it as a mindfulness practice with transformative benefits.
This is a gentle interrogative process, kind of like you’re interacting with your own internal three-year-old.
For every thought you have about what you’re reading, ask why — and for every answer, ask why, again.
Be open to the discomfort of not being centered in the narrative, and embrace the knowledge that comes from those emotions.
How can you use it to engage in antiracist work in your community?
1: Breath
Pause for at least ten seconds and take three deep, slow breaths.
Purpose: This prompts you to pause and create the conditions for you to be as mindful as possible.
2: materials
What do I think I see or hear in this text at this moment? Can I identify with it?
Purpose: The encourages you to consider your personal connection to the words and text in front of you.
3: habits
What habits of judgment and language am I using to make that meaning? How would I describe them and their affordances and limitations?
Purpose: This is the central component of this practice as it helps us uncover the structural habits that have become personal.
4: origins
Where did I get those habits in my life? What other habits might be reasonably applied here?
Purpose: This inspires you to investigate how you have come to such habits of language and judgment: How did something external become internal to you?