[An antiracist world] can become real if we focus on power instead of people, if we focus on changing policy instead of groups of people. It's possible if we overcome our cynicism about the permanence of race."
-- Ibram X. Kendi (Introduction paragraph 2)

Importance: In the introduction, Kendi establishes the premise that antiracist change comes about through addressing racism at its source: the lawmakers that are responsible for instituting and perpetuating racist policies. This is is in contrast with the belief that racism can be eradicated by educating individual racists.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race, and then say, 'You are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
-- President Lyndon B. Johnson (chapter 1 paragraph 2)

Importance: At a commencement address at Howard University in 1965, President Johnson expressed his understanding that enacting civil rights...