Simile: Addiction
Kendi compares being an anti-racist to fighting an addiction, using the simile: “Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination” (23). An addiction is notoriously hard to eradicate, and people with addictions feel intense cravings for the object of that addiction. This is the same with racism, which is deeply ingrained in people's psyches and requires constant vigilance against.
Metaphor: Marriage
Kendi uses numerous metaphors in the text to easily get his point across. One example describes the "dark ghetto": "dark had married ghetto in the chapel of inferiority and took her name as his own—the ghetto was now so definitively dark, to call it a dark ghetto would be redundant" (156). Imagining the word "dark" marrying the word "ghetto" shows just how fully united and intimately related the concepts are.
Metaphor: Driving
Kendi uses a metaphor of driving to explain his journey from racism to antiracism: "I share my own journey of being raised in the dueling consciousness of the Reagan-era Black middle class, then right-turning onto the ten-lane highway of anti-Black racism—a highway mysteriously free of police and free on gas—and veering off into the two-lane highway of anti-White racism, where gas is rare and police are everywhere, before finding and turning down the unlit dirt road of antiracism" (11). We can imagine him driving nicely and comfortably at first, then ending up in successively more difficult and emptier roads. This shows that antiracism is indeed difficult and lonely at times, but it is still the correct route.
Metaphor: Pie
Here, Kendi uses the metaphor of pie to explain how racist ideas are made: "Race making is an essential ingredient in the making of racist ideas, the crust that holds the pie. Once a race has been created, it must be filled in" (40). We see racist ideas being poured into the pie: the idea that Black people are inferior, the idea that they are more violent and more sexual, etc.
Simile: Spaces
When Kendi refutes the idea that it is fair or appropriate to compare Black and White spaces, the latter of which are better funded, he uses a simile of fighting: "Comparing spaces across race-classes is like matching fighters of different weight classes, which fighting sports consider unfair" (172). This simile conjures an image of a hundred-and-twenty pound boxer going up against someone literally twice his size, which would be categorically unfair.
