You remember Ibram X. Kendi.
He’s a genius. How do I know he’s a genius? He’s such a genius that he actually won a MacArthur “genius grant” in 2021. The grant was a $625,000 no-strings-attached fellowship honoring his “exceptional creativity, scholarly achievements, gift for communicating his antiracist work and ideas with diverse audiences.”
Boston University gave him an anti-racist grant. For those who have not followed the prodigious career of Ibram X. Kendi, the founder of the new Center for Antiracist Research, he is the author of a bunch of mediocre books and he speaks nonsense for a living. The nonsense that he speaks is all about how America is deeply and irrevocably racist.
He has written that America was literally racist in all of its iterations from the very beginning, up to and including all of the constitutional protections of the Bill of Rights. So what exactly does this genius say about racism? He can’t really define the term. He just knows racism exists wherever there is a disparity. In his book, “How to Be an Antiracist,” he says, ”Racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas.”
Let me give you an example of how stupid that is. The vast majority of the NBA is black. That is a massive racial disparity. Only 13% of the American population is black. Does this mean there has been some sort of deep and abiding racism in the NBA to make all of that happen? Conversely, in hockey, virtually all the players are white. Does that mean there is deep and abiding racism that exists at the roots of hockey, and that is why there are not that many black hockey players at the NHL level? Of course not. That’s incredibly silly. If you see 99% of people in prison for violent crime are men, is that because of deeply sexist roots in society?
The truth is, disparities exist across virtually every industry and every metric in society — and they have for all of time. They’re tied to everything from geography to environment. The idea that if two groups by race do not stack up identically in any particular area is because of systemic and abiding racism is absolute nonsense. But all Kendi has to show is any disparity, which makes his job really easy because I too can point to disparities in every arena of life.
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In 2020, we decided as a society that you no longer had to prove racism was at the root of, for example, crime statistics. Instead, you could just simply claim that it was. And then everyone who said it wasn’t was deemed to be racist. That was a scam. The idea that American society rests in unidentifiable but ever-present racism is a lie. The notion that disparities in crime statistics are caused by racist policing is a lie. This is the magic of Kendi. He says colorblindness is racist. If you think race shouldn’t matter, that’s because you’re racist. According to Kendi, race does matter. And the way we know race matters is because of disparities. And those disparities are evidence of racism. And if you say that’s why race shouldn’t matter, that’s because you’re a racist, don’t you see?
So why am I discussing Ibram X. Kendi today? Because Boston University is now announcing an inquiry into his anti-racist center. It turns out the whole thing is a scam.
You don’t say.
A person who can’t define the word racism but is being paid not to define the word racism — you mean that was a scam? You mean just like any other cult? If the cult leader can’t define the terms, it can still be a cult.
This was the Emperor’s New Clothes garbage. Everyone knew this at the time. Anti-racism is a collection of anti-racist policies that target racist disparities backed by racist ideas. But everyone could tell this was gobbledygook nonsense. And now Boston University has announced an “inquiry” into Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research. The predicate for this is that the center laid off some 20% of their entire staff and has been accused of misusing millions of dollars in funds. They have published hardly any research.
It’s hard to have a research-based approach when you do no research. A giant scam.
That is the message here: If you can’t articulate why someone should give you money to do something, all you can do is threaten them that you will call them a racist or a bigot if they do not do that something.
Boston University professor Phillipe Copeland, who is black and used to work for Kendi’s center, stated, “Boston University needs to explain how one of its premier Centers ended up in this situation and how mass layoffs are ’antiracist.’ This act of employment violence and trauma is not just about individual leaders. It’s about the cultures and systems that allow it to occur.”
“It’s about the culture and systems that allow it to occur.” I love it. Kendi preaches the grift, and then when he actually uses the grift to fire his own people, creating a disparity in outcome, this means he is now violating his own anti-racist precepts.
It’s a snake eating its own tail here.