Why We Ask: Our mission and operations are funded 100% by conservatives like you. Please help us continue to extend Liberty to the next generation and support the 2024 Year-End Campaign today.

September 20, 2023

Race Huckster’s Grift Runs Into Financial Trouble

Woke antiracism activist and author Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research is laying off employees despite pulling in millions of dollars in donations.

Grievance grifting has long been plied by individuals who resemble confidence men in every way except for the fact that the yarns and outright lies they weave are accepted as legal. In the American context, the most successful type of grievance grift is that which thrives upon the nation’s great moral stain — our history of slavery.

After slavery had ended and the rights of American Liberty had been legally extended to those former slaves, Booker T. Washington famously observed that among poor blacks there were some who realized that they could enrich themselves by preying on the emotions of others over sins of the past.

In his book My Larger Education, Washington wrote: “There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Ever since Washington made this observation, the class of race huckster has endured. First it was W.E.B. Du Bois in Washington’s own day, and then Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Today’s new generation of hucksters includes Ibram X. Kendi. Collectively, what all these folks knew was that there’s fame and fortune to be gained in the racism grift.

Kendi is a 41-year-old New York City native and university professor who rose to prominence following the success of his book, How to Be an Antiracist, published in 2019 during his time at American University in Washington, DC. He then rose further in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd.

Moving to Boston University, Kendi entered into a partnership creating the Center for Antiracist Research. Riding the outpouring of “antiracism” virtue signaling, Kendi’s center received millions of dollars in donations. Of note, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey gave $10 million, while another $1.5 million came in from the Rockefeller Foundation and $1.5 million from biotech company Vertex.

Not only was Kendi riding high off his book sales, a book in which he promoted critical race theory as if it were the Gospel, but he was also raking in millions from white leftists seeking any way to purge themselves of white guilt.

According to Kendi, the only way to end racism was with more racism, or what many have noted is simply a repackaging of reverse racism. In Kendi’s view, the victimizer or oppressor must now become the victim or the oppressed. Only then will “justice” come.

Well, just three years later, Kendi’s center is collapsing. Recent news reports note that the center has laid off between 15 and 30 of its 45 employees. And some of those former employees are now speaking out.

Spencer Piston, who was the faculty lead at the center’s policy office, stated regarding the collapse: “There are a number of ways it got to this point. It started very early on when the university decided to create a center that rested in the hands of one human being, an individual given millions of dollars and so much authority.” Another former employee, who is an associate professor in Boston University’s African American & Black Diaspora Studies, was even more critical, claiming that from its start the center lacked structure and overworked people. “It became very clear after I started that this was exploitative and other faculty experienced the same and worse.”

Christopher Rufo, who has done yeoman’s work to confront and dismantle the influence of the inherently racist CRT in America’s halls of higher education, found the news unsurprising. “Ibram Kendi’s ‘antiracism’ center is collapsing,” Rufo he noted. “He hired a bunch of left-wing academics that produced almost no research, but complained that he was ‘exploitative’ and forced them to work too hard. Now he’s laid off nearly half of the employees and they’re trashing him publicly.”

About that “research,” The Washington Free Beacon reports, “The group’s plans to ‘maintain the nation’s largest online database of racial inequity data in the United States’ quickly fizzled out, and the database has been dormant since 2021.” Only two research papers, co-authored with outside academics, and two other “policy reports” have come from the center.

Meanwhile, as the center collapses and transitions into a “fellowship model,” Kendi himself will remain employed at the university, guaranteeing that his racial grifting will continue unabated. All grifting does is create narratives to further grievances, because that’s where the money is. And grifters don’t ever offer any real solutions because doing so would put them out business.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.