The Patriot Post® · Ibram X. Kendi's Self-Destruction
The New York Times Magazine just published an article on the rise and fall of Ibram X. Kendi. He’s an academic whose core theory on racism is always questioning whether something is racist or anti-racist — but only as it pertains to race, not as a general measure, NYT assures its readers. He also has been the subject of criticism and scrutiny since his ascension to fame post-George Floyd.
Kendi’s rise to prominence garnered him name recognition for his books and afforded him the honor of being asked to be a guest lecturer for $20,000 a gig and cash for a research center. In 2020 alone, the Center for Antiracist Research received $55 million. That money was run through like water, forcing Kendi and Boston University to restructure the center; instead of full-time employees, the center issued nine-month-long academic fellowships that would exist as long as the money held out. It was a grift from beginning to end, but he is still hanging on in the event of another George Floyd moment to give his center and his pockets an infusion of cash.
Who exactly is Ibram X. Kendi? Well, his birth name is really Henry Rogers, but he changed it in his early 30s to a more authentically African-sounding name. Kendi is a complicated individual.
NYT Magazine paints this interesting contrast of Kendi. On the one hand, he is portrayed as a soft-spoken and kindly man who was put upon by unsought fame and struggles with being a misunderstood and introverted intellectual. On the other hand, it talks about a man who is fussy with his appearance to the point of mockery by his friends and is the bane of his colleagues’ existence. His coworkers give accounts of a god complex wherein the only rule for pursuing research is that it must be the carrying out of Kendi’s own ideas.
The magazine is very intentional in drawing a distinction ideologically between Kendi and his contemporaries like Robin DiAngelo. Perhaps the correct person to compare Kendi to is a figure like Patrisse Cullors, who cashed in on the BLM money train. Nonetheless, it is DiAngelo to whom Kendi is paired, and in the words of National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar: “For her, racism is a state of inexpiable white original sin that one must constantly apologize for. For Kendi, it is merely something you oppose by micro-interrogating every single action you take on a relentless second-by-second basis. The Times wants you to understand that his is the more sensible way to reckon with your failures.”
Speaking of failures, NYT Magazine went to extensive lengths to paint Kendi as a misunderstood academic, which was really an attempt to justify his failures with the Center for Antiracist Research he started at Boston University. This center, his brainchild, was supposed to be the compendium of knowledge and tracking of racism and antiracism to help activists positively influence policy for the black community. This mission is vague enough that those who worked at the center were hard-pressed to understand what their actual end goal or objectives were.
Kendi apparently created a toxic work environment for his employees by being secretive and hard to work with. Moreover, when a new executive director stepped in to help lighten Kendi’s workload, she found the center’s finances in disarray and a group of dissatisfied researchers with no clear objectives to follow and no tangibly achievable end goals. This, in a word, was Kendi’s destruction.
Ironically, Kendi blamed his former employees for their own complaints, insisting that they were being more ideologically radical and performing on that radicalism rather than trying to bring about change that would help people. Also, their real resentment was that they were being led by a black man. So they’re racist radicals?
The real reason that Kendi, BLM, critical race theory, and DEI are starting to fade is that the ideas are toxic. His ideas about racism and antiracism aren’t feasible; they are actively harmful. They usher in anti-white, anti-Asian, and anti-Jew racism. As Kendi once said himself, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Kendi’s Roman candle of a grift is fizzling out, and not a moment too soon.