Reader Revolt

There might actually be some smart readers of The New York Times (NYT) out there. After the American Pravda detailed the fall of Henry Rogers, better known as Ibram X. Kendi, readers felt emboldened to express their unvarnished opinions on Kendi-ism.

By commenting, readers were defying a core tenet of Kendi-ism: the notion that it is racist to question the validity of those who claim racism is an omnipotent and omnipresent evil implicating every white person in the world.

One NYT reader responded to Kendi’s proposal for a federal agency to analyze the disparate impact of every local, state, and federal policy:

The concern here does not capture the depths of the insanity of this proposal. … Just think of the cost! How many trillions of dollars would that department require? Say a fiscally responsible president wants to raise taxes on billionaires to narrow the deficit. “But wait!” objects a canny conservative. Mightn’t it be racist to raise taxes on high earners just at a time when more black people are joining their ranks, when rates for whites were so low for so long?

Another reader went further, questioning Kendi-ism in its entirety:

According to Kendi’s narrative, he “used to be racist.” The question was, “why … were so many Black people out of work, impoverished, or incarcerated?” His allegedly racist hypothesis ascribed this to beliefs and attitudes borne by those who were out of work, impoverished, or incarcerated themselves. But, according to the narrative, he transcended that racism. He came to see that the blame for those conditions was external, a lack of antiracism on the part of others. And, since it is racist, the hypothesis that the causes of those conditions were in any way connected to such beliefs or attitudes was morally unacceptable.

Well, as Hume pointed out, the fact (if it is a fact) that a certain idea can receive moral criticism is not an argument that it isn’t true. As I understand it, there have been a lot of people very much concerned with the question asked at the beginning who have entertained the idea that Kendi rejected as racist. It does seem to me that it’s an empirical question what the causes of those social conditions are. I don’t see how we make progress if we maintain dogmatically that the problem lies in an absence of sufficient antiracism because an alternative hypothesis, since it is racist, is unthinkable.

These two comments reflect the majority of responses to this article. It appears that when given the opportunity, NYT readers are willing to speak honestly about a topic they have long been forced to remain silent on.

I find the second comment particularly enlightening. Kendi has spent years and millions of dollars arguing that the obvious answer to a question is unthinkable because it is racist. As I mentioned in an earlier piece, this misdiagnosis of Black America’s problems has hindered any progress toward improving their condition.

Therefore, it is necessary to diagnose some of the issues facing the black community and how “anti-racism” needs to be realigned with the reality that Kendi once acknowledged.

The root of anti-racism

The motivation behind Kendi and other “anti-racists” is to present a theory that explains the inequality of outcome between blacks and whites in America. Their motivating questions are:

1.) Why are blacks overrepresented in the criminal justice system?
2.) Why is there a gap in standardized test scores and occupational achievement?

Their answer can be summed up in one word: racism. They argue that the historical and ongoing oppression of black individuals is the sole variable in explaining these gaps.

But to complex questions there is seldom such a straightforward single answer.

Where to begin

I think it’s appropriate to first start this analysis by stating something both “anti-racism” advocates and their detractors can agree on:

1.) That the historical mistreatment of blacks in America was wrong and has long-lasting effects.
2.) That a group that was placed under the boot of slavery and Jim Crow is bound to have developed pathologies and anti-social behaviors as a result of under-developed human capital.

I believe it is important to make these first two points. We would be mistaken to say that the oppression of blacks reinforced by the legal system had no spillover effects into the present day.

But to argue that historical oppression forever condemns a group to a future of poor social outcomes is naive of the histories of many other marginalized and oppressed groups.

Policing and incarceration

Perhaps the biggest statistic pointed to when defending the premise that racism holds blacks back today is that although they are only 13% of the population, they make up almost 40% of the U.S. prison population.

This statement is rarely challenged. Given that criminals are looked down on in our society, asserting that different populations commit crimes at different rates often leads to the implication that groups as a whole are “inferior” or born to be criminal.

However, whenever discussing incarceration, it is necessary to discuss how much crime a particular group commits. In a recent meta-analysis of 51 studies, sociologists Christopher Ferguson and Sven Smith found that “overrepresentation among perpetrators of crime explains incarceration disparities to a greater degree than does racism in the criminal justice system.”

The reality that none of the mainstream media wants to face is that different populations commit crimes at different rates. This disparity in criminality impacts who gets incarcerated relative to others.

This brings me to the subject of policing. The “anti-racism” crowd defends the theory of systemic racism by pointing to police shootings of black suspects. But claims that police departments are hunting black men barely stand any empirical scrutiny.

As researcher Heather Mac Donald painstakingly pointed out several years ago:

In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects.

Similarly, Harvard scholar Roland Fryer has also demonstrated with strong empirics that while there was a disparity in lower-level uses of force, there was actually no racial disparity in the lethal use of force by police officers.

The Achievement Gap

Next on the list of concerns of “scholars” like Kendi is the underrepresentation of blacks within the highest levels of the workplace. But as usual, the uncomfortable facts regarding the metrics that influence one’s lifetime achievement are ignored.

Important metrics include high-school grades, college grades, and performance on a suite of standardized tests.

At the most fundamental level, there is a crisis facing the education of blacks in America. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, almost two-thirds of black 12th graders demonstrate below basic mastery of mathematics compared to 27% of whites and 21% of Asians. Additionally, 7% of black 12th graders in America demonstrated proficiency in mathematics compared to almost 30% of whites and 37% of Asians.

One’s academic and occupational success is not solely dependent on mastery of basic math and reading in high school. Many high school dropouts have gone on to get their GED, attend great universities, secure stellar jobs, or start successful companies. However, it is mistaken to believe that these stark differences in educational achievement in secondary school do not impact racial representation and achievement in higher education and beyond.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that these gaps in high school achievement have little bearing on college performance down the line and that while these gaps are profound, they serve no role in explaining racial disparities in competitive medical residencies, academic medicine, Supreme Court clerkships, or prestigious law firms.

First, let’s consider the rigorous field of medicine. Contrary to the generous assumption above, blacks lag behind on various tests that predict one’s ability to get into medical school and move on to match into competitive specialties and residency programs. On the MCAT, blacks score over one standard deviation below whites on average and are almost one standard deviation below the average GPA of whites as well. This disparity has enormous implications on the relative rates of acceptance into medical schools in a colorblind, Affirmative Action-free system. Furthermore, similar gaps are observed on the USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 exams. These exams assess “a physician’s ability to apply knowledge, concepts, and principles, and to demonstrate fundamental patient-centered skills that are important in health and disease and that constitute the basis of safe and effective patient care” and are influential in determining the type of residency a medical student will match into. The same achievement gap is observed, continuing the meritocratic filter that decreases diversity in medicine.

Secondly, let’s consider law. The first barrier to entry into law is one’s score on the LSAT. The 75th percentile of LSAT scores at the nation’s most prestigious law schools like Yale, Stanford, or Harvard range from 175-177 points out of 180. In 2017, only 7% of black law school applicants had LSAT scores between 160-180. To better quantify how many blacks scored above 170, we unfortunately have to look at older data: In 2004, only 29 blacks out of over 10,000 scored 170 or above.

Another metric that filters out blacks from the law profession is bar exam success rates. In 2022, 2,500 of the 33,000 people who took the bar exam for the first time were black. Of those 2,500, only 57% passed, compared to 83% of the 21,500 white first-time test takers. This means that for every black test taker who passes the exam on the first try, 12.5 white test takers pass. This nearly 13:1 ratio of passing whites to blacks further shrinks the available supply of blacks to be lawyers and eventually partners in a law firm.

So, when explaining why less than 5% of radiologists are black, why 3.3% of cardiothoracic surgeons are black, why only 3% of dermatologists are black, or why only 5% of lawyers are black, one does not need to make abstract claims of racist admissions committees or hiring managers. Instead, one can look directly at performance on standardized tests for an explanation that does not impute evil motives on over half the country.

Education inequality = Racism

To the firm believer in Kendi-ism, test score gaps play no role in explaining gaps in life achievement. Instead, they are prima facie evidence that the education system itself is biased against non-Asian minority students.

This point is more difficult to dispute because there is truth to the claim that blacks disproportionately attend lower-quality schools.

However, school quality is only part of the story.

One of the greatest benefits of the Internet Age is the expanded availability of test prep and other educational resources online. All one needs to prepare for the ACT or SAT is a device, internet access, a $2 calculator, and a few number two pencils. A Google search for “free ACT practice tests with solutions” yields 920,000,000 results in just 0.31 seconds. If you want a workbook that explains the solutions, the structure of the ACT, and test-taking strategies, the Official ACT Prep Guide can be delivered to your door for only $30 on Amazon.

The increased accessibility of test-prep resources has rendered tutors less useful than ever before. This presents an enormous opportunity for the test gaps to close like never before.

Family Dysfunction

The single most important explanatory variable in understanding the root cause of black-white disparities in all the fields described above is the state of the black family. Almost 70% of blacks are born to unmarried mothers. The strong nuclear family is the most fundamental building block for a flourishing society. Through the unified effort of two loving and strong parents, children are taught pro-social behaviors and the discipline required for academic success. Without this, children, especially young boys, are at significant risk of deprioritizing academics, getting involved in criminal activities, and resolving petty disputes with lethal violence.

The continued dominance of systemic racism as the sole theory through which achievement disparities can be explained will only perpetuate and further facilitate the decline of Black America. Educational failure will be explained away as the fault of whites. Blacks will continue to gun each other down in growing numbers. And the black family will continue to disintegrate.

Concern over acute racial disparities is often valid. Justice is a desire found across all ideological lines. But in accordance with Kendi-ism, the only way to narrow racial gaps is to make insignificant or abolish the standards and examinations that quantify these gaps. New York Times readers have en masse rejected Kendi-ism. It’s now time for America’s leaders to do so as well.

You can reach Caleb at [email protected].