The Rise & Fall of Ibram X. Kendi

For the right price, Ibram X. Kendi will explain to you how everything that isn’t explicitly antiracist is racist.

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Not long ago, Ibram Xolani Kendi — formerly Henry Rogers — was at the cutting edge of the burgeoning “anti-racism” industry. He and other high-ranking professional activists already were treated as sagacious specialists in race relations and lauded as public intellectuals. Then his career went into overdrive during the George Fentanyl tantrum of mid-2020, followed by the media’s unprecedented outpouring of anti-white bile since then.

Had things continued on this trajectory without a hitch, it’s anyone’s guess as to what lofty heights he might have attained. Could he have followed in Barack Obama’s footsteps? Perhaps the College of Cardinals one day would’ve gifted Catholic Christendom with Pope Ibram? Might he even have become the first President in dreadlocks while moonlighting as the Pontiff? Unluckily for him, his good fortune hit the skids lately.

The making of a skintellectual

In earlier times, he started out as just another mouthy hothead — you know the type — attending a historically black college. Then his explorations in that particular academic milieu, richly fertilized with Afrocentric bullshit, led him to believe in Elijah Muhammad’s loopy ideas about the origin of “white devils.” Then for a time he came to believe that white people are aliens. Other than that, according to one of his columns in the student newspaper:

He explained that “Europeans” had been “socialized to be aggressive people,” and “raised to be racist.” His theory was that white people were fending off racial extinction, using “psychological brainwashing” and “the AIDS virus.”

Although that of course seems quite silly, I must confess to having had a small part of these misconceptions likewise. Being well-educated in science, I used to think AIDS was caused by a virus. Then, after being schooled by a team of online armchair microbiologists, I’ve accepted the received higher knowledge that viruses are imaginary and AIDS comes from dirty toilet seats. Cool, no more condoms for me! I’ve been barebacking it in the bathhouses ever since!

You can buy Beau Albrecht’s Space Vixen Trek here.

From these humble beginnings, Kendi’s star began rising in 2008 when he became a professor specializing in Africana studies. In addition to various academic posts since then, he’s authored a number of books. The first, in 2012, was a monograph about black academia.

His second title was a breakout hit, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. This thrilling doorstopper is approximately 600 pages of complaining about white people. Not only did it rise to popularity, showered with buckets of drool from enraptured reviewers, Kendi became the youngest recipient of the National Book Award for Nonfiction. (I’m inclined to quibble about the “nonfiction” part, though.) As for whether this sudden success in Getting Discovered was solely the result of his own exceptional talent, or whether it was because his message coincided with the ethnic sociopolitical interests of some executives and other powerful figures in the publishing industry, I’ll leave it to the reader to decide.

This was followed in 2019 by How to Be an Antiracist, another book by this intrepid rebel heroically standing up to the white supremacist establishment. Again, it was carried aloft within the literary-industrial complex by forces far greater than himself. The timing couldn’t have been better, since the next year was the annus horribilis of 2020. While cities burned across America, guilt-plagued liberals were buying it hot off the press, trying to figure out how they could appease blacks more effectively. As the riots and looting went into extended overtime, the book climbed to the top of the charts, and surely the royalties brought in a king’s ransom!

The heyday of the professional anti-whites

Courtesy of Stonetoss

Indeed, George Fentanyl’s untimely demise while in police custody was the spark that inaugurated the peak boom times for the “antiracism” industry. Corporations were getting hip to an alphabet soup of politically correct fads: critical race theory; diversity, inclusion, and equality; and environmental, social, and governance. This created a temporary surplus of make-work opportunities for newly-minted sociology graduates, empowered feminist selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor addicts, and assorted terrestrial calamari.

The big-name professional activists are raking in the money, too, delivering struggle sessions at countless workplaces. Motormouthed skintellectuals and sanctimonious diversity mystagogues pull in tidy sums to indoctrinate captive audiences. Their occupation generally involves spouting boilerplate Leftist talking points and sometimes badgering the participants — all in the name of promoting harmony and brotherhood, of course. Such types usually seem about as obsessed with “racism” as medieval inquisitors were preoccupied with heresy, evil spirits, and witchcraft.

In Kendi’s case, one of his gigs included $20,000 paid by the Fairfax County, Virginia School Board for an hour of livestreamed sagacity. Sweet! Since then, the wise Professor has contributed to children’s literature with the titles Antiracist Baby, Goodnight Racism, How to Be a (Young) Antiracist, and How to Raise an Antiracist. As usual, these sell like hotcakes to white liberal bootlickers eager to indoctrinate their own children.

While America’s cities were ablaze during the “mostly peaceful” protests of the George Fentanyl tantrum, another Kendi initiative began: his Center for Antiracist Research, hosted at Boston University. It’s undergoing an implosion recently, presenting a serious problem for the Kendi legacy.

“Antiracism” at a glance

It’s quite often difficult to determine the full implications of Leftist writings. The most candid ones are usually meant for internal use. Sometimes they’re hidden in plain sight, but available if you know what to look for — basically “security by obscurity.” Then there are those written in obfuscating jargon, such as postmodernism, which are all but impenetrable by non-initiates. Writings meant for the public are usually candy-coated, and can be quite lengthy, too. That also makes it hard to tell what the results of their program would really look like if they got their way. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist is rather remarkable in that it’s meant for mass consumption, yet also explains in plain language exactly what these types believe. More importantly, it requires little interpretation to see what they’d do if given the opportunity.

Early on in the book there’s the definition of “racist,” which is “[o]ne who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.” (That sounds rather like a self-referential circular definition, but you’ll just have to run with it.) The opposite, of course, is an “antiracist.” For all the libertarians out there, note that this bifurcation allows for no colorblind, neutral middle ground. Treating everyone the same no matter what they look like is not the object. For the apathetic — those who just want to grill, for God’s sake — they’re not off the hook, either. By definition, anyone who isn’t an “antiracist” is a “racist.” Those who disagree, or fail to express sufficient enthusiasm, are considered enemies. Thus, for whites to escape being called raaaacists, they must cheerfully support their own dispossession. Also by definition, any policy or law that isn’t “antiracist” is “racist,” even if it makes no mention of race whatsoever.

The criterion here isn’t about equality of opportunity, but instead equality of results. This concept goes by the nice-sounding code word “equity.” If some socioeconomic metric shows any racial differences, it’s considered to be evidence that it was caused by malicious bias. For example, if a law against mugging turns out to produce a racially disparate number of muggers, then the law itself is to blame — not criminal behavior. If the “racist” law is rewritten to enforce equality of results between the races — again, “equity” — regarding mugging convictions, such as by making it harder to prosecute blacks, only then is it “antiracist.”

The law is only one facet. For another example, disparate outcomes in health metrics are considered evidence of “racism,” too. This must be corrected likewise by gaming the results. What would that look like? Presumably this would involve preferential treatment for non-whites and neglect for whites until all statistics are the same, including death rates. Indeed, there have already been rumblings in the usual quarters of the mainstream media to the effect that whites should be put at the back of the line for healthcare in order to enforce “equity.”

Note that differences in behavior, culture, or biology are explicitly disallowed as explanations for any disparity. “Antiracism” is a tightly-wrapped ball of Leftist tautologies, alleging that any way in which blacks fall behind is not their fault, and likewise neither is anything bad they do. But admitting that meaningful racial differences exist invalidates the whole shebang. The expectation underlying “equity” is absolute egalitarianism, and any differences in racial outcomes are to be settled on the Iron Bed of Procrustes.

What they want to do about “racism”

Around the time that How to Be An Antiracist came out, Kendi proposed a constitutional amendment as a remedy, creating a new government bureau “comprised of formally trained experts on racism” with vast powers:

The DOA [Department of Anti-Racism] would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.

Other than having unconditional veto power over legislature, the above would effectively grant the Department of Antiracism authority to supersede the judicial and executive branches of the government by punishing noncompliant officials. (Recall once again that pursuing colorblind policies is “racist” because they’re not geared toward enforcing “equity.”) The proposed DOA would therefore have the full spectrum of government power to enforce racial equality of results, as they see fit, over the public. Since the antiracism commissars would be unelected and not bound to any of the usual constitutional checks and balances, it would effectively turn the United States into a dictatorship. Moreover, the talk about investigating “private racist policies” hints that the DOA might also claim authority over businesses. As ugly as all these implications are, the proposal has quite a compelling selling point in the present political climate: “You’re a raaaacist if you don’t want to ratify the Antiracism Amendment. You monster!”

Thus, the full details emerge clearly. “Antiracism” is a totalitarian ideology determined to enforce absolute equality, according to the determination of unaccountable “experts” with unlimited authority. In practice, this means subjugating whites until they are reduced to black levels across all socioeconomic metrics. A Procrustean social levelling scheme would theoretically grind down Asians, too, but only whites are really on target.

Actually, this wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the detrimental effects were strictly limited to white liberals who think all that’s a good idea. They’re like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders, and they need to get a clue about the consequences of their ethnomasochistic behavior. It would teach them a valuable lesson when they’re taxed exorbitantly for giveaway programs. Oh, wait, we already have that. . .

Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research

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The creation of a think tank to further this new ideology should’ve been a great advance for it, but it turned into Kendi’s Waterloo. The beginnings were quite promising, though. The former Twitter head, Soyjak Dorsey, forked over $10 million for the project. Other donations poured in as well. All told, the Boston University student newspaper cited “at least $43 million in grants and gifts” since the project’s beginning. That’s obviously quite a lot of swag. If every black in America chipped in a buck, then it would come close to that amount.

Again, the historical context was that George Fentanyl had died from heart failure quite inconveniently in police custody. The corrupt mainstream media jumped to conclusions before all the facts were in which most of them still won’t acknowledge. Then, black rioters and Leftist militants set cities ablaze all across the country. The orgy of violence continued for months, causing further deaths, injuries, and massive property damage to avenge the “martyred” career criminal. The media lied; people died.

During all that rioting, looting, and mayhem, massive donations began pouring into a new foundation called the Center for Antiracist Research. Surely much of it was from guilt-ridden white do-gooders who believed that “racism” — only by whites, of course — was to blame for the Long Hot Summer of Floyd. Now just let that sink in. Moreover, they thought that handing over the dough to this outfit would be a constructive remedy.

What do they actually do?

But, I digress. So what has the Center for Antiracist Research done with all that swag? I checked out their site. Looks like they hired a good web designer. They have a research department, and it seems their flagship project was tracking racial disparities in relation to Covid-19. This was carried out by their Racial Data Lab, and that seems to be its only project. Okay, so even viruses are racist; got that.

Also, they have a Narrative Office. I do have to hand it to them — the name sounds more low-key than “Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment.” It has half-a-dozen projects listed. First up is a reboot of The Emancipator. (That one seems mainly a project of the Boston Globe, since it’s hosted on their website and is basically an index page of the usual sort of editorials.) The other items are:

• a Public Scholarship Shop,
• Designing Antiracism Curricula,
• the Vertex Symposium,
• Antiracist Book Festivals, and
• Antiracism Training for the Workforce (this item is a stub with no link to another page).

Aside from these projects, the page links to a merchandise site related to their Antiracist Book Festivals. You still can get their Antiracist Book Festival facemasks; better buy them before these collectors’ items all fly off the shelf! (I just hocked my TV so that I could order two dozen — yup, uh huh, sure did!) More seriously, it looks like their busiest beavers are in the Narrative Office.

Other than that, I’m just not seeing a lot. Like, that’s it? Is that all they’ve got done for $43 million and change? Did they free any slaves with that? Oh, they didn’t? How many social problems have they solved? Well, let’s lower the bar a bit. So how many lunch counters did they desegregate for such a princely sum? Whether their efforts actually led to any tangible improvement in race relations — picking at old wounds doesn’t count — is very debatable.

For that matter, although the object was black uplift, did any of this Ivory Tower critical race theory do anything meaningful to help the black community? That $43 million really could’ve done something if it had gone to funding Boston’s social services instead of this “antiracism” boondoggle. For all that, imagine how many homeless could’ve been lifted out of the gutter and given a shot at getting their lives back together. A transitional living facility with a job training program could’ve been funded for newly released ex-convicts, offering an alternative to cyclic incarceration. Junkies could’ve been put in drug rehab programs and freed from chemical slavery. If a heartless fascist like me can come up with those ideas, then surely I’ve only scratched the surface of ways the donations could’ve been used other than producing snotty anti-white agitprop.

The party’s over

Despite the lavish funding, the money eventually started getting tight. A round of layoffs was recently announced. Looks like they’ll need to get real jobs — ouch!

Since then, the management style has been a hot topic. More than that, there’s been much interest in the institution’s finances. Indeed, one might wonder: Where the hell did all those millions go? A lot of other people have been asking the same thing lately. There’s been much buzz, but little in the way of specifics yet. That should change when the ledgers are opened, so long as the story doesn’t get swept under the rug. Hopefully a forensic accountant will get a chance to go through the records with a fine-toothed comb. Was it frittered away? Did millions disappear into someone’s pocket? If so, whose hand was in the cookie jar? Time will tell.

Even some of the staffers have weighed in. For example, from the article “Fed-up staff seethe over Boston U’s antiracist center: ‘Colossal waste of millions of dollars’“:

Phillipe Copeland, a clinical associate professor in the BU School of Social Work and former assistant director of the Narrative office at CAR, accused both institutions of spinning the layoffs as a “redesign rather than an institutional failure, for which people need to be accountable.”

He claimed the organization had lost at least one funder due to the research center’s inability to meet goals. He wasn’t the only one who shared this sentiment in the report.

“There’s a mismatch between the amount of money that CAR has received from these grants and what they’ve actually produced,” an anonymous source told the campus newspaper. “You can juxtapose that with other research centers either at BU or other universities that have received a tiny fraction of what CAR has received and has produced a lot more.”

This has led to critiques in the Leftist media as well, such as from the Daily Beast in “What I Saw While Working at Ibram Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University“:

I accepted the challenge of building these programs and got to work. It wasn’t long before I ran into obstacles. I noticed that leadership would make decisions that either weren’t adequately explained or made no sense. I received mixed messages and contradictory directives. I would make recommendations based upon my expertise that went unheeded. I would go to meetings and get the sense I was in a class with students who hadn’t done the reading. I would express concerns and it would go nowhere.

This experience was shared by many at the Center for Antiracist Research.

Having worked in a number of organizations, I was used to a bit of dysfunction. I tried to take it in stride. However, I was also hearing rumbles of discontent from colleagues.

A number of people in significant leadership positions left, often abruptly. This was a bad sign. I told myself that the center was new, and growing pains were to be expected. My solution was to support my colleagues and focus on what I could control. However, this coping strategy was not sustainable, because the center’s dysfunction was sabotaging my efforts.

There’s a lot more where that came from. When Leftists start criticizing Leftist projects, that’s a sign things really went off the rails.

What’s next?

Let it not be said that this was some noble, well-intentioned project that unfortunately just didn’t work out. (Such a response is predictable; that’s pretty much what certain Leftists say about Communism these days.) No, Kendi’s “antiracism” is a totalitarian ideology that has the flawed premise of absolute egalitarianism as its cornerstone. He’d like to implement it with a bureau that supersedes the government, and would presumably have no limitations on its own power. If he and others like him got their wish, it would lead to massive confiscations and dispossession of white people — and that’s just for starters. The Center for Antiracist Research, clothed in the hallowed aura of academia, was meant to agitate for this ideology.

Hopefully, the imbroglio will burst this pustule that appeared on Boston University three years ago. With luck, perhaps this will serve as a lesson about anti-white sinecures cloaked in phony righteousness. The much larger financial meltdown afflicting BLM — Build Larger Mansions — is another example, of course. It may be a lot to hope for, but perhaps this could be the beginning of the end for the white guilt racket. By the grace of Kek, we might see the day that anti-white agitation will no longer be a viable career path, and nobody is getting a paycheck by calling white people “racists.”