How to be Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

Dr. Kendi has very recently come into controversy. Director of the Antiracism Institute at Boston University, Dr. Kendi has recently laid off half the staff.

During 2020, Dr. Kendi released the text How to be Antiracist, a NYT bestseller that introduced an inversion to racism and framed that inversion as binary to racism.

Where I think this framework succeeded was in bringing greater attention to neutraility and its ineffectiveness. Within this framework, more actions/behaviors/thoughts/patterns are categorized as racist for not meeting the antiracist criteria.

This was a popular book, and critics online like blacademics say it appealed to the white liberal, satisfying the alleviation of guilt by being a self-help guide.

The perspective of self-help for antiracist activity as being a personal journey "negates the physical and material ways in which racism affects how we interact in society."

Both are fair points, and an inquiry is ongoing into Dr. Kendi's latest activity as the research from the institute, which was funded at $43 million, is being considered insubstantial.

Additionally, Kendi is quoted as being avoidant to criticism, since most criticism often calls into question the experiences of blackness, but obviously that doesn't help research flourish in the arena of ideas.

This story highlights several interesting facets. Who's considering the work insubstantial? Why were so many laid off? How were the resources used and what could have been done differently?

As presented, there was an idea here that had surface level merit on a broad scale. Ergo $43 million in funding. Yet something seems to be going awry. What matters to me is how this resolves and what we learn.

2023-10-18