The anti-racism of Ibram X. Kendi

One only needs to hear an anti-racist like Ibram X. Kendi speak to sense that he is a trickster. Below is a description of his anti-racism in the context of anti-racism as a whole that will explain this intuition.

Where institutions are concerned, anti-racism has only ever had one aim and made one argument. The aim is to overturn the principle of equal treatment so that black people can receive what they are not entitled to.[1] The argument goes like this. The races are the same, but their circumstances differ. Black people must be being discriminated against, therefore we need to discriminate in their favour.[2]

The problems with this argument are obvious. There is no reason to think that the races are the same. Secondly, if black people were being discriminated against, there would be evidence of it. Finally, if such discrimination were going on, the answer would be to stop it, not reverse it. Despite these flaws, the argument has served anti-racism well for decades thanks to the media’s skill in making it seem plausible.

Insisting that the races are the same is essential to anti-racism. If we could point out that they differ, this would explain the fact that their circumstances differ, and the idea that these differing circumstances are the fault of whites would collapse. And so, underlining the existing taboo against mentioning racial differences, Kendi calls the idea that the races differ “racist”.[3] He doesn’t say what is wrong with it; this is just a “principle” of his.[4]

His second “anti-racist principle” is that “Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy”, where by “racial inequity” he means the races being in different circumstances and by a policy he means any rule, law, requirement or procedure. By a “racist policy” he means a policy that tends to increase racial inequity. According to him, then, wherever we see a differences in the races’ circumstances, a racist policy is behind it.[5] Again he backs this up with no argument. The link between “racial inequity” and “racist policies” is created by stipulation.

If racial disparities are caused by racist policies, clearly something must be done. For example, any difference between the SAT scores of blacks and the SAT scores of whites must be eliminated to remove and atone for that racism. This might be a difficult task since two thirds of black twelfth-graders lack even partial mastery of basic twelfth-grade maths,[6] and the number of blacks at the advanced stage is too small to show up in the statistics.[7] However, by hook or by crook, racial equity in academic qualifications must be achieved, which will lead to racial equity in the world of work as well, with black people being employed as scientists and technicians at the same rate as whites. Most black scientists and technicians will be innumerate, but at least there will be plenty of them. Similarly, if white people’s wealth exceeds black people’s, white people owe some of their wealth to blacks. If I have $100 but a black man has only $50, I owe him $25.

It is a mistake, thinks Kendi, to say that there is necessarily anything wrong with racial discrimination.[8] It depends on its effects. “The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist.”[9] Indeed, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination”.[10]

Nor is there any such thing as a non-racist policy. According to Kendi, every policy is either racist or anti-racist because it either increases or reduces racial inequity.[11] People who think that it is possible to be non-racist or “race-neutral” — meaning to treat a black person like anybody else — are deluded. Worse, they are racist: the drive for race-neutrality is the “most threatening racist movement” of today.[12] Unless we want to be threatening racists, therefore, we must discriminate in favour of black people as hard as we possibly can, 24 hours a day.

Kendi’s technique is so simple that it is embarrassing to think that anyone falls for it. He just attaches the word “racist” to whatever he opposes. Such is the voodoo-like quality the word has acquired from Americans’ guilt about the racism of the past, however, that many think that if something is described as racist there must be something wrong with it.

One of the peculiarities of Kendi’s position is that it makes it impossible to appraise a policy on its merits; it can only be appraised by looking at its effects. Thus if I invite everyone to a party, we cannot know whether the invitation was racist until after the event. If no black people come, it was racist because it gave rise to racial inequity; if many do, it was anti-racist. In the case of murder, if black people committed the crime at the same rate as whites, the law against it would be no problem since there would be equity in the races’ incarceration rates. Because black people commit it at a higher rate, however, the law against it is a racist policy. Indeed, it must be about the most racist policy there is, for American blacks commit murder at more than twenty times the rate of whites.[13] Kendi’s solution would presumably be for the police to turn a blind eye to nineteen black murders out of twenty, or, to tackle the problem at its root, to repeal the law.

In deploring policies that have a “disparate impact” on the races, Kendi follows every anti-racist who came before him. It is part of basic anti-racist doctrine to say that if blacks fail to meet a requirement at a higher rate than others, the requirement is illegitimate, as is any attempt to enforce it or to monitor occasions on which it is not met. We saw this in Britain in 2000 when the Commission for Racial Equality argued that the police should stop going after muggers because the law against mugging “indirectly discriminated” against young black men.[14] Years before, American anti-racists had opposed the requirement for teachers to take basic-skills tests periodically on the grounds that black teachers failed them at a higher rate than did white teachers.[15] Recently, speed cameras were deemed racist for showing that black drivers are more likely to break the speed limit than are the other races.[16] To be anti-racist, Miami and Rochester, New York took down their speed cameras.[17]

Writing with another author about the Supreme Court’s recent ruling against affirmative action in college admissions, Kendi confirms our impression of his character.[18] The authors lament the fact that the ruling will mean that racial inequity will again become normal, by which they mean that when college admissions are decided on merit, black people will go to college at a lower rate than whites. They don’t say what is wrong with inequity, which is an inevitable effect of fair competition, be it between individuals, countries or racial groups, since one competitor must come out on top. Rather, it is a dead heat that should raise suspicions, suggesting as it might do that the competition was rigged to obtain this result. Such rigging is what Kendi demands, calling a dead heat “equity”.

The authors ignore obvious facts. “Admissions metrics”, they assert, by which they seem to mean test scores, say more about wealth than about students’ potential. They ignore the fact that any child, black or white, rich or poor, can do well if it is talented and works hard. They also ignore the fact that, according to the literature, taking account of socio-economic status diminishes the size of the Black-White IQ difference by only about a third. Moreover, most studies indicate that the difference is not reduced but increases as parental socioeconomic status rises. In other words, greater parental wealth is associated with a rise in Black IQ but with an even bigger rise in White IQ.[19]

The authors misrepresent reality, referring to “these metrics that give preferential treatment to white students”. The “metrics” do no such thing; they show that whites outperform blacks. Similarly, the authors refer to the “deep advantages white Americans receive” from “race-neutral” admissions metrics, putting “race-neutral” in quotes to signify that they do not consider the metrics to be really race-neutral. Therefore, they suggest, the advantages gained by whites are not deserved. But the “metrics” confer advantages on any American who makes the grade; it is just that blacks less often do. By pretending that whites gain undeserved advantages at the expense of blacks, the authors insinuate an argument that seeks undeserved advantages for blacks at the expense of whites.

They compare “race-neutral” admission policies, again in quotes, to the way that in the South the right to vote was restricted to those who could read and write, which excluded many blacks, the suggestion being that the real aim was to stop blacks voting. But the restriction was just as race-neutral as it seemed, for it didn’t stop literate blacks voting or give the franchise to illiterate whites. For anti-racism, however, no group to which something desirable is granted must be defined by reference to a quality that few blacks have. Accordingly, the practice of awarding Nobel prizes has been condemned because few blacks seem to have the intelligence, imagination or perseverance needed to win a Nobel prize.[20]

The deviousness goes on. The authors come out with Kendi’s idea that “racial inequities prove that policies proclaimed to be ‘race neutral’ are hardly neutral”. What the inequities in fact prove is that the races differ — the idea that Kendi tries to ban as “racist”. They say that so far from there being anything wrong with affirmative action, it was never taken far enough. What do they want, a PhD awarded to every black person at birth? They are not above making an utterly meaningless statement. They write: “Race, by definition, has never been neutral”. You might as well say that pastry has never been neutral.

But we have bigger problems than an anti-racist like Ibram X. Kendi. On both sides of the Atlantic, anti-racism is the national ideology. In 2000, one of London’s top policemen boasted that he had reduced the number of young black men stopped and searched by almost forty per cent in the previous twelve months,[21] during which muggings rose by at least two thirds.[22] That display of anti-racism was a response to an official report of 1999 that described the police as institutionally racist.[23] The police still accuse themselves of institutional racism, citing the fact that black people fall foul of the law at a higher rate than others.[24] All they can do to bring “equity” to the criminal justice system is look the other way when black people commit crimes. Politicians are quite blatant in their pro-black discrimination. As fast as black police officers are convicted of gross misconduct or criminal offences, Home Secretaries introduce schemes to fast-track them to senior ranks.[25]

So internalised is the anti-racism of British institutions that they need no nudge from activists to take their pro-black discrimination to ever new extremes. In 2021 Lloyds Bank gave itself four years to increase black representation in senior roles to at least three per cent, citing “diversity” as the justification.[26] The following year His Majesty’s Treasury stated its aim of making six per cent of its staff black, almost twice the percentage of black people in the population.[27] Such moves are as nothing compared to the lengths to which pro-black discrimination is taken by the advertising and entertainment industries. In Britain the principle of equal treatment — treating people on their merits, racial impartiality, fairness, whatever you want to call it — is an increasingly distant memory.

According to Heather Mac Donald, America’s institutions permit only one explanation of racial differences of outcome that are not to black people’s credit: the “racism” of American institutions.[28] The institutions’ folly and self-hatred are turned back on them by activists, who demand that the results of academic tests be ignored or that the tests themselves be abolished since black people’s performance in them shows that they are “racist”. Illustrating the repetitive nature of anti-racist claims, this one has been being made for decades, at least if anti-racist objections to IQ tests are any guide. The claims never change; what changes is the amount of purchase they have on the mainstream, which always increases, with the occasional blip as in the recent Supreme Court decision.

If every requirement that black people rarely meet and every rule they are prone to break must be done away with, this, as Heather Mac Donald points out, is a recipe for civilisational suicide. As she does not point out, the destruction of Western civilisation was always the aim of the more far-seeing anti-racists, as it is of Marxists, climate-change alarmists and many other intellectuals today.[29]

This includes the media, who cannot see the West rush towards its suicide fast enough. So avidly did they promote Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist (2019) that it sold more than two million copies in its first two years. Companies everywhere recommended it to their employees. Jack Dorsey donated $10 million to Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.[30]

The bitter opposition of our intellectuals to the principle of equal treatment means that they are bitterly opposed to the continuation of our civilisation. Ibram X. Kendi is just riding the wave of success which, thanks to them, anti-racism has been enjoying for the last sixty years.

[1] One could have said “non-whites” rather than “black people”, but anti-racism has always been mainly concerned with black people, who by most white standards are the least capable race. That it is black people, not non-whites in general, who are the intended beneficiaries of anti-racism is demonstrated by the fact that Asians, who on average are more intelligent than whites, pay a price for affirmative action rather than being favoured by it.

[2] A variation of the argument has arisen in step with the spreading of the idea of equality of circumstance as an ideal. In the variation, white people must favour black people solely on the basis that the latter’s circumstances are less favourable than their own. This does not have to be in the opinion of black people; all that is needed is that white people would prefer not to be in those circumstances. Thus the variation appeals to white people’s capacity for pity, whereas the original argument first appeals to their hatred of injustice, by presenting black people as wronged, and secondly, in accusing whites of perpetrating that injustice, seeks to make them feel guilty.

[3] In his book How to Be an Antiracist (2019), Kendi writes: “A racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way” (Penguin, June 9th 2020, “Ibram X. Kendi defines what it means to be an antiracist”, https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/june/ibram-x-kendi-definition-of-antiracist.html. “Inferior or superior to” translates into “different from” because as soon as a difference between two races is recognised, it becomes possible to say that one race is superior to the other in that way. Thus if Race A can run faster than Race B, to say as much is to say that Race A is superior to Race B at running fast. Therefore Kendi is in effect condemning any comparison of the races.

[4] Politico, 2019, “Pass an Anti-Racist Constitutional Amendment” by Ibram X. Kendi,  https://www.politico.com/interactives/2019/how-to-fix-politics-in-america/inequality/pass-an-anti-racist-constitutional-amendment/.

[5] Thus Kendi told the New York Times in 2018: “When I see racial disparities I see racism” (Headline shown on American Renaissance, March 10th 2022, “‘Unconditional war’ on racism”, https://www.bitchute.com/video/AhbzYJ4r9vlr/).

[6] For readers outside the USA, twelfth-graders are students in their final year at high school (seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds).

[7] The New Culture Forum, July 19th 2023, “Lowering the Bar for Ethnic Minorities ‘Threatens Lives & is a Recipe for Civilisational Suicide’”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYR7_YPYMwE. Heather Mac Donald was being interviewed about her book When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives (2023).

[8] From Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist (2019): “Racial discrimination is not inherently racist” (Penguin, June 9th 2020, “Ibram X. Kendi defines what it means to be an antiracist”, https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/june/ibram-x-kendi-definition-of-antiracist.html).

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] There is “no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy”, Kendi says in How to Be an Antiracist (ibid.).

[12] “The most threatening racist movement is … the regular American’s drive for a ‘race-neutral’ [state]” (ibid).

[13] American Renaissance, March 24th 2023, “A harsh new light on race and murder”, https://www.bitchute.com/video/DkJclYNa5D9S/. The multiple should be no surprise. According to Wikipedia, Jamaica’s homicide rate is 75 times Norway’s.

[14] Commission for Racial Equality, Feb. 2000, “Race Relations (Amendment) Bill” (briefing note), http://www.cre.gov.uk/publs/dl_rrab3.html.

[15] S. Thernstrom and A. Thernstrom, 1999, America in Black and White, New York: Touchstone-Simon and Schuster. pp. 349-50.

[16] American Renaissance, Feb. 18th 2022, “Building Haiti right here in the United States”, https://www.bitchute.com/video/G7zaRiwM11KV/.

[17] American Renaissance, Feb. 18th 2022, op. cit.

[18] Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/p/CuFS1hrNJco/, quoting and commenting on The Atlantic, June 29th 2023, “‘Race Neutral’ Is the New ‘Separate but Equal’” by Uma Mazyck Jayakumar and Ibram X. Kendi, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/supreme-court-affirmative-action-race-neutral-admissions/674565/.

[19] Charles Murray, Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race and Class (Twelver, 2020). See F. Roger Devlin’s review: “Murray on Race Differences in IQ,” The Occidental Observer (February 20, 2020). https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2020/02/20/murray-on-race-differences-in-iq/

[20] According to CNN in 2020, the Nobel Prize organisation had a diversity problem: not enough black people were getting prizes. See CNN, Oct. 10th 2020, “The Nobels honored 4 women this year. But the awards still lack diversity”, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/10/world/nobel-prize-diversity-2020-intl/index.html.

[21] This was John Grieve, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (Metropolitan Police, Feb. 22nd 2000, “Press Conference Held Re the Anniversary of the Lawrence Inquiry Report”, http://tap.ccta.gov.uk/[…]/b3cb2697adf8d9e1802…OpenDocument).

[22] Muggings in London went up by more than 75 per cent in the fifteen months to May 2000 (calculation based on figures given in Telegraph, April 24th 1999, “Muggings soar as police tread softly”, and Sunday Times, June 25th 2000, “Straw on rack as muggings soar”).

[23] Sir William Macpherson, 1999, Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, CM 4262-I, The Stationery Office, Paragraph 6.34. Macpherson also stated that “Colour-blind policing must be outlawed” (Paragraph 45.24).

[24] Avon and Somerset Police, June 16th 2023, “Chief Constable Sarah Crew on Institutional Racism”, https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/news/2023/06/chief-constable-sarah-crew-on-institutional-racism/.

[25] This was first done by Jack Straw in 1999, when he introduced quotas for the number of non-white police officers (Home Office, March 1999, Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Home Secretary’s action plan). He wanted to see non-whites promoted to the highest ranks, including chief constable (Telegraph, April 11th 1999, “Straw to set ethnic quota for every police force”, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000659276559150&rtmo=aNN3…/npol11.htm).

Priti Patel announced a scheme to fast-track non-white officers to the rank of superintendent in 2021 just as the case against a black Chief Superintendent was being heard, who was accused of spending almost fifty times the sum of his allowance at a conference using someone else’s credit card. Another case was that of Superintendent Robyn Williams, a black woman, who in 2019 was found guilty of handling indecent images of children. We can be sure that if such cases arose involving white people, we would hear about them.

Black people and other non-whites have always been investigated for misconduct at a higher rate than whites, as have non-white doctors and solicitors. Typically, the BBC presents this as evidence of racism (BBC, June 30th 2020, “My 30-year struggle with racism in the Metropolitan police”, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53224394).

[26] Lloyds Banking Group, no date given (June 2021), “Ethnicity”, https://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/who-we-are/responsible-business/inclusion-and-diversity/ethnicity.html.

[27] Telegraph, Nov. 15th 2022, “Treasury aims to have six per cent of staff from black backgrounds in race target”, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/11/15/treasury-aims-have-six-per-cent-staff-black-backgrounds-race/.

[28] The New Culture Forum, July 19th 2023, op. cit.

[29] In 1992 Maurice Strong as chairman of the UN’s Earth Summit said: “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialised nations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” (quoted by Tom DeWeese in Redoubt News, Oct. 20th 2017, “Agenda 21/Agenda 2030 there is no difference” https://redoubtnews.com/2017/10/agenda-21-2030/).

[30] Insider, Aug. 20th 2020, “Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey donates $10 million to Ibram X. Kendi’s center on antiracism at Boston University”, https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-donates-ibram-kendi-center-on-antiracism-boston-university-2020-8?op=1&r=US&IR=T.