Ibram X. Kendi’s Reckoning
By Wade Lee Hudson
In a lengthy New York Times Magazine profile of Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How To Be An Antiracist and many other books about racism, Rachel Poser says Kendi “faces a reckoning of his own.” Numerous critics have criticized his theories and his administration of a well-funded center at Boston University.
Poser concludes, “In tying together racism’s two senses — the personal and the systemic — Kendi has helped many more Americans understand that they are responsible not only for the ideas in their heads but also for the impact they have on the world.”
However, she reports,
Kendi doesn’t like the term “systemic racism” because (he says) it turns racism into a “hidden and unknowable” force for which there’s no one to blame, so he prefers to talk about “racist policies.” He writes instead about “the ideas and psychological defenses that cause people to deny their complicity in (racism).” He affirms “individual transformation for societal transformation.”
Poser writes, “Kendi emphasizes in his books that policies alone are the cause of racial disparities today.” In The Atlantic, Kendi “warned against the country going down a path of symbolic change” where, he said, “monuments to racism are dismantled, but Americans shrink from the awesome task of reshaping the country with antiracist policies,” like Medicare for All.
She reported
In a 2022 meeting, when the team (at his center) tried to get a better sense of his vision, Kendi told them that he wanted a guy at a barbershop or a bar to be able to “pull up the numbers.” To many (center) employees with data or policy backgrounds, what Kendi wanted didn’t seem feasible; at worst, they thought, it risked simply replicating others’ work or creating a mess of sloppily merged data, connected to too many policies for their small team to track rigorously.
As funding for the center dried up, inner turmoil prompted Kendi to tell Poser, “Scholars who study the experience of Black leaders find that the No.1 racist challenge Black leaders face is contested authority, even from other Black leaders and staff.”
Poser wrote
Many progressive advocacy groups, Kendi pointed out, have been torn apart by internal clashes in recent years, conflicts that he said were driven by employees who “care more about performing their radicalism” than working to “improve the lives of everyday people…. Former employees constantly deauthorized me as the director of the center — not because they were against hierarchy — but to assume authority for themselves,…claiming that they are against hierarchy when they really are against being directed by a Black person.
Kendi’s heavy-handed administrative style failed to recognize that a “director” can facilitate authentic collaboration while retaining authority to make decisions unilaterally when needed. His experience illustrates the common inner turmoil at activist organizations, which is aggravated by pressure from younger people for a greater voice. How to resolve this difficult tension is a critical dilemma.
As reflected in Kendi’s work, the rejection of systemic analysis contributes to counter-productive scapegoating (blaming individuals). Though individuals and public policies are part of the problem, the primary problem is the Top-Down System that encourages everyone in every arena to climb social ladders and look down on, dominate, and exploit those below — and submit to those above. This oppression perpetuates inequity with interconnected political, economic, cultural, and social systems that individuals reinforce with their daily actions.
Rather than call out with harsh, judgmental personal attacks, we can call in, “creating space for growth, forgiveness, and understanding,” as Loretta J. Ross advocates.