We now come to what I expect will be the final two posts of my series on Critical Race Theory. In my first three posts, I looked at the book, Critical Race Theory, and in posts 4-5, I looked at Robin DiAngelo’s book, White Fragility. My primary goal has been to clearly articulate the major points and arguments these books are making. Hopefully, I’ve done that. My secondary goal has been to also critique those major points and arguments. Hopefully, readers find I’ve been fair in my critique as well.
In the next two posts, I am going to look at Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to be an Antiracist. If I were to summarize the “feel” and layout of Kendi’s book, I’d have to say it consists of three things: (1) His personal story, from the time he was a child up to his life today as a professor at American University; (2) A lot (and I mean A LOT) of stories and references to America’s (and Europe’s) racist past, dating from around 1600 to 1950; and (3) Rather grandiose and overgeneralized pronouncements regarding the issues of race in America today.
His ultimate argument in all of this is simple: Racism is a result of racist policies that either produce or normalize racial inequities. To be clear, Kendi is not saying racism is racist policies that prevent equal opportunity. He is saying that any policy that does not produce equity (meaning an equal distribution of wealth and resources among racial groups) is racist. In fact, although it is not mentioned in the book, Kendi has recently come out as saying that the government needs to pass an Anti-racist Constitutional Amendment that would render “racial inequity” and “racist ideas by public officials” to be unconstitutional. In addition, it would establish the Department of Antiracism that would monitor all local and federal policies, monitor public officials for any expression of racist ideas, and have the power to discipline any policy maker or public official who don’t voluntarily change their racist policies and ideas.
That is basically Kendi’s goal and endgame that he would like to see happen in America. To understand how he comes to that conclusion, we are going to look at his book. In this post, though, I am going to just focus on his personal story he tells in his book. It’s good to get to know someone in order to understand where he is coming from. And so, here’s a summary of Kendi’s own story he has in his book.
A Brief Personal History of Ibram X. Kendi
Kendi’s parents, Larry and Carol Rogers, were black Evangelical Christians who met at InterVarsity Urbana ’70. They were very much influenced by the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the black liberation theology of evangelist Tom Skinner, and really had a heart for social justice. They eventually got married and were able to settle into the middle class in Queens, New York. Carol started a career in healthcare while Larry became an accountant. Kendi tells that his parents continually impressed on him the idea that education and hard work would uplift and pay off. Kendi, though, by his own account, always hated, and was never good at, school.
His parents sent him to private Christian schools. Kendi recalls beginning to resent his parents sending him to private Christian school when they enrolled him into third grade at a private school Long Island in 1990, when there were public schools within walking distance of their house in Queens. Kendi says that even though the school was mostly minorities, there was only one black teacher, and 3rd grade Kendi resented that fact and felt like his white 3rd grade teacher was racist because she didn’t call upon a black girl who had raised her hand, and instead called upon a white student.
Skip forward to 8th grade in 1995. Kendi recalls when the O.J. Simpson verdict came out, all the black students were happy and that his racist white teacher looked dejected. During that year, though, there were two actual African boys in that 8th grade class that Kendi and the other American black boys resented and would often make fun of because they believed that the African boys’ ancestors were probably African chiefs who had sold the American black boys’ ancestors into slavery.
Skip forward to 9th grade in 1996. Again, Kendi reiterated that he hated private schooling and church. He was also disappointed in his parents when they told him to be careful in the neighborhood and keep an eye out for any possible danger. Looking back, Kendi says that his parents taught him to view “black bodies” as violent and dangerous. Immediately after that complaint against his parents, Kendi tells about a black boy in the neighborhood with the nickname “Smurf” who, along with this gang, was a dangerous bully. One time he pulled a gun on Kendi on a bus, another time he beat up a kid from India on the bus. Still, Kendi says, that didn’t happen every day, and it was still wrong for his parents to teach him to fear “black bodies.”
Also, during that year, Kendi was on the JV basketball team—he loved basketball. At one point, the “white coach” came into the locker room to talk to the players about their grades and reminded them that they needed to keep at least two “Cs” and three “Ds” to stay on the team. Kendi resented that and felt like it was a form of racism against black people.
In 1997, Kendi’s family moved to Virginia, where he attended Stonewall Jackson High School for his final three years of high school. He hated and looked down on the black kids at that school because their culture in Virginia was different from that of the New York that Kendi knew. What was even worse was that he failed to make the basketball team. Consequently, he hated the rest of his time in high school.
During his last year in high school, though, he won the Prince William County Martin Luther King Jr. Oratorical Contest, in which he gave a stirring speech about what MLK’s for a new millennium would be: how Black youth didn’t value education the way they should, how Black teen pregnancy was bad, how the dreams of Black youth were limited to sports and music—basically (echoing what his parents had taught him), the key to achieving MLK’s dream was education and hard work. Looking back at that speech, the adult Kendi condemns it and says it was full of racist ideas against black people.
Kendi attended Florida A&M University, a historical black college. During that time, he was briefly enthralled with the Nation of Islam and its teaching that white people were devils. At one point he was convinced that white people were aliens—literal aliens—who were bent on the extinction of black people. It was during that time that the 2000 election happened, and Kendi was convinced that racist Republicans had stolen the election for Bush. By the end of his college years, in 2003, though, he came to the conclusion that black people should stop hating white people for being themselves. He wrote an article for the school newspaper expressing this view, saying that white people only made up 10% of the world’s population, had recessive genes, and were facing extinction. And that was the reason why they were trying to “destroy my people.” Thus, Kendi concluded, “Europeans are trying to survive and I can’t hate them for that.” The school’s president was not happy with the article and called Kendi into his office—Kendi called the president of the college “Jeb’s boy” (i.e. Jeb Bush). The black editor of the Tallahassee Democrat (where Kendi had an internship) also confronted him about the piece and there was another altercation.
Fast forward to 2005, when Kendi began a graduate program at Temple University in African American Studies. He purposely moved into the “ghetto” so he could be around real black people. Later, though, he realized that that kind of attitude was actually racist, in that he was discriminated between different kinds of black people. In any case, during his time at Temple, he had a number of influential professors who helped me further flesh out his ideas about race and racism. He also became friends with various black lesbians and black queer folk and realized that for him to be a true anti-racist and fight for black people, he had to also ally with lesbians and gays, because their oppression was even more layered than the oppression he felt as a cis-gendered black man.
Eventually, Kendi got a PhD in African American Studies. He also got married in 2013. At the wedding ceremony, he changed his last name from “Rogers” to his wife’s last name of “Kendi.” (So basically, he was a “Rogers” during all the life events I have just related!). In addition, he also changed his middle name from “Henry” to “Xolani.” His parents had given him the middle name of “Henry” to honor his uncle. During his African American Studies, though, Kendi learned that one of the first Europeans to start the African slave trade was Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal in the fifteenth century. It was because of that, that he changed his middle name to “Xolani,” which is a Zulu word for “peace.”
Also, his wife battled and defeated cancer in 2013-2014, and then he too battled and defeated cancer in 2017. Those experiences helped him realize that racism is a cancer on the body politic, and what is needed is the implementation of antiracist policies to act as the chemotherapy to kill and remove racist policies, even the undetectable ones.
My Initial Reaction to Kendi’s Story
So, there you have it—a quick overview of the personal story Kendi gives of himself in his book. Now, I will discuss and critique Kendi’s take on race, racism, and the American system in my next post, but as a preview, let me try to sum up his view. As I said at the beginning of this post, Kendi argues that the root of racism is racist policies, and a racist policy is anything that produces or normalize racial inequities. Kendi today does not agree with much of the views Kendi had back when he was younger (and that is partly the reason for his personal story). Unlike DiAngelo, Kendi doesn’t believe only whites can be racist—he in fact states just the opposite. And unlike DiAngelo, Kendi doesn’t speak in overgeneralized terms regarding “the system.”
He refines his criticism by talking about racist policies that produce racial inequity (although, truth be told, he doesn’t really ever talk about specific policies today). In any case, if I can put it this way, his view is that since racist policies produce the racism, those policies affect whites, blacks, and all other minorities—therefore everyone can be racist. Therefore (as I mentioned earlier), what is needed is a Constitutional amendment and Antiracist government agency with the power to monitor and local and federal governments, politicians, and policy makers and, if needed, to cancel any perceived racist policies or ideas, which (as said before) are defined as policies or ideas that “promote or normalize inequity.” You might think that sounds quite totalitarian, dare I say “Soviet.” If you think that, I’ll be honest—I have to agree.
In any case, I want to just give a few impressions I had concerning his personal story. To the point, it really puzzles me. He seems really bitter and resentful of his parents for the “sin” of trying to give him a good education and encouraging him to work hard. By his own account, it seems (from the time he was in 3rd grade) that he saw and interpreted everything in his life through a very bitter, antagonistic, and racialized lens. He hated school, so he didn’t try, and then he resented his parents for encouraging him to try, and even accused them of being racist for doing so. For that matter, throughout the book, it is abundantly clear that he practically hated everything and everyone in his life growing up. And the fact that, as a young 20-something, he actually was convinced that white people were murderous extra-terrestrials—I’m sorry, but that is unbelievable. Overall, as I read what he shared about his life, I felt sorry for him. He comes across as a very angry and resentful person, and (as I’ll cover in the next post), it shows in his commentary and take on American life and politics.
Still, he managed to eventually get a master’s degree and a PhD, and now is considered to be one of the top 100 most influential people in 2020. His ideas and arguments are really popular and influential in America today. We had better make sure we understand what they are. I’ll make my attempt to do so in my next post.
