“Never believe what you publish — and never publish what you believe,” said the sleazy journalist in the film Night Flier. This attitude could come to mind when pondering the new breed of “anti-racist” writers, such as Robin DiAngelo, who make millions peddling the narrative that American is a white-supremacist nation, whites are inherently “racist,” and preferential treatment for non-whites is “equity.” After all, do these rabble-rousing propagandists really believe all the nonsense they disgorge?
One of them, Ibram X. Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers), certainly may not. Kendi, an establishment favorite whose breakout bestseller How To Be An Antiracist is now read everywhere from boardrooms to schoolrooms and by everyone from matriculating students to military personnel, was named one of the world’s most influential people by Time magazine. Yet recent tweets he sent, at least one of which he promptly deleted, indicate he may not believe his own rhetoric — and that he’s certainly not the “woke” man he pretends to be.
First there’s a tweet (screen shot of which is below) related to how many white students today are lying about their race to increase their chances of college acceptance.
“Wow! America must be really racist if the only way Whites can get into college is if they pass as minorities,” quips commentator Andrea Widburg. “Oh, wait! Never mind….”
Kendi’s deletion of the tweet didn’t forestall criticism and mockery, which he responded to in what appears a “[He] doth protest too much, methinks” manner (screen shot below).
Aside from how Kendi may be trying too hard, it could occur to one that the whole “racism” shtick is more than a bit stale. But the professor’s (yeah, he’s an academic) pseudo-intellectual responses should be addressed.
Kendi’s initial point is that while a third of white college applicants lie about their race and 75 percent are accepted, this doesn’t prove such racial deception’s advantageousness. Maybe these white kids are delusional. If we wanted to be entirely scientific, we’d have to compare this group of white applicants with a likewise-situated cohort (i.e., similar economic status, grades, test scores, geographic location, etc.) and learn if the former’s acceptance rate actually was higher.
The problem is that Kendi made no effort to do this. He just deleted his tweet, indicating he believed it hurt his cause and that, perhaps, he knew what the aforementioned comparison would reveal.
Moreover, if these young white Americans are delusional and oblivious to their “white privilege,” so are black Americans. Were it otherwise, we’d see some black people masquerading as white in order to benefit from “white privilege.” But can you think of one instance in the last 50 years where this has happened?
In fact, I know of a young man who looks completely white, but who labels himself “black” because he has a half-black mother and knows it’s beneficial. And what about Kendi? Did he ever seek to claim white status (based on a “one-drop rule”) to succeed?
So when comedic pro golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez said at an outing decades ago to a man who introduced himself as Smith (I believe), “My name used to be Smith — I changed it for business purposes,” it was a hilarious joke. Now it could be reality.
Fox News personality Tucker Carlson recently said that Kendi has succeeded despite being “stupid.” Yet he was smart enough, when tweeting about racial disparities, to write that whites are “on the higher end.” For he surely knows that on the highest end are Asian-descent Americans. He likely doesn’t want to mention this, however, because then he’d have to explain how a “white supremacist” nation has advantaged a group of non-whites over whites.
Kendi wasn’t smart enough, though, to avoid stepping into Velvet Mafia quicksand by throwing shade on the Made-up Sexual Status (MUSS or “transgender”) crew. As Breitbart reported Sunday:
In a video posted on Twitter Ibram X. Kendi, the man celebrated by the left for his efforts to insert Critical Race Theory in the nation’s schools, said it was “horrifying” when his daughter announced she wanted to be a boy.
“Even talking about gender, you know, I think it was last week my daughter came home and said she wanted to be a boy,” Kendi said in a video that includes his name on the screen. “You know, which was horrifying for my wife to hear, myself to hear.”
“And so of course, you know, we’re like, okay, what affirmative messages about girlhood, you know, can we be teaching her to protect her from whatever she’s hearing in our home or even outside of our home that would make her want to be a boy,” he continued.
What’s striking, though typical of out-of-touch-with-reality leftists, is Kendi’s lack of “cultural” awareness. Anyone who’s paying attention knows what happens upon questioning the MUSS agenda, as tennis star Martina Navratilova’s and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling’s experiences attest. Kendi apparently needs some “sensitivity” training.
But he’ll be okay. Widburg tells Kendi, “Celebrate the fact that you’re in America, not Africa, and that, by virtue of your skin color, even the fact that you’re incredibly ill-informed and really not very bright hasn’t stopped you from reaching the pinnacle of woke society.” And he’ll stay at that pinnacle. The oh-so “principled” mainstream media will memory-hole his MUSS trespass because he’s a high-status useful idiot needed to advance “the cause.” And the Alphabet Crew will just have to suck it up and, for a moment, identify as tolerant.
