Professor Ibram X. Kendi spoke about dismantling racism at a virtual summit hosted by the Boston Globe. His books are being censored in red states but he was free to speak out in Massachusetts.
While the civil unrest of 2020 may have ignited necessary conversations about racial injustice and inequalities, it hasn’t yet sparked the big, bold changes needed to dismantle racism, professor and best-selling author Ibram X. Kendi said in a virtual session presented Thursday by the Boston Globe Summit.
The sweeping discussion with Amber Payne, co-editor in chief of The Emancipator, touched on structural racism, critical race theory, and the abolition movement as a model for reimagining an antiracist society.
“It’s a pretty massive step from awareness to action,” said Kendi, founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research…
Kendi won the National Book Award for his 2016 release “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.” His widely read “How to be an Antiracist” offers a blueprint for antiracist activism. He was included in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020…
To dismantle structural racism, you’ve got to understand its symptoms, including racial violence, racial inequities, racial injustices, and the ways in which people are demeaned, Kendi said.
“It’s harder to see the policies behind those inequities, and that’s where the research comes in,” Kendi said of the work done at the Center for Antiracist Research.
The center’s researchers are trying to assess the myriad factors leading to disparities and create evidence-based policies to replace the ones that are proven to be racist and unjust, he said.
It’s not enough for people to say or believe that they’re not racist, Kendi said; they must be loud and radical about it, and actively involved in building a more equitable society.
“To allow anything to persist is to be complicit in its persistence,” Kendi said.
Abolitionism is a perfect model for imagining an antiracist future, Payne said.
Kendi agreed. Abolitionists, he added, were loud, radical, and persistent.
“Enslavers were extremely upset about Boston abolitionists because they wanted them to just shut up and do nothing,” he said, adding that enslavers knew the slave trade would persist and grow if the abolitionists didn’t interfere.
But the abolitionists believed it was up to them to dismantle slavery, because if they didn’t, no one else would, Kendi said.
That’s a mindset that needs to take hold today, he said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There’s a paywall for the Boston Globe article. Is there another way to access the virtual conference without going through the newspaper link? I can only find other articles that lead to the Boston Globe. It would be nice to access it through YouTube.
This might be it.
My first eye opener on racism was reading the “Autobiography of Malcolm X.” It gave me new insights in what black people face in our country. Being an adolescent in the 1960s gave me a front row seat on the Civil Rights Movement and most of MLk’s speeches. Both of these experiences helped me understand that America has failed to deliver on a fair and just system for all its people.
Change is never easy. It can only happen with a great deal of effort. I am impressed that many more young people today understand the negative impact of an unjust system. Today we have a much more educated Black and brown population, and a diverse educated young population of different backgrounds that are willing to work for change. As more of these young people move into powerful positions, changing systems to promote equality and justice will be inevitable. Perhaps it will not occur until some of the old “dinos” of my generation are gone, but I believe it will come.
My mother grew up in a household that was unremittingly rascist. She rejected all of this unequivocally. There was one simple reason. Her beliefs as a Christian precluded such thoughts altogether. Feeling guilty for their part in creating southern white supremacy, Methodists in her era reached out to try to solve the problems they became aware of as her generation matured. Some of them did not go along, but many did. My aunt refused to join the DAR because they would not let Lena Horne sing.
The point is that we depend on good leadership. The church led my family in a proper direction. Other leadership centers, churches, communities, and the like did just the opposite. So we still have problems. Perhaps we always will.
I think the DAR banned Marian Anderson, not Lena Horne.
Quite correct, Had Lena Horne on the brain since our trip to Laurel, MS this summer.
“To allow anything to persist is to be complicit in its persistence,” Kendi said.
Professor Dorothy Roberts delivered Washington University School of Medicine’s 2021 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Lecture on January 18, 2021 via Zoom. Speaking on “Dr. King’s Message on Race, Science and Justice,” she quickly sets the context for her lecture by quoting Dr. King:
“Some men conveniently twisted the insights of religion, science, and philosophy to give sanction to the doctrine of white supremacy. Soon this idea was embedded in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit. It became a structured part of the culture. And men then embraced this philosophy, not as a rationalization of a lie, but as the expression of a final truth.”
Now, just as “white supremacy” is a lie and not a final truth, “race” is a lie and not a final truth. So will we ever accept that race is a lie and not a final truth? Will we ever see that racism has become an equal opportunity thinking behavior that manifests and causes race to persist and that race does not and cannot manifest racism? That those who accept and embrace the race lie as a final truth actually maintain a feedback loop to racism that then actually causes racism to persist and find persistent expression as white supremacy (i.e., racism’s racial hierarchy of supremacy), as does Kendi and his “antiracism” ideology?
Has the race lie become so ingrained that now it is neigh impossible to let go of it?
So here’s my “Is my thinking racist, racialist, or humanist?” simple multiple choice test. Dare take it.
Regardless of how he self-identifies racially, Barack Obama is:
A) A Black man whose mother is White from Kansas, USA.
B) A White man whose father is Black from Kenya, Africa.
C) Both A) and B).
D) Neither A) nor B).
IMHO, wisdom is speaking through Professor Roberts, and relatively few seem willing to listen.
But folly is speaking through Professor Kendi, and throngs seem quite willing to listen.
Saw some great graffiti in Germany and the Netherlands earlier this month. One that sums up the Kendi quote above that I really liked: White Silence = Violence
On another note, today are the German elections. Regardless of what one thinks about politics and policy, I was blown away by the simple, direct, effective messaging of the Olaf Scholz/SPD campaign. It was built on three simple messages: Respect for You, Competence for Germany, and Chancellor for Germany. The message from the other campaigns was the same drivel about Freedom! and Together for a Modern Germany. I was struck by how many Germans felt lukewarm about Scholz as progressive Dems did about Biden in the campaign. If he can put together a governing coalition (we do most of this messy work at the party level, in a parliamentary system it is done in the open after an election), I think he may be a pleasant surprise on balance as Biden has been.
I am all for treating people equally, but anti-racism isn’t without prejudice.
I think some white folks cannot see the inequality that is built into the system. I worked with Black and brown students for more than three and a half decades. I listened to them a lot about their experiences with prejudice, and I learned to be an advocate for equity in the school system. You are right that some Black and brown folks may have preconceived notions about white people or other sub-groups as well. That’s why we have to learn to get along for a better more inclusive country.
My issue with anti-racism is that it basically ignores sexism.
If that’s your only issue with it, you need more issues.
We likely agree there is inequality. The question is what is to blame, nature or nurture? After the 20th century, the answer should have become clearer. People with darker shades of skin are not born into the same country that people with lighter shades are. Educators need to be sensitive to the fact that the environment that must change to erase inequality. Standardized tests must go. Segregationist school privatization must end. Housing and loan discrimination has got to hit the bricks. Artificial intelligence must be untaught its prejudices. Sentencing laws need reform. Where do I stop listing examples to end this break from planning lessons? Here’s fine.
I agree. I respect his work and what he has been doing in his career. But he is also a human being who has flaws, just like us. Last year, he was criticized for trolling a SCOUTUS judge Amy Coney Barrett on her adoption of a black kid. Perhaps he wanted to send the message about inequality and power in relation to race, but choosing a picture about someone’s personal life for that purpose was way out of line. It didn’t settle well.
In college, Kendi literally believed that white people may be aliens. He has proposed making it illegal for public officials to hold “racist views,” and the creation of a federal Department of Antiracism run by “trained experts on racism” (such as Kendi himself, naturally) and charged with pre-clearing all local, state, and federal policy to ensure they don’t create “racial inequality.” He is an authoritarian quack and a first-class grifter.
I have enormous respect for both Ibram X. Kendi and the late Derrick Bell, who asserted that racism is a permanent feature of society that cannot be eradicated. It’s a pity that Dr. Kendi and Professor Bell don’t have the chance to talk with one another now.
[…] Kendi expands on his anti-racism beliefs here. […]
The more we who have white privilege read books such as those Kendi has published, the better we can understand racism and how it is effecting society. Another author (and book) to read is Michelle Anderson’s the New Jim Crow. There are many out there which I have found helpful (So You Want to Know About Racism is a must).
White privilege doesn’t negate our struggles in life, but learning how much harder it is to overcome these same struggles when you are a minority will help us understand why “black lives matter”.
FYI: This is banned book week, so be radical and pick up one of these banned books.
People just lap this crap up.
It’s posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Ibram-X-Kendi-How-to-Dis-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_People_Racism_Racism-210927-360.html
It’s a quasi-Christian cult that sanctifies the oppressed (especially blacks) and demonizes white men. In both cases, it dehumanizes. It urges prejudice: blacks are to be prejudged as innocents; white men are to be prejudged as malign. Forget the fact that we’re all equally prone to evil (or good). Believing this gospel and repeating it will redeem you. Failing to support it damns you to hell. Practical, empirically based ideas for advancing black students not welcome. This is a spiritual practice —and vehicle for seizing power.
It’s a Kafka trap. I refuse to engage with todays “social justice warriors”…..they are cult-ish and dangerous.
Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection, puts forward the premise that the Emancipation constituted another phase of enslavement for Black Americans, as they moved from the plantations to the punitive controls of the Black Codes and Jim Crow. What Hartman calls the “afterlife of slavery”: limited access to health care and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment—the “skewed life chances” that Black people still face.
Two grasp this reality a white person must try to engage in the thought experiment that Matthew McConaughey‘s character urged the jury to undertake in “A Time to Kill“
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/specialengagements/moviespeechatimetokill.html
“Suffering only becomes legible when they can imagine their own non-Black body suffering.”
– Michael J. Dumas, “Beginning and Ending with Black Suffering: A Meditation on and against Racial Justice in Education”
I’ll admit to having read only excerpts, summaries, and interviews, but here’s my take so far. Kendi provides a layman-friendly interpretation of dense, legalistic CRT tracts, and focuses on practical application in society (beyond govt policy/ courts). That was much needed. Robin DiAngelo also attempts to fill that void but to me her stuff sounds like amateur self-help horsefeathers.
Every time I go hunting for Kendi recommending wrong-headed pedagogy for the classroom, I come up empty-handed. Example: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-12-01-how-to-be-an-antiracist-educator-an-interview-with-ibram-x-kendi Absolutely right on. Example: https://sites.up.edu/tl/tips-from-ibram-x-kendis-how-to-be-an-antiracist/ Admirable. Yet somehow his name seems to get attached in the public mind to examples of mis-handled, off-base, supposedly anti-racist pedagogical practice. The examples I’ve read of sound like misguidance by school admin, maybe checking off some vague agenda by importing untweaked corp equity-training exercises intended for adults.