IS IBRAM X KENDI STILL A LIGHTWEIGHT?
What I discovered reading his book
In one of my earlier videos on my YouTube channel, inspired by Glenn Loury’s famous rant calling Ibram X Kendi a “lightweight,” I offered my searing critique of Kendi about the ideas expressed in his best selling book, “How to be an anti-racist”
The critique was well received by my audience and remains one of my best performing videos to date, however, I got one critique of my critique, that upset me, not upset me as in make me mad or sad or angry, but upset me in the sense that it made me think that I may have made a mistake in my analysis and that my assertions about Ibram X Kendi and his definitions could be wrong.
This comment that upset me was born from my admittance in that video that I hadn’t actually read the book, but only critiqued it based on the videos I saw online of Kendi talking about the book.
I went hard after him particularly on his circular definition of racism and racist that he presented in the video. But after reading that comment, I suspected that my critique may have been premature, perhaps there was more to his definition revealed in the book.
I wasn’t afraid of being wrong, I was just terrified that I may have so eloquently and passionately misunderstood or misrepresented a man’s definitions by critiquing it without first reading the book. That to me amounted to intellectual heresy, the sort I prayed to never be guilty of.
So, to remedy the situation, to find out if indeed I had been wrong, to settle once and for all whether Glenn was right in calling Kendi a lightweight or whether I was correct to follow in that position, I decided to read the book, to get first-hand information, especially about his definitions.
And after reading the book, I'm ambivalent, although my outlook on him improved considerably, there were at least three areas where I think Kendi's work falls apart or at least were faulty in reasoning.
The first was his circular definition, the second his tendency to reduce any sort of disparity to discrimination and the last, his appalling solution of solving discrimination with discrimination.
To the first point, here is an example of a definition given by Kendi, racist; one who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea. Again, immediately we are hit with the circular definition of racist, just as he had done in the video interview, but I wanted to be charitable, so I read further to find out what his definitions of racist policy was, perhaps that would give me a better understanding of what he was trying to convey.
Kendi defines a racist policy as "any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups." This definition ties neatly with my second point of contention with his book, which is interpreting discrimination as the cause of disparity.
Continuing to be charitable, I reasoned that if there were indeed policies that were intended and designed to produce racial inequity and do so, we could give that to him and say his definition makes sense, but to Kendi, intent doesn't matter just as long as the end product of any policy produces any racial disparity, then that's racism.
The thing is disparate outcomes to varying degrees is expected for any policy, no policy is ever guaranteed to have racially equitable outcomes for people of different "races," Kendi states this and I agree. But for Kendi, so-called neutral policies if they produce disparate outcomes are racist and not neutral after all. To circumvent this, he proposes that policies must be designed and engineered to produce equitable racial outcomes.
This solution is so nebulous that no policy would ever be passed because of the amount of time it will take to fine-tune all the factors guaranteed to achieve a racially equitable outcome.
The argument that Kendi is making here is the equality of outcome argument, and intent doesn’t matter to him, or it does, just that the intent should be geared towards attaining racial equity. Not a bad aspiration by the way
This makes me conclude that what Kendi is defining here is something entirely different, race or racism is not necessary to understand, explain or proffer solutions to disparities. Yet Kendi sees this as the only way it can be explained, through a racial lens. So it seems that Kendi is correctly identifying problems, which I agree with, but mislabels them as racism. For example, Are racial disparities a reality? Are they a problem? Absolutely, But are they caused by racism? Well, Not entirely.
Thomas Sowell would argue that disparity doesn’t necessarily mean discrimination, well if you take any two groups with any amount of historical, cultural and behavioural differences, you are going to find a disparity, heck that is even applicable at the individual level, no two individuals have the same outcomes in life.
This individual disparity would show when people aggregate by groups, and may not necessarily mean one group is being discriminated against. Even in a racially homogeneous society, policies after their interactions with other factors would produce disparate outcomes by any measure of categorization.
Heck, you could find an income disparity between let’s say people below 5 feet and those above 5 feet, would heightism account for such disparity? You could find an income disparity between right-handed people as a whole and left-handed people as a whole, is that because of handism?
My point is, by whatever measure of analysis we are using, disparity would by nature exist between groups, however the metric of classification.
By Kendi's definition and logic, the racial makeup of the NBA—with black players accounting for a whopping 74% of all player—would be considered racist, because there isn't an equitable distribution of players of different races in the NBA, but we also understand that a possible reason for this is because there isn't an equitable development and display of talent by the different races in the NBA. I'm curious to know if Kendi would find the NBA racist on this account.
Note that I said equitable development of talent because I don't think that black people have any inherent biological advantages over other races that's enabling them to dominate the NBA, they have however developed more capacity in that regard and that is true for any racial group that excels at a particular endeavour. Jews aren't biologically programmed to know how to make money more than others, but there is a development of that capacity in the Jewish community.
Now I understand that past discrimination can affect a group's socioeconomic outlook to an extent today, like radiation its after-effects can be felt in a diminishing manner for periods after the initial event occurred, having this understanding, how should such lingering effects of past discrimination be addressed? The answer shouldn’t be as Kendi puts it, “..the only remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination, the only remedy for current discrimination is future discrimination.”
This is by essence saying America should return to its racist past, but swap one racial group for another one. This proposal seems punitive and will most likely breed bad blood in a country that desperately needs racial healing. The idea shouldn't be to hold one group in stasis while dragging the other up but to continually improve access till the other group naturally catches up.
While I concede that Kendi correctly identifies certain problems like the racial wealth gap, he fails miserably at explaining their etymology, defining terms or even correctly proffering solutions.
If Kendi would replace race with socio-economic class, his proposals would make more sense to me, I could even get behind continually fine-tuning policies till approximately equitable socioeconomic outcomes are attained because I believe we should constantly strive to improve the socio-economic conditions of everyone in a society.
Finally, Kendi is by no means a lightweight as a historian and as a writer, he's brilliant on those fronts and there is little to argue with on that, but on the issues of definitions, disparity and offering solutions for such ideas, he is a lightweight.
Excerpt from Hotel Shendam
He looked lost and fatigued; the sweat breaking out at his brow a testament to that. His arms, numb from the weighted bags extending from them, lay limp at his side as he trudged along the dirt road to the destination unknown. Brown dust, coated his leather shoes—which in turn left their prints embedded on the face of the sandy road. He caught a glimpse of the lighted signboard of what appeared to be a hotel, its name undecipherable. It was some minutes away by foot and his legs protested an estimation of the distance—he couldn’t find any means of transportation to take him down to the hotel, so he settled for walking the distance. A passerby he approached for directions, confirmed to him that there was indeed a hotel in the direction he was headed.
The sky was coloured crimson by the sun in its late stages of descent, painting a mural of fiery patterns—splashed about like tentacles, engulfing patches of white-blue sky in a reddish web—as it made its way to the underworld, to rise again with dawn. Nightfall was imminent. The dry northern wind agitated dead leaves, strewn about on the street. The dead leaves coloured a dark brown, danced about to the rhythm of entropy……
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Charles Ekokotu (Pharm. D.) is a bibliophile, prose fiction writer, poet, and playwright. His first self-published novel, Hotel Shendam—a crime fiction novel featuring a debate on race and colonialism—is available on Amazon. A very fun read! Grab a copy now!
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Great piece Charles!
Your obvious support is much appreciated.