The Muddled Thinking of ‘Antiracism’
4th June 2021
This week, a clip of America’s most prominent racial grifter, Ibram X. Kendi, began making the rounds on Twitter. Kendi, the author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” has undoubtedly made a fortune by indicting those who disagree with him as complicit in American racism — and by providing partial absolution to those who repeat his cultish ideas. In one particular clip from a recent interview, however, Kendi was asked to do one very simple thing: to define racism itself. Kendi failed signally in that task. “I would define it as a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas,” Kendi stated.
The audience laughed out loud.
Kendi then reiterated his definition and added: “And antiracism is pretty simple using the same terms. Antiracism is a collection of antiracist policies leading to racial … equity that are substantiated by antiracist ideas.”
This, of course, is utterly nonsensical. No term can be defined by simple reference to the term itself.