**Kendi didn’t come up with the ideas of systemic racism, nor was he the first to conflate systemic problems with all racism- his contemporaries did as early as 2012. His works simply cemented the idea.
The Anti-defamation league put out a statement in february about re-expanding to the old definition, but the NAACP seems to have doubled down, even sticking with their web statement from March 2021 that black people are most affected by racism (by what metric is not clear). This over-focus on purely structural issues is hurting their own cause, as is most evident with their Minneapolis EIP targeting exclusively structural issues (https://naacp.org/resources/minneapolis-economic-inclusion-plan) and COMPLETELY ignoring the fact that refugees or children of refugees are the black Minnesotans struggling the most--they are experiencing heavy language barriers in health care & education and even struggling with brand-new redlining problems. Thus, they need a lot of support that cannot be achieved by copy-pasting policies directed at African Americans that are trying to recover from generational inequity. (https://mn.gov/admin/assets/MNSDC_EconStatus_2018Report_FNL_Access.pdf_tcm36-362054.pdf)
If you are asking for nothing less ambitious than the abolition of racism, good luck. Racism is a grass roots issue. Tell me what law you pass to change hearts and minds.
I look at racism as a subset of groupism – us vs. them, with “us” defined not necessarily by skin color but by any number of factors including religion and geography. Of course, this is not just an American phenomenon. From this side of the world, the Serbians and Croatians look like the same people, but not too long ago they were killing each other. Why? “Us vs.Them”.
Now, I don’t mean to imply moral equivalence. White Americans enslaved and discriminated against Black Americans. But there are feedback loops. My immigrant grandparents who had nothing to do with slavery or Jim Crow lived for many years in a mostly Black neighborhood where they were the target of hostility. Maybe that hostility, from the Black neighbors’ point of view, was historically justifiable but it turned Grampa and Grandma into lifelong racists – not the cross burning, church bombing kind, but they had an attitude of fear and disdain towards Black people.
I certainly don’t have an easy answer, except perhaps the encouragement of a mindset that looks at the individual, not a collective, as the basic unit of society.
I must admit I haven't done enough research to know why "prejudice" as a term was abandoned to describe that sort of interpersonal racism. I had a professor of African American Studies and Sociology who preferred the former to the latter. He was an older black man, for what that's worth.
Ezra has gone on Coleman Hughes podcast. This is good for America. There are smart ass comments welling up in my mind right now but I will try not to spoil the moment with my petty dickishness. I look forward to listening.
I appreciate Kendi's consequentialist approach to racial equity. Robert Byrd was a KKK member, but (later in life) didn't govern like one. Whether he had a change of heart or just a change of political calculation doesn't matter.
However, I agree with Matt that that a lot of the rest of Kendi's theories fall apart. Calculating a policy's impact on racial equality falls apart in practice, where it mostly results in debate over whether the policy actually increases or decreases racial equality.
For example, if you ask opponents of Affirmative Action why they oppose it, a lot of them will tell you it is because it actually hurts Black people by encouraging people to focus on race, by setting up black students for failure and by undermining Black people by making it appear that their are not qualified for whatever position they might have. Do I think these things are true? No, but social science is nowhere close to objective or reliable enough to prove it. Do I think the people making these claims believe them? Probably some, but the answer is not relevant under Kendi's Anti-Racism anyways.
His proposed constitutional amendment to make racial inequality over a certain threshold unconstitutional is also wholly unworkable. Not only is it not clear how you could quantify this, but I don't see how you implement it. Does the SCOTUS start striking policies it believes are increasing racial inequality until inequality gets down to a manageable level? Since there are undoubtedly a variety of policies contributing to the inequality, how do they pick which ones? Do you really want Roberts, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Berrett to be the arbitrators of which policies are contributing to racial inequality? Because I'm sure that they can find a way to decide that the things causing inequality are welfare programs, abortion, environmental regulation, affirmative action and the VRA without even breaking a sweat.
On your last paragraph, that's presumably why Kendi has his proposal for creating a politically unaccountable "Department of Antiracism" to enforce the amendment -- to cut the Supreme Court out of the process -- although I've never seen an interviewer actually ask him about that. (I've also never seen him be asked how the heck you staff a federal government agency without some number of political appointees to start with -- even the US military has political appointees at the top.)
Reminds me of Madison's quote "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
This is not the sort of thing that has an objectively "right" answer, especially since it calls for predictions. Whether its the Surpeme Court, or some new agency that is somehow empowered to strike down "racist" laws, at some point Trump or Trump 2.0 is going to be in charge of appointing whomever is going to make the call and Kendi isn't going to like the calls they make.
The CBO scores bills on their cost estimate, but its entirely non-binding. If congress wants to disagree with or disregard their score, they are free to do so with a 50+1 vote majority. This is true even on something like reconciliation, where the score is intended to help determine if the bill fits within the process. There may be some value in funding an agency to give bills a racial equity score, but giving the agency veto power over bills is hardly going to help our already veto-heavy system.
Kendi reminds me of no one so much as the 5-Minute Abs guy from Something About Mary. He has an idea that has some merit but the second you start asking critical questioning, his responses lose all semblance of reason.
It seems like there are a ton of misconceptions about Kendi's ideas in these comments! I think every woke idea a slow boring commenter doesn't like has been attributed to Kendi here, whether Kendi believes it or not. I haven't read his book but now I feel like I should because this incredibly popular book is apparently widely misunderstood.
The most interesting idea Kendi proposed is different racial outcomes will create racists. To take an extreme example: the Trans-Atlantic trade system (if my recollection of history is correct) largely helped create the racist thinking which we still live with today. In a very real way: the requirement of treating slaves brutally by their owners for hundreds of years (in order to perpetuate the system of slavery) created racists. In this regard: creating a more equitable society will likely reduce racial sentiment. On this, I completely agree with Kendi.
That being said, what I found frustrating about Kendi is every example he cited involved explicit racism by racists. They might have hidden behind supposedly 'color blind' reasoning, but the intent was clearly racist. Which, in my opinion, puts a damper on his argument in some ways. I also vehemently disagree with his assertion that EVERY racial disparity MUST come from some form of racism, which simply does not stand up to scrutiny.
To briefly pivot, James Madison created the American system to grant different regions (via federalism) a say in the outcome of federal policy. In 1787 the original 13 states generally embodied explicitly different interests by region. Today, the disparate interests of different groups within the United States are less perfectly shown via our current states, hence why we have an unusual system. The TL:DR version of the above being: the American system originally WORKED more like the Finnish system does now, but due to nearly 250 years of change it's slipped a bit. I suspect in the long run this will change (likely back to a more equitable proportion), but that of course does not reduce how much of an issue it is NOW.
Haven't read Kendi, but I do like the idea that when a city councilor is opposed to changing land use law, you don't have to explore and conclusively decide what's in the councilor's heart. "I'm not racist" often seems like a tactical move that gets people focused on the person rather than the policy. With Kendi, maybe you can just have a conversation about the effects of not building public housing? Not arguing that identifying someone as a racist can also be illuminating/useful in certain situations.
Just looking at the excerpt available on Amazon, he capitalizes both "Black" and "White." I don't think he uses "brown" in a racial context in the excerpt, so couldn't say on that one.
In his last The Atlantic article he uses the following: Black families, Latino families, and then white families; Black kids and white children; Asian (and white) neighborhoods. That might also more a function of standards at The Atlantic. Not sure how that works.
The AP or someone like that decided that "Black" is an ethnic group with shared interests and history and "White" isn't. To me this is most plausible if you also accept that the term "white" sometimes stands in for a mainstream, or non-ethnic, or not-immigrant majority. For example I often hear complaints about white hipster neighborhoods - like parts of Brooklyn or Silverlake in LA. But when you visit those places the "white" hipsters and gentrifiers are actually extremely racially diverse, maybe less than the people that are moving out, but if they're even majority white it is a slim majority.
But overall I personally think it's a completely indefensible decision. If you literally mean white people, as in people who define their ethnicity as white, then you are talking about an ethnic group with some shared interests and history whether you like that or not
There's also the fact that the AP and other outlets typically use capitalized "Black" in referring to people in Africa despite such people belonging to already identifiable local ethnic groups.
Though something approaching 100% of black people perceive structural racism to be just as big if not a bigger obstacle in their lives as interpersonal discrimination, Matt recruits anti anti racism whipping boy Ibram X. Kendi as the spokesman for this view. That’s not an idle choice. More importantly, this attempt to, for lack of a better word, segregate racism into white-man-approved real racism and white-man-repulsed not racism, all in order to more easily ignore black people’s cries about the latter is not in any new. Conservatives have been fucking this particular chicken for a half century now. Why Matt would want to join them in this endeavor is beyond me, but I can’t say that I am entirely surprised that a guy who went out of his way to let the world know that believes it’s unfair to call Tucker Carlson and Steven Miller white nationalists is also so willing to believe he’s the best person to tell black people about our own experiences and how we should best describe them. I think it’s noteworthy that he has not been able to recruit and black bluechecks other than McWhorter to vouch for this line of thinking. In a meaningful way, Matt’s argument in short is, “You have it all wrong black people, let me tell what racism is…”
I don't know if you meant this as hyperbole, but from what I've seen it doesn't seem to be true that nearly 100% of Black people see structural racism as on par with interpersonal discrimination as an obstacle in their lives. This poll from 2019 (https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/04/09/views-of-racial-inequality/) shows 55% of Black people say being Black hurts one's ability to get ahead in society, compared to 26% saying it neither hurts nor helps. Obviously there may be more data available, but this seems on par with polls I've seen that, for instance, white liberals are likely to rate structural racism as a bigger problem than Blacks as a whole do.
None of which means that structural racism isn't a thing, or a huge problem—I certainly think it is, and Matt has a section here where he gives an example of a structurally racist institution (the Senate) with a huge effect on Black people's lives. But if I'm right about the data, I think that should make us question the idea that this is a matter of white people telling Black people what to think.
Obvious hyperbole, but go re-read your own source (69% of black folks see advantages to being white, 68% say being black hurt's ability to get ahead, 82% say it hurts in hiring & promotion, 87% say it hurts when dealing with criminal justice system.78% say the country hasn't gone far enough to give black equal rights. Those are big numbers. The kind a big that would have me questioning someone whitesplaining racism since it's clear experience different things.
But as far as I can tell Matt doesn't disagree that Black people are at a structural disadvantage in the US. Where do you see him saying that? What he's saying is that, since policies intended to be nondiscriminatory ("ban the box") can end up having discriminatory effects, calling those effects "racism" doesn't add anything; it needlessly charges what should be an empirical debate about effects, while drawing attention away from the harms of out-and-out racism. Obviously a position one can disagree on but I don't think it's out of bounds as a position (granted I'm also white).
It plays differently if you're black and haven't heard white conservatives make similar, "we've decided that's not racism" arguments for the last several decades. I'm also saying that most black people would disagree with Matt that calling racism by its name is for some reason inappropriate. Further. it takes a helluvalot of nerve for a white dude to fix his mouth to say as much. which explain Matt's inability to recruit black co-signers to his preferred definition among the many black politco-types who normally agree with him.
I sincerely think that "calling racism by its name is for some reason inappropriate" is a misreading of Matt's point. The idea is that *no one* (AFAIK) would call "ban the box" laws racist, but under Kendi's definition they technically would be. Which means that his definition isn't strictly operative for anybody.
The context of what conservatives are saying seems relevant. When conservatives say "we've decided that's not racism," they're defending the status quo, right? Like, they say it's not racism that (say) levels of personal debt are higher among Black people, ergo we don't have to do anything to address that disparity (doing away with check-cashing scams, punitive bankruptcy laws, etc.). I have no idea if Matt would say the debt disparity is racist or not, but he's in favor of taking steps that would lessen or eliminate it. That seems like an important difference to me.
But Matt's went much further than just pushing back on "ban the box." Consider this quote.
"A lot of people had a visceral reaction of disgust to his bigoted rhetoric — implying that Mexican immigrants are typically murderers or offhand references to “shithole countries,” but at the same time, more people than ever were insisting that this actually isn’t what racism is"
His thesis, is that the "more people" in the last sentence are incorrect and that racism is the bigoted rhetoric. My thesis is that is mighty white of him.
It is not clear to me that there is a distinction in his rationale as compared to the conservatives of yesteryear. In both cases the goal is, as I said earlier, to over the objections of black folks, limit the scope of what should be considered racism so as to de-emphasize focus on the structural racism that we acutely experience. If you think it's less inappropriate for Matt to whitesplain racism to black people because he has more progressive fiscal attitudes, I don't know what to say other than I disagree and it's notable that the many black politico-types who share Matt's progressive fiscal attitudes are not co-signing any of this. Do you think that is an accident?
Wouldn’t all of those examples meet what Matt calls the traditional definition of racism, interpersonal discrimination and bias…? Except maybe “equal rights” one.
I'd argue that none of these require actual racist or interpersonal discrimination. Most of the unfairness most black people experience or fear experiencing with the justice system involves no racist at all, but rather a system in place that disadvantages black folks, in particular poor black folks, at ever turn. Same for jobs, which often are obtained in personal networks. To say nothing of something like this - You didn't the job because you didn't go to the college, you didn't go to college because you went to a shitty high school and caught on weed possession charges that you would have never got had you gone to the "good" school a mile a way, you didn't go to the good school a mile away because you're family has lived in your current neighborhood for a generation because they were redlined out of the good neighborhood whose housing values has quintipled in the last 25 years.
At what point does personal agency start to kick-in or matter to this discussion? A lot of people born poor will grow up to be poor, and the history of America means a lot of black people are poor.
But most of the immigrants and kids of immigrants I know, including the black ones, had next to no connections or wealth in America 25 years ago but are doing well now. Most of the people I knew growing up had no family wealth to speak of and some are in poverty or jail and others are getting paid 6 figures today. I understand many people feel differently, but to me the best evidence points to personal agency being the most important thing.
If you'd like to argue that deficiencies in "personal agency" as opposed to the myriad of active and vestigial factors associated with America's subjugation, enslavement, and oppression of black people are the reason for disparities in outcomes, I won't bother to try to change your mind. I'd just note that your misconception is common among those who seek to segregate racism into white-man-approved real racism and white-man-repulsed not racism, all in order to more easily ignore black people’s cries about the latter.
Fair point. I do think the million dollar question is, do we have a “ system in place that disadvantages black folks, in particular poor black folks, at every turn”, or one that “disadvantages poor folks, in particular poor black folks.” Seems like the “structural” (legal) part of the problem, which is vast, seems much more closely linked to the “poor” part, but it’s surely intersectional.
You've pretty clearly not spend much time talking to non-poor black people most of whom would vehemently disagree with you. Also, structural is in not in any way limited to legal obstacles. Much of it is social.
(And certainly it’s no coincidence that black people are more likely to be poor; legalized racial discrimination in the past definitely still echoes today.)
I want to thank Matt for writing this. I wrote, on this blog, months ago that Kendi’s ideas were not being challenged. Matt then wrote a tepid piece in the Washington Post. This piece is a more thoughtful challenge to Kendi’s ideas. It would appear “How to be an Anti-racist” has been hanging on the door of refrigerator long enough. We honor Kendi by challenging his ideas! It would be racist not to.
This piece makes a similar point, that liberal and leftist critics of these lines of thinking like to focus a lot on DiAngelo because she's white and it feels "weird" to criticize a Black author, even though that ends up depriving Black authors of agency in a condescending way (like "they don't know what they're saying, but you can't blame them for being worked up").
Of all the internal disagreements among Ds, I worry that Kendi's equity-based pro-discrimination ideas have the most potential to split and sink the D party. Everything I know from following politics for a long time tells me that most people will find this unappealing and that opinion could easily crystalize against it. Maybe I'm too old to get it, or maybe it's just a passing fad, but I could see left centering this issue and insisting on it, and the D party splitting after some very bad losses. Ezra asked Kendi about the potential political downside of his agenda, and Kendi said basically you have to try even if things would be worse if you fail. Well, given the direction Rs are going, I just strongly disagree.
Honestly, the idea seems so unpopular that I don't think it'd get that far. After the 2020 primary, the NYC mayoral election, affirmative action losing in CA, the Virginia primaries, etc, it's hard to see this getting off the ground enough to actually split anyone.
I mostly agree with this, and I'm not saying it's likely, but Ds rely heavily on the Black vote, and if we end up with a lot of lefty Black activists insisting that D candidates endorse equity-based discrimination, it's going to be a problem if they don't, and if they do.
While I share Kendi’s concern about something like Trump’s tax cut creating a larger wealth gap, it has to be acknowledged that it’s not necessarily that simple. If the tax cut were to make everyone better off but the the wealthiest relatively more better off then maybe it makes sense. I am not arguing that’s true merely pointing out that obsessing in relative differences is not the only lense to look through. Should we not do things to make group A better off because it makes group B even more better off and therefore increasing relative gaps?
Side note - the leader of my organization is so anxious about virtue signaling she’s on board with DEIA that she now speaks Trump-like incoherent sentences where she randomly drops in words like equity and lens. I haven’t heard the word lens spoken so many times since my last visit to the optometrist. If we had played a drinking game where we drank everytime she used equity or lens we would all be dead.
Her idea of equity is interesting. She did find it equitable to give the #2 and #3 persons in the org (highly paid) extraordinary effort bonuses which went to about 10% of the org. Some things never change!
I believe Kendi's push for a more empirical definition of racism is motivated by the fact that we can more easily measure empirical things. We will never be able to probe conservatism's soul and determine that racial animus was the motivation for cutting taxes over and over again. On the other hand, it's not so hard to show that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 widened the racial wealth gap.
Yeah, but why don’t we just call it racial inequality or inequity rather than racism. The idea is to play the words to be provocative and attach some moral urgency to these issues (which are, for sure, morally urgent). But the rhetorical strategy has huge downsides, including confusing the issues and the audience and obscuring the analytical points about the nature of structural racism.
I listened to the Klein podcast. From the EZ reddit comments I was expecting a disaster. Totally surprised to find myself way more sympathetic with Kendi's positions. I have a number of thoughts but still too raw and sadly the half-life of these comments is a day so I'll miss this one.
Here's one where I think Kendi's critics are being disingenuous. Matt here and I felt Ezra in the interview take the statistical rigour required for this approach to an illogical conclusion and then seem to dismiss it all as unfeasible. But I don't think Kendi is saying that. He pointed out that White-alone homeownership rates are ~75% while Black-alone are 45%. The census bureau already tracks this quarterly. This isn't graduate-level data science. This is high school stats. When the gaps are large enough and the trend lines stable enough - this is easy stuff to say with statistical confidence. I took Kendi's point here as ... (1) we haven't recognized this gap as racist, (2) we haven't - politically - prioritized closing this gap, and (3) we certainly haven't taken systemic action to close this gap. I think he's right. He loses me elsewhere but I *got* this.
Pointing out those statistics is the easy part, though. It's what to do about it that's the hard part, and that's where he doesn't have workable answers.
I don't disagree. I would only make the personal distinction that previously *I* wouldn't have started with point (1) ... that the gap in inherently racist. I would have started at some sub-level (e.g., poverty). But kindof stepping back now. I'd say it's racist. I'd start there.
If I understand him... the gap isn't racist, its the policies that either increase or decrease the gap which are anti-racist or racist. The gap is the symptom... or proof.
Rory -- Totally fair and correct distinction. I don't see much of a difference there between those two statements but certainly it was large enough that Kendi's response to MY in his last Atlantic article explicitly calls out this point. Actually kind of interesting both MY and I did come to the same understanding - so there's a lot of ambiguity / confusion here.
I would only say more generally, that whether you call it structural racism or from Kendi's view racist policies ... that - for example - this homeownership gap exists and persists is a problem and I'm more willing to say there's a racist driver here were has previously I would have led with class.
Yes. I wouldn’t argue. I think the debate is what are the drivers. At one level you could have more direct policies. Such as previous redlining. Or they could be more underlying such as poverty / behavior as a result of it.
Data could lead u to this policy causes blacks of this income level to be less likely to buy a house. In which case it’s something that we can attempt to fix.
But then their are things like black men are less likely to graduate college resulting in less income.
This cause now becomes a symptom. So you have to go to… policies that fix this.
But then it goes further back. Each contributing factor is itself a symptom.
It just makes it very difficult. How do you fix, while at the same time keeping with in allowable fixes.
Just a very complex thing. I think like a lot of commentators I find myself surprised how much I agree with him. Especially in data driven policies analysis’s.
I wonder about policies like reparations. For instance. Let’s say average wealth gap is 100K. If you provided every ADOS wih $100K. I suspect after 10-years there would still be a gap since managing and maintaining wealth requires a certain amount of learned skill and social connections.
Right, and also most wealth is regenerated, recycled and recreated through incomes (as well as from investments). You could give me enough money to equalize my wealth with a partner-track lawyer today, and in 10 years the gap will bigger than when we started.
Or put it another way, the income gap between white and black americans is 21,000 per year. It might not take all that long (maybe 10 years, like you said) before the gap is back to where it started, unless there's significant investment in starting businesses or job skills
I was really hoping that this post would be the "share to everyone" article that really put anti-racism into perspective. Sadly, while the hypothesis is dead-on (as per usual), the actual writing of this one was a bit inscrutable.
I respectfully request that Matt do another take on Kendi, and next time, write it for the normies, so that we can start mounting a cogent counter-movement against the radicalization of a good idea.
Here's a Canadian discussion of the distinction between racism as individual bias (the commonly understood meaning) and "systemic racism" (disparate impact): http://induecourse.ca/redefining-racism/
"... many people seem to think that, in order to make the case for the reform of a particular institution (or to condemn it as 'racist'), all that one needs to do is identify some respect in which it is having a disparate negative impact on a disadvantaged racial group. This does not follow. Typically, the argument works by exploiting the ambiguity between racism in the attitudinal sense, which is always wrong but hard to prove, and racism in the systemic sense, which is easier to prove but not always wrong. Another way of putting it is to say that, if you want to preserve the judgement that racism is always wrong, then you should not refer to institutions with disparate racial impact as 'systemically racist,' because systemic racism in this sense of the term is not necessarily wrong."
**Kendi didn’t come up with the ideas of systemic racism, nor was he the first to conflate systemic problems with all racism- his contemporaries did as early as 2012. His works simply cemented the idea.
The Anti-defamation league put out a statement in february about re-expanding to the old definition, but the NAACP seems to have doubled down, even sticking with their web statement from March 2021 that black people are most affected by racism (by what metric is not clear). This over-focus on purely structural issues is hurting their own cause, as is most evident with their Minneapolis EIP targeting exclusively structural issues (https://naacp.org/resources/minneapolis-economic-inclusion-plan) and COMPLETELY ignoring the fact that refugees or children of refugees are the black Minnesotans struggling the most--they are experiencing heavy language barriers in health care & education and even struggling with brand-new redlining problems. Thus, they need a lot of support that cannot be achieved by copy-pasting policies directed at African Americans that are trying to recover from generational inequity. (https://mn.gov/admin/assets/MNSDC_EconStatus_2018Report_FNL_Access.pdf_tcm36-362054.pdf)
If you are asking for nothing less ambitious than the abolition of racism, good luck. Racism is a grass roots issue. Tell me what law you pass to change hearts and minds.
I look at racism as a subset of groupism – us vs. them, with “us” defined not necessarily by skin color but by any number of factors including religion and geography. Of course, this is not just an American phenomenon. From this side of the world, the Serbians and Croatians look like the same people, but not too long ago they were killing each other. Why? “Us vs.Them”.
Now, I don’t mean to imply moral equivalence. White Americans enslaved and discriminated against Black Americans. But there are feedback loops. My immigrant grandparents who had nothing to do with slavery or Jim Crow lived for many years in a mostly Black neighborhood where they were the target of hostility. Maybe that hostility, from the Black neighbors’ point of view, was historically justifiable but it turned Grampa and Grandma into lifelong racists – not the cross burning, church bombing kind, but they had an attitude of fear and disdain towards Black people.
I certainly don’t have an easy answer, except perhaps the encouragement of a mindset that looks at the individual, not a collective, as the basic unit of society.
I must admit I haven't done enough research to know why "prejudice" as a term was abandoned to describe that sort of interpersonal racism. I had a professor of African American Studies and Sociology who preferred the former to the latter. He was an older black man, for what that's worth.
Ezra has gone on Coleman Hughes podcast. This is good for America. There are smart ass comments welling up in my mind right now but I will try not to spoil the moment with my petty dickishness. I look forward to listening.
I appreciate Kendi's consequentialist approach to racial equity. Robert Byrd was a KKK member, but (later in life) didn't govern like one. Whether he had a change of heart or just a change of political calculation doesn't matter.
However, I agree with Matt that that a lot of the rest of Kendi's theories fall apart. Calculating a policy's impact on racial equality falls apart in practice, where it mostly results in debate over whether the policy actually increases or decreases racial equality.
For example, if you ask opponents of Affirmative Action why they oppose it, a lot of them will tell you it is because it actually hurts Black people by encouraging people to focus on race, by setting up black students for failure and by undermining Black people by making it appear that their are not qualified for whatever position they might have. Do I think these things are true? No, but social science is nowhere close to objective or reliable enough to prove it. Do I think the people making these claims believe them? Probably some, but the answer is not relevant under Kendi's Anti-Racism anyways.
His proposed constitutional amendment to make racial inequality over a certain threshold unconstitutional is also wholly unworkable. Not only is it not clear how you could quantify this, but I don't see how you implement it. Does the SCOTUS start striking policies it believes are increasing racial inequality until inequality gets down to a manageable level? Since there are undoubtedly a variety of policies contributing to the inequality, how do they pick which ones? Do you really want Roberts, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Berrett to be the arbitrators of which policies are contributing to racial inequality? Because I'm sure that they can find a way to decide that the things causing inequality are welfare programs, abortion, environmental regulation, affirmative action and the VRA without even breaking a sweat.
On your last paragraph, that's presumably why Kendi has his proposal for creating a politically unaccountable "Department of Antiracism" to enforce the amendment -- to cut the Supreme Court out of the process -- although I've never seen an interviewer actually ask him about that. (I've also never seen him be asked how the heck you staff a federal government agency without some number of political appointees to start with -- even the US military has political appointees at the top.)
Reminds me of Madison's quote "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
This is not the sort of thing that has an objectively "right" answer, especially since it calls for predictions. Whether its the Surpeme Court, or some new agency that is somehow empowered to strike down "racist" laws, at some point Trump or Trump 2.0 is going to be in charge of appointing whomever is going to make the call and Kendi isn't going to like the calls they make.
The CBO scores bills on their cost estimate, but its entirely non-binding. If congress wants to disagree with or disregard their score, they are free to do so with a 50+1 vote majority. This is true even on something like reconciliation, where the score is intended to help determine if the bill fits within the process. There may be some value in funding an agency to give bills a racial equity score, but giving the agency veto power over bills is hardly going to help our already veto-heavy system.
Kendi reminds me of no one so much as the 5-Minute Abs guy from Something About Mary. He has an idea that has some merit but the second you start asking critical questioning, his responses lose all semblance of reason.
It seems like there are a ton of misconceptions about Kendi's ideas in these comments! I think every woke idea a slow boring commenter doesn't like has been attributed to Kendi here, whether Kendi believes it or not. I haven't read his book but now I feel like I should because this incredibly popular book is apparently widely misunderstood.
The most interesting idea Kendi proposed is different racial outcomes will create racists. To take an extreme example: the Trans-Atlantic trade system (if my recollection of history is correct) largely helped create the racist thinking which we still live with today. In a very real way: the requirement of treating slaves brutally by their owners for hundreds of years (in order to perpetuate the system of slavery) created racists. In this regard: creating a more equitable society will likely reduce racial sentiment. On this, I completely agree with Kendi.
That being said, what I found frustrating about Kendi is every example he cited involved explicit racism by racists. They might have hidden behind supposedly 'color blind' reasoning, but the intent was clearly racist. Which, in my opinion, puts a damper on his argument in some ways. I also vehemently disagree with his assertion that EVERY racial disparity MUST come from some form of racism, which simply does not stand up to scrutiny.
To briefly pivot, James Madison created the American system to grant different regions (via federalism) a say in the outcome of federal policy. In 1787 the original 13 states generally embodied explicitly different interests by region. Today, the disparate interests of different groups within the United States are less perfectly shown via our current states, hence why we have an unusual system. The TL:DR version of the above being: the American system originally WORKED more like the Finnish system does now, but due to nearly 250 years of change it's slipped a bit. I suspect in the long run this will change (likely back to a more equitable proportion), but that of course does not reduce how much of an issue it is NOW.
Haven't read Kendi, but I do like the idea that when a city councilor is opposed to changing land use law, you don't have to explore and conclusively decide what's in the councilor's heart. "I'm not racist" often seems like a tactical move that gets people focused on the person rather than the policy. With Kendi, maybe you can just have a conversation about the effects of not building public housing? Not arguing that identifying someone as a racist can also be illuminating/useful in certain situations.
What Kendi's rationale for capitalizing "Black" but not brown or white? (I kind of get why you don't capitalize "white"... but still)
Just looking at the excerpt available on Amazon, he capitalizes both "Black" and "White." I don't think he uses "brown" in a racial context in the excerpt, so couldn't say on that one.
In his last The Atlantic article he uses the following: Black families, Latino families, and then white families; Black kids and white children; Asian (and white) neighborhoods. That might also more a function of standards at The Atlantic. Not sure how that works.
The AP or someone like that decided that "Black" is an ethnic group with shared interests and history and "White" isn't. To me this is most plausible if you also accept that the term "white" sometimes stands in for a mainstream, or non-ethnic, or not-immigrant majority. For example I often hear complaints about white hipster neighborhoods - like parts of Brooklyn or Silverlake in LA. But when you visit those places the "white" hipsters and gentrifiers are actually extremely racially diverse, maybe less than the people that are moving out, but if they're even majority white it is a slim majority.
But overall I personally think it's a completely indefensible decision. If you literally mean white people, as in people who define their ethnicity as white, then you are talking about an ethnic group with some shared interests and history whether you like that or not
There's also the fact that the AP and other outlets typically use capitalized "Black" in referring to people in Africa despite such people belonging to already identifiable local ethnic groups.
Though something approaching 100% of black people perceive structural racism to be just as big if not a bigger obstacle in their lives as interpersonal discrimination, Matt recruits anti anti racism whipping boy Ibram X. Kendi as the spokesman for this view. That’s not an idle choice. More importantly, this attempt to, for lack of a better word, segregate racism into white-man-approved real racism and white-man-repulsed not racism, all in order to more easily ignore black people’s cries about the latter is not in any new. Conservatives have been fucking this particular chicken for a half century now. Why Matt would want to join them in this endeavor is beyond me, but I can’t say that I am entirely surprised that a guy who went out of his way to let the world know that believes it’s unfair to call Tucker Carlson and Steven Miller white nationalists is also so willing to believe he’s the best person to tell black people about our own experiences and how we should best describe them. I think it’s noteworthy that he has not been able to recruit and black bluechecks other than McWhorter to vouch for this line of thinking. In a meaningful way, Matt’s argument in short is, “You have it all wrong black people, let me tell what racism is…”
I don't know if you meant this as hyperbole, but from what I've seen it doesn't seem to be true that nearly 100% of Black people see structural racism as on par with interpersonal discrimination as an obstacle in their lives. This poll from 2019 (https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/04/09/views-of-racial-inequality/) shows 55% of Black people say being Black hurts one's ability to get ahead in society, compared to 26% saying it neither hurts nor helps. Obviously there may be more data available, but this seems on par with polls I've seen that, for instance, white liberals are likely to rate structural racism as a bigger problem than Blacks as a whole do.
None of which means that structural racism isn't a thing, or a huge problem—I certainly think it is, and Matt has a section here where he gives an example of a structurally racist institution (the Senate) with a huge effect on Black people's lives. But if I'm right about the data, I think that should make us question the idea that this is a matter of white people telling Black people what to think.
Obvious hyperbole, but go re-read your own source (69% of black folks see advantages to being white, 68% say being black hurt's ability to get ahead, 82% say it hurts in hiring & promotion, 87% say it hurts when dealing with criminal justice system.78% say the country hasn't gone far enough to give black equal rights. Those are big numbers. The kind a big that would have me questioning someone whitesplaining racism since it's clear experience different things.
But as far as I can tell Matt doesn't disagree that Black people are at a structural disadvantage in the US. Where do you see him saying that? What he's saying is that, since policies intended to be nondiscriminatory ("ban the box") can end up having discriminatory effects, calling those effects "racism" doesn't add anything; it needlessly charges what should be an empirical debate about effects, while drawing attention away from the harms of out-and-out racism. Obviously a position one can disagree on but I don't think it's out of bounds as a position (granted I'm also white).
It plays differently if you're black and haven't heard white conservatives make similar, "we've decided that's not racism" arguments for the last several decades. I'm also saying that most black people would disagree with Matt that calling racism by its name is for some reason inappropriate. Further. it takes a helluvalot of nerve for a white dude to fix his mouth to say as much. which explain Matt's inability to recruit black co-signers to his preferred definition among the many black politco-types who normally agree with him.
I sincerely think that "calling racism by its name is for some reason inappropriate" is a misreading of Matt's point. The idea is that *no one* (AFAIK) would call "ban the box" laws racist, but under Kendi's definition they technically would be. Which means that his definition isn't strictly operative for anybody.
The context of what conservatives are saying seems relevant. When conservatives say "we've decided that's not racism," they're defending the status quo, right? Like, they say it's not racism that (say) levels of personal debt are higher among Black people, ergo we don't have to do anything to address that disparity (doing away with check-cashing scams, punitive bankruptcy laws, etc.). I have no idea if Matt would say the debt disparity is racist or not, but he's in favor of taking steps that would lessen or eliminate it. That seems like an important difference to me.
But Matt's went much further than just pushing back on "ban the box." Consider this quote.
"A lot of people had a visceral reaction of disgust to his bigoted rhetoric — implying that Mexican immigrants are typically murderers or offhand references to “shithole countries,” but at the same time, more people than ever were insisting that this actually isn’t what racism is"
His thesis, is that the "more people" in the last sentence are incorrect and that racism is the bigoted rhetoric. My thesis is that is mighty white of him.
It is not clear to me that there is a distinction in his rationale as compared to the conservatives of yesteryear. In both cases the goal is, as I said earlier, to over the objections of black folks, limit the scope of what should be considered racism so as to de-emphasize focus on the structural racism that we acutely experience. If you think it's less inappropriate for Matt to whitesplain racism to black people because he has more progressive fiscal attitudes, I don't know what to say other than I disagree and it's notable that the many black politico-types who share Matt's progressive fiscal attitudes are not co-signing any of this. Do you think that is an accident?
Wouldn’t all of those examples meet what Matt calls the traditional definition of racism, interpersonal discrimination and bias…? Except maybe “equal rights” one.
I'd argue that none of these require actual racist or interpersonal discrimination. Most of the unfairness most black people experience or fear experiencing with the justice system involves no racist at all, but rather a system in place that disadvantages black folks, in particular poor black folks, at ever turn. Same for jobs, which often are obtained in personal networks. To say nothing of something like this - You didn't the job because you didn't go to the college, you didn't go to college because you went to a shitty high school and caught on weed possession charges that you would have never got had you gone to the "good" school a mile a way, you didn't go to the good school a mile away because you're family has lived in your current neighborhood for a generation because they were redlined out of the good neighborhood whose housing values has quintipled in the last 25 years.
At what point does personal agency start to kick-in or matter to this discussion? A lot of people born poor will grow up to be poor, and the history of America means a lot of black people are poor.
But most of the immigrants and kids of immigrants I know, including the black ones, had next to no connections or wealth in America 25 years ago but are doing well now. Most of the people I knew growing up had no family wealth to speak of and some are in poverty or jail and others are getting paid 6 figures today. I understand many people feel differently, but to me the best evidence points to personal agency being the most important thing.
If you'd like to argue that deficiencies in "personal agency" as opposed to the myriad of active and vestigial factors associated with America's subjugation, enslavement, and oppression of black people are the reason for disparities in outcomes, I won't bother to try to change your mind. I'd just note that your misconception is common among those who seek to segregate racism into white-man-approved real racism and white-man-repulsed not racism, all in order to more easily ignore black people’s cries about the latter.
Fair point. I do think the million dollar question is, do we have a “ system in place that disadvantages black folks, in particular poor black folks, at every turn”, or one that “disadvantages poor folks, in particular poor black folks.” Seems like the “structural” (legal) part of the problem, which is vast, seems much more closely linked to the “poor” part, but it’s surely intersectional.
You've pretty clearly not spend much time talking to non-poor black people most of whom would vehemently disagree with you. Also, structural is in not in any way limited to legal obstacles. Much of it is social.
(And certainly it’s no coincidence that black people are more likely to be poor; legalized racial discrimination in the past definitely still echoes today.)
I want to thank Matt for writing this. I wrote, on this blog, months ago that Kendi’s ideas were not being challenged. Matt then wrote a tepid piece in the Washington Post. This piece is a more thoughtful challenge to Kendi’s ideas. It would appear “How to be an Anti-racist” has been hanging on the door of refrigerator long enough. We honor Kendi by challenging his ideas! It would be racist not to.
This piece makes a similar point, that liberal and leftist critics of these lines of thinking like to focus a lot on DiAngelo because she's white and it feels "weird" to criticize a Black author, even though that ends up depriving Black authors of agency in a condescending way (like "they don't know what they're saying, but you can't blame them for being worked up").
Forgot the link: https://medium.com/arc-digital/sympathy-for-the-masochists-a731824f0eec?source=rss-2097db1b8a4------3
Of all the internal disagreements among Ds, I worry that Kendi's equity-based pro-discrimination ideas have the most potential to split and sink the D party. Everything I know from following politics for a long time tells me that most people will find this unappealing and that opinion could easily crystalize against it. Maybe I'm too old to get it, or maybe it's just a passing fad, but I could see left centering this issue and insisting on it, and the D party splitting after some very bad losses. Ezra asked Kendi about the potential political downside of his agenda, and Kendi said basically you have to try even if things would be worse if you fail. Well, given the direction Rs are going, I just strongly disagree.
Honestly, the idea seems so unpopular that I don't think it'd get that far. After the 2020 primary, the NYC mayoral election, affirmative action losing in CA, the Virginia primaries, etc, it's hard to see this getting off the ground enough to actually split anyone.
I mostly agree with this, and I'm not saying it's likely, but Ds rely heavily on the Black vote, and if we end up with a lot of lefty Black activists insisting that D candidates endorse equity-based discrimination, it's going to be a problem if they don't, and if they do.
While I share Kendi’s concern about something like Trump’s tax cut creating a larger wealth gap, it has to be acknowledged that it’s not necessarily that simple. If the tax cut were to make everyone better off but the the wealthiest relatively more better off then maybe it makes sense. I am not arguing that’s true merely pointing out that obsessing in relative differences is not the only lense to look through. Should we not do things to make group A better off because it makes group B even more better off and therefore increasing relative gaps?
Side note - the leader of my organization is so anxious about virtue signaling she’s on board with DEIA that she now speaks Trump-like incoherent sentences where she randomly drops in words like equity and lens. I haven’t heard the word lens spoken so many times since my last visit to the optometrist. If we had played a drinking game where we drank everytime she used equity or lens we would all be dead.
Her idea of equity is interesting. She did find it equitable to give the #2 and #3 persons in the org (highly paid) extraordinary effort bonuses which went to about 10% of the org. Some things never change!
I believe Kendi's push for a more empirical definition of racism is motivated by the fact that we can more easily measure empirical things. We will never be able to probe conservatism's soul and determine that racial animus was the motivation for cutting taxes over and over again. On the other hand, it's not so hard to show that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 widened the racial wealth gap.
Yeah, but why don’t we just call it racial inequality or inequity rather than racism. The idea is to play the words to be provocative and attach some moral urgency to these issues (which are, for sure, morally urgent). But the rhetorical strategy has huge downsides, including confusing the issues and the audience and obscuring the analytical points about the nature of structural racism.
Kendi's gambit is that if he can reduce racial inequity by a crucial amount, then all the confusion he sowed would've been worth it.
I listened to the Klein podcast. From the EZ reddit comments I was expecting a disaster. Totally surprised to find myself way more sympathetic with Kendi's positions. I have a number of thoughts but still too raw and sadly the half-life of these comments is a day so I'll miss this one.
Here's one where I think Kendi's critics are being disingenuous. Matt here and I felt Ezra in the interview take the statistical rigour required for this approach to an illogical conclusion and then seem to dismiss it all as unfeasible. But I don't think Kendi is saying that. He pointed out that White-alone homeownership rates are ~75% while Black-alone are 45%. The census bureau already tracks this quarterly. This isn't graduate-level data science. This is high school stats. When the gaps are large enough and the trend lines stable enough - this is easy stuff to say with statistical confidence. I took Kendi's point here as ... (1) we haven't recognized this gap as racist, (2) we haven't - politically - prioritized closing this gap, and (3) we certainly haven't taken systemic action to close this gap. I think he's right. He loses me elsewhere but I *got* this.
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf
Pointing out those statistics is the easy part, though. It's what to do about it that's the hard part, and that's where he doesn't have workable answers.
I don't disagree. I would only make the personal distinction that previously *I* wouldn't have started with point (1) ... that the gap in inherently racist. I would have started at some sub-level (e.g., poverty). But kindof stepping back now. I'd say it's racist. I'd start there.
If I understand him... the gap isn't racist, its the policies that either increase or decrease the gap which are anti-racist or racist. The gap is the symptom... or proof.
Rory -- Totally fair and correct distinction. I don't see much of a difference there between those two statements but certainly it was large enough that Kendi's response to MY in his last Atlantic article explicitly calls out this point. Actually kind of interesting both MY and I did come to the same understanding - so there's a lot of ambiguity / confusion here.
I would only say more generally, that whether you call it structural racism or from Kendi's view racist policies ... that - for example - this homeownership gap exists and persists is a problem and I'm more willing to say there's a racist driver here were has previously I would have led with class.
Yes. I wouldn’t argue. I think the debate is what are the drivers. At one level you could have more direct policies. Such as previous redlining. Or they could be more underlying such as poverty / behavior as a result of it.
Data could lead u to this policy causes blacks of this income level to be less likely to buy a house. In which case it’s something that we can attempt to fix.
But then their are things like black men are less likely to graduate college resulting in less income.
This cause now becomes a symptom. So you have to go to… policies that fix this.
But then it goes further back. Each contributing factor is itself a symptom.
It just makes it very difficult. How do you fix, while at the same time keeping with in allowable fixes.
Just a very complex thing. I think like a lot of commentators I find myself surprised how much I agree with him. Especially in data driven policies analysis’s.
I wonder about policies like reparations. For instance. Let’s say average wealth gap is 100K. If you provided every ADOS wih $100K. I suspect after 10-years there would still be a gap since managing and maintaining wealth requires a certain amount of learned skill and social connections.
I do like the fact sea of constant evaluation.
Right, and also most wealth is regenerated, recycled and recreated through incomes (as well as from investments). You could give me enough money to equalize my wealth with a partner-track lawyer today, and in 10 years the gap will bigger than when we started.
Or put it another way, the income gap between white and black americans is 21,000 per year. It might not take all that long (maybe 10 years, like you said) before the gap is back to where it started, unless there's significant investment in starting businesses or job skills
I was really hoping that this post would be the "share to everyone" article that really put anti-racism into perspective. Sadly, while the hypothesis is dead-on (as per usual), the actual writing of this one was a bit inscrutable.
I respectfully request that Matt do another take on Kendi, and next time, write it for the normies, so that we can start mounting a cogent counter-movement against the radicalization of a good idea.
Thank you in advance! :)
Here's a Canadian discussion of the distinction between racism as individual bias (the commonly understood meaning) and "systemic racism" (disparate impact): http://induecourse.ca/redefining-racism/
"... many people seem to think that, in order to make the case for the reform of a particular institution (or to condemn it as 'racist'), all that one needs to do is identify some respect in which it is having a disparate negative impact on a disadvantaged racial group. This does not follow. Typically, the argument works by exploiting the ambiguity between racism in the attitudinal sense, which is always wrong but hard to prove, and racism in the systemic sense, which is easier to prove but not always wrong. Another way of putting it is to say that, if you want to preserve the judgement that racism is always wrong, then you should not refer to institutions with disparate racial impact as 'systemically racist,' because systemic racism in this sense of the term is not necessarily wrong."