[rayiner]

If what you say is true, books like “how to be an antiracist” would include examples of these “arguably worse” mechanisms to maintain inequality. They don’t contain such examples. Indeed, a central premise of Kendi’s book is that affirmative measures are required because simply “not being racist” doesn’t work.

[tptacek]

When you say "books like _How To Be An Antiracist_", you mean... bad books, right? Why would you expect bad-faith actors like Kendi to do better?

[barry-cotter]

What’s your disagreement with Kendi and those like him? What changed?

[tptacek]

Nothing's changed. I think Kendi is an ideological grifter. It's frustrating to see "normie" anti-racism, of the "BLM lawn sign" variety, tainted by association with him.

[rayiner]

I don’t think he’s a “grifter.” Kendi thought is just the logical combination of three mainstream progressive ideas:

1) (a) The history and experience of Black people in America is sui generis and (b) justifies responses that don’t need to be generalizable or measure up to ordinary standards of procedural fairness.

2) the “bootstraps”approach of Kendi’s parent’s generation has failed.

3) bureaucratic institutions operated by well meaning credentialed people can solve every problem.

Really, the only area where I substantively disagree with him is (3)—the white people in charge of bureaucratic institutions will inevitably use any special powers given to them to advance their own economic and cultural interests.

[tptacek]

I don't want to get too far into it, so I'll just say:

1. Virtually nobody with a BLM lawn sign believes this: https://twitter.com/DrIbram/status/1302724276412387334

2. I can't do any better than Kalefa Sanneh at pointing out the incoherence of Kendi's professed world view. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/19/the-fight-to-r...

[random314]

What are the examples of ideological grift? I just found out about Kendi through this comment thread and a simple Google search didn't yield anything.

[wizofaus]

But how convincingly does he make that case? It seems to be that while we're obviously a long way from a truly race-blind world, someone belonging to a minority ethnic grouping has a much better chance of succeeding in most careers in the average Western country today than they would have 50 years ago. I struggle to believe that's largely due to the weird sort of "anti-racism" Kendi promotes.

[deepl_derber]

I don't see how this follows from what I said at all.