


In his latest update at Discover the Networks, John Perazzo updates the profile for Ibram X. Kendi, the godfather of ‘antiracism,’ on the Claudine Gay case.
“Racist mobs won’t stop until they topple all black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism. What these racist mobs are doing should be obvious to any reporter who cares about truth or justice as opposed to conflicts and clicks. Too often mainstream reporters join the racist mob or give it credibility — as they did in this case — just as they did a century ago.”
“When a racist mob attacks a black person, it finds a seemingly legitimate reason for the attack that allows for it to accrue popular support and credibility, and which allows the growing mob to deny they are attacking the person in this way because the person is black.”
So, according to Kendi, who divides the world into binary tones of racism and anti-racism, is there ever a legitimate reason to criticize a black person?
Kendi, like much of critical theory, offered a pop redefinition of racism detached from hatred and focused purely on power.
Once racism became power then everything could be divided into racism (everything that doesn’t serve the ends of black nationalism) and anti-racism, everything that does elevate black nationalism.
Any critic of Claudine Gay must be a racist because he is undermining black power.
Is there a legitimate reason to ever criticize a black person according to anti-racism? Sure.
As Kendi argued, “You have black people who believe that they can’t be racist because they believe that black people don’t have power and that’s blatantly not true. Every single person on earth has the power to resist racist policies and power. We need to recognize that there are black people who resist it, and there are some who do not because of their own anti-black racism. And then you have black people, a limited number, who are in policy-making positions and use those policy-making decisions to institute or defend policies that harm black people. If those people were white we would be calling them what they are – racists. If they’re black, they’re no different. They’re racists.”
So any black person who isn’t a leftist is a racist.
The only racist black people are those who don’t push various leftist agenda items because they’re inhibiting black power. And so black conservatives and moderates are the only racists around.
(You can read more about Ibram X. Kendi at his Discover the Networks profile and browse more profiles at Discover the Networks.)