Ibram X. Kendi's "Anti-Racist" Institute Downsizes? So What?

"The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

So wrote Ibram X. Kendi (real name Henry Rogers) in his best-selling 2019 book "How To Be An Anti-Racist," a foundational text for the white guilt industrial complex.

To say Kendi did well out of his call for permanent race-based discrimination would be a massive understatement.

Labeling all white Americans — including children and babies — inherent racists won him a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship and a lucrative "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Time magazine named him one of its 100 most influential people of 2020.

CBS News, The Atlantic, and, most recently, ESPN welcome his regular commentary.

Kendi has a line of children’s books intended to impart his message to toddlers, adolescents, and parents.

His speaking fees reportedly run into tens of thousands of dollars per session.

In 2020, Twitter’s founder and former owner Jack Dorsey donated $10 million to support Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research (CAR) just after Kendi founded it.

Dorsey’s gift was followed by another $43 million in donations over the next three years, reaching a combined $55 million when earlier funds are included.

With figures on that scale, there could be no doubt that Kendi’s racialist message would resound for decades to come.

As Boston University theology and ethics professor David Decosimo opined in The Wall Street Journal last week, his institution — along with many others — has strived to make Kendi-esque "anti-racism" a guiding principle, apparently at the expense of free speech, academic freedom, and anti-discrimination laws.

At its height, CAR employed 43 people, boasted a news site operated in partnership with The Boston Globe, hosted events to cultivate the new ideology, and planned undergraduate and graduate degree programs.

According to Kendi, CAR’s ultimate goal was to "solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice," even though any honest reader of his work would understand this to involve more inequity and more injustice.

Last month, the bubble burst.

In what Kendi called "the hardest decision of his career" — presumably harder than labeling a majority of his countrymen as racists on the basis of their skin color — he announced that he was laying off more than half of CAR’s employees and that the Center’s budget would be halved.

Operations will pivot toward a fellowship program that will bring in scholars for short residencies rather than solicit research funds.

The big question — now amplified by numerous public accusations of mismanagement, malfeasance, and incompetence — is where all the money went.

CAR never produced its degree programs.

The Center’s hiring was slow, its research output minimal.

The Boston Globe, which has been investigating CAR, is no longer its media partner.

CAR’s website content is remarkably sparse for an organization with resources in the mid eight-figures.

Kendi’s colleagues started to notice early on that something was amiss.

Boston University (BU) sociology professor Saida U. Grundy, who is Black and a former CAR affiliate identified on the university’s website as a "feminist sociologist of race and ethnicity," told The New York Times that "commensurate to the amount of cash and donations taken in, the outputs were minuscule."

Nearly two years ago, Grundy raised concerns about this suspicious disparity to BU’s provost, but only now is the university investigating claims and concerns raised by her and a number of other former CAR affiliates.

With decorous politeness that other critical race theorists might describe as "whiteness," Kendi says he welcomes the investigation and hopes he can "live in a world where all leaders of new organizations are given the time to make mistakes and learn and grow."

All people accused of mismanaging tens of millions of tax-deductible dollars should be so lucky, but in a Times interview Kendi flaunted his ideology’s circular logic to try to defend himself, arguing that any criticism is intended "to settle old scores and demonstrate that I’m a problem or that antiracism is a problem . . .

"Unfortunately we live in such a polarized, spiteful sort of reactionary moment."

Criticizing Kendi for any reason, in other words, is a racist act to which only dastardly reactionaries would stoop, including the Black feminist sociologists who secretly circulate among them.

BU’s investigation will continue at academia’s slow pace and may eventually discover where the money went and who was responsible.

Regardless of the results, it is unlikely that Kendi will suffer any serious consequences. His progressive celebrity status has burnished BU’s progressive credentials to too great degree.

If BU were to fire or even modestly discipline him, he and the guilty white liberal donors he attracts would almost certainly decamp to an eager new academic home, likely with a higher salary and more perks.

BU, meanwhile, would expose itself to the same damning allegations of racism that Kendi is already bandying against his critics in the former paper of record, which offers no critical comment on them.

Likely to avoid those unpleasant consequences, BU’s interim president Kenneth Freeman has doubled down on his commitment to Kendi’s ideology.

"We are hopeful that CAR will emerge from this moment in a better position to sustainably pursue its scholarly work and antiracism teaching and policymaking," Freeman told the campus newspaper, "this will not change. The University will not step back."

Only in these twisted circumstances could possible malfeasance on a massive scale be considered a "teachable moment" or a challenge to recommit to what The Washington Post — no home to reactionary thought — has called out as "a grift" in the name of a favored ideology.

Kendi has risen to bulletproof celebrity by perfecting an act that resonates on a deep emotional level with how white liberals believe "oppressed" black intellectuals should stereotypically behave.

His successful show will continue, even if the only remedy to possible past malfeasance turns out to be potential future malfeasance.