Friday 1/5/24
Another note about Ibram X. Kendi, genius.
Guy who is a racist himself writes a book called How to Be an Antiracist. This sounds like something out of Swift or Candide, doesn't it? Not real-life statement of facts.
Publishing eats this up, awards committees eat this up, rich suburban white women who want to show that they're one of the good ones and buy the book to own it as a shelf decoration rather than read it eat it up.
Then George Floyd happens. Hold on--let me clarify. I don't mean that George Floyd holds a gun to a pregnant woman's belly as he robs her. That was earlier. George Floyd died, is what I mean.
Race became even bigger business. Kendi, of course, was going to make the most of this. It was like an-all-you-could eat--or all-you-could-stuff-in-your-pockets--buffet for a race profiteer. You had peaceful protests of buildings being lit on fire, and all manner of "elite" white people elbowing each other in the crotch to get near the start of the line--where the money is to be had--as one of those aforementioned good ones.
The hogs were fattened up, and it was time for the slaughter--a financial killing, that is.
With the assistance of BU, Kendi launched a think tank billed as an "antiracist center," to be headed up and ran--as the sole voice in the room--by Kendi.
The center received upwards of fifty million dollars. It produced virtually no research. Then again, what research was it supposed to produce?
Proof that racism is bad? Yes, racism is bad. Discrimination is bad. Discriminating against forms of discrimination and saying that this kind is automatically worse than this kind because it's in vogue and pays out, is bad.
So then he fires half the staff. People who said that he was inept as a leader of the enterprise. Well, I'm sure he was. But then again, they were people who'd been dismissed and bias can play a role in what such people say. And you have to allow for that, unless they're very clear--and usually that also means voluminous--in laying out what went down.
But no one knows where all of that money--which was burned through--went.
Such a shocker, right?
Take a race profiteer, a grifter, a con man, put millions and millions of dollars at his disposal, for this thing he's only doing to bolster his grift and con and boost his net worth, and the money just isn't there anymore.
One person who worked at the center had concerns and I'd say they were pretty big. It was clear to her--this being Saida Grundy, an associate sociology professor at BU--that grant money was being accepted by Kendi with no intention whatsoever of being put to use for research, whatever it might have been. She filed an anonymous complaint with the university. The antiracist center didn't renew her contract, and wouldn't respond to her afterwards.
Now, I don't know, exactly, how this went from an anonymous complaint to what Grundy claims was retaliation against her. She simply could have said other things--even mild things--along the way, or asked the wrong question once.
That is all it takes with evil people who are up to no good. I know all about them. I'll have someone try to steal money from me, and if I very politely ask when I might be getting paid, they'll shut it down. They'll never respond again. That's their technique. That's how many people in publishing operate. That's how Kendi operates.
This center wasn't created to address any problems in the world, or solve them. It was part of a racist's grift. People will get away with what they think they can get away with. They won't even say, "That's enough, you don't want to push it too far." They'll keep going until they're made to stop.
Kendi's advantage is how easily he's enabled and helped out in the various legs and installments of his grift.
I mean, the MacArthur people said, "You know what? Let's write you a big check and say you're a genius. Sound good?"
Do you think they believed he was that thing? Do you think anyone who supports someone like this, who props them up, funds them, tries to legitimize them into being things they plainly are not, thinks they're anything special? Anything good? Or do you think such matters never really enter their minds?
Do you think people writing the checks to Kendi for his antiracist center ever thought, "We need this man and what he's doing! He is making the world a better place!"
No. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that. This isn't Sherlock Holmes at the moment of the big reveal and Watson going, "Fuck man, you've done it again."
This is just obvious. Plain to see. For everyone to see.
But it's still what happens and what is allowed to happen.
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