Ibram X. Kendi vs. America’s ‘antiracism backlash’

Just a few years ago, historian and activist Dr. Ibram X. Kendi seemed to be everywhere. At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, Kendi became one of the leading voices on racism in America—and particularly what he described as antiracism. In 2019, his book How to Be an Antiracist became a best-seller. And later, just months after the death of George Floyd—a Black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis—Kendi founded The Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, receiving $55 million in funding.

But over the last few years, as a backlash grew against the BLM movement, Kendi also came under attack. His ideas urging people to be actively antiracist were often the target of conservative critics fighting against DEI policies and the teaching of critical race theory. Kendi was also accused of mismanaging the antiracism center at BU, which laid off much of its staff before closing last month. (BU cleared Kendi of financial mismanagement.) Later this fall, Kendi will head up another academic project, this time at Howard University’s Institute for Advanced Study, which will focus on racism and the global African diaspora.

As the Trump administration eliminates DEI initiatives and erases parts of Black history throughout the federal government, Kendi places this moment alongside two others in American history: the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s and the racial violence that marked the segregation era during the 1920s. “These are moments in which you had very powerful racist forces who were seeking to eliminate policies and practices and ideas that had been created to bring about more democracy and equity and equality,” Kendi says. “We’re literally right now in a very pitched battle for the future of justice in the United States and frankly around the world.”

On this week’s More To The Story, Kendi discusses this historical moment with host Al Letson, responds to the criticism he faced at Boston University, and talks about Malcolm Lives!, his new book for young readers about Malcolm X.

This following interview was edited for length and clarity. More To The Story transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors.

Al Letson: So I was first introduced to your work when I read your 2019 book, How to Be an Antiracist. Now, I had never heard that term antiracist before. It was a new way of looking at how to address racism. For those who haven’t had a chance to read it, what does it mean to be an antiracist?

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi: Well, the book and what I try to show through my research is that the true opposite of racist is not not racist, it is antiracist. That historically, and even in our moment, typically people who self-identify as not racist, they do so largely after they just did or said something that was racist. It’s also the case that the term not racist is a term that’s widely used without a definition. So I actually have yet to see somebody actually define clearly what it means to be not racist. And then thirdly, the reason why antiracist is the true opposite of racist is because most people understand, for instance, that a racist idea is a notion that suggests racial hierarchy, that a particular racial group is superior to another racial group, or inferior. What’s the opposite of hierarchy? Equality. There’s a true opposite. And antiracist ideas suggest racial equality, that no racial group is superior or inferior.

If a racist policy is yielding racial inequity between groups, what’s the opposite of that? A policy that yields racial equity. It’s a clear opposite. And so I’ve tried to show that we should be supporting antiracist policies that lead to racial equity. We should be expressing ideas, antiracist ideas about racial equality, and ultimately we should be striving to be antiracist, which is to say we should be actively seeking to confront the structure of racism, while recognizing that if we do nothing in the face of the status quo of racial inequity, then that racial inequity and injustice will persist. And those who are seeking to conserve that status quo want the rest of us to do nothing. That’s literally the goal of racist ideas, to convince us that there’s no problem other than, let’s say, Black people. And so that’s why being antiracist is an action. It’s an active term, it’s an active practice, while being racist could be active or even passive. You just do nothing and allow racism to persist.

I guess the thing that I’m thinking about a lot is, when you talk about race in America, what triggers a lot of white people, at least the white people that I’ve spoken to specifically on this topic, is that they feel like they have worked extremely hard for the things that they have. And when you tell them that there’s another group of people who have had it harder, and some of them have come from very hard circumstances. I remember someone talking years ago about, try explaining white privilege to people who are living in Appalachia with nothing. And so I’m wondering, how do we bridge that gap?

One of the ways in which those of us who study racism, one of the findings and one of the things we’ve tried to show in recent years, and I certainly showed this in a chapter called “White” in my book, How to Be an Antiracist, Heather McGee has written about this in a book called The Sum of Us. There’s another book called Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl. And the throughline between these three books is really showing through evidence the ways which it is the case that white people benefit more, let’s say, than peoples of color from racist policies and practices. But what we’ve also shown is that they, white people, would actually benefit even more from antiracist policies and practices.

In other words, white people are less likely to be disenfranchised because of the series of voter suppression policies that have been instituted in this country in the last few years, frankly since the undermining of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. It’s less likely for them to struggle to vote. But that doesn’t mean that there are not white people that are still struggling to vote, particularly white people who are students, particularly white people who are poor, particularly white people who are senior citizens. And so a truly equitable and antiracist electoral policy that would make it easy for all of us to vote would actually make it easier for more white people to vote, just as it would make it easier for people of color to vote.So the current system benefits white people more than it does people of color, but an actual truly equitable policy would benefit us all. So I think one of the things we’re trying, let’s say, to show white people is that Donald Trump is not an aberration. Which is to say, a person who is trying to say to white people, “I am your defender” when his actual policies are harming the majority of white people and people of color, is not an aberration. That’s racism in and of itself.

Yeah. So I want to move on to your work and where it’s been and where it’s going. And you founded the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, and you just closed up shop there. So there have been reports that there were some mismanagement, and the university said that the investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing. Can you walk us through what happened? Because it was a really big deal when you opened up the center.

Well, what happened is we created a center for antiracist research, and it was founded in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, in the middle of the so-called racial reckoning. And so of course we had really ambitious ideas for our center, and we started receiving resources and hiring people and pursuing projects. And by 2021, especially 2022 and 2023, a lot of the support we were receiving had started to get dried up. And at the same time, the attacks on so-called critical race theory and so-called wokeism and so-called DEI was picking up tremendously. And of course we as a center became the subject of that. And frankly, if you’re a Black leader, chances are somebody have claimed that you mismanaged something, because apparently Black leaders, we can’t manage anything. And so it wasn’t surprising for me or anyone who sort of studies racism that those allegations surfaced. And just as it wasn’t surprising to us when ultimately it was investigated, and in our center there was really no wrongdoing.

Can you talk to me about what it feels like to be in the center of the storm? I’ve actually on social media at times been a subject of conversation, but nowhere near the amount of being in the eye of the storm that you’ve been in. And I imagine having a center like this in a time when basically, at least when your center was going on, it was at the start of what I consider a Blacklash, where people were tired of hearing about antiracist policies. They were tired of 1619, and they’re tired of it because they’re being pushed by provocateurs to look at this as like it’s a bad thing and it’s harming the country. So what is it like to be in the center of the storm while that’s all going on?

I think ultimately the biggest challenge of being at the center of a storm is not taking it personally. That ultimately-

Oh my God, how do you do that? I don’t know how to do that.

Yeah, it’s incredibly hard to not do. But ultimately, even by 2020, the major talking point that emerged to really undermine those of us who were engaged in antiracist work was actually an old white nationalist talking point, which essentially was that antiracist is code for anti-white. And so those of us who were striving for racial justice, who were striving for equal opportunity, who were striving for equity, we were misrepresented as striving to somehow harm white people or take away opportunities or resources for them. And that was purposeful, because there was an attempt to anger white Americans and to manipulate them into somehow seeing that all these efforts are going to harm them, as opposed to, as we talked about earlier, help them just as it was going to help peoples of color.

And so I became one of the faces of that. And again, I had to figure out a way to know that this had nothing to do with me. That even as my name was being used, my image was being used, anyone who had read my work could know that I was being misrepresented. And so at the time, I really had to trust readers. I had to trust people who consumed my work. And I had to also, again, not take it personally. But it was very difficult because there was people who hated me who never read my work, and it was pretty obvious by the things that they said. The other part of it that I think is less talked about is, there’s not only a lot of these attacks coming from people who want to conserve racism, but then there’s also people who have been challenging racism who personally want to be the person in the spotlight, and they take issue with anyone who is in the spotlight. There’s a certain level of envy there as well.

And so when you’re in the spotlight, particularly in this context, you not only get attacked, bad faith attacks by people who want to conserve racism, but even bad faith attacks by people who claim they want to challenge racism, because they didn’t enter this arena truly committed to the eradication of racism. They entered the arena because they’re interested in fame and resources. And then those who are in the spotlight, they project themselves onto those people. So that’s also incredibly difficult. And it’s particularly difficult when those persons I’m speaking about are Black.

So now you’re heading back to DC, you’re going to Howard University, and you’re launching a new institute there. So what are you hoping for with this new institute?

Well, just first and foremost, I feel like this is a full circle moment for me personally, because I really started my journey to be an intellectual at Florida A&M University, at an historically Black university. And I don’t know if I would have embarked on that journey if I had not been in that space. And so to be able to return to Howard University, to be able to work very closely with Howard faculty and students and alumni, to be able to be in a space where there’s a long history of nurturing scholars like me who study racism, is something I’m incredibly excited about. And to be there with other, again, scholars whose work I’ve studied and admired for a long time, I’m just really excited about the prospects.

Yeah. So I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, so I’m a big Rattlers fan. So going to Howard University, and your work primarily is in antiracism, I’m just wondering, how do you adapt that for a school that is celebrating their Blackness? I think the beautiful things about HBCUs is that in many ways the world of America, the world that rejects Blackness, is on the outside of those campus walls, and on the inside of that campus is nothing but love and nurturing for these young Black minds moving forward. And so antiracism is definitely something to be talked about there, but it’s different than being at BU, isn’t it?

So I think the way that I have conceived of being antiracist, and let me actually even return to How to Be an Antiracist, most of that book, which is largely a story of my journey, my journey of internalizing anti-Black racist ideas, and ultimately how I was able to begin to liberate myself from those ideas and strive to be antiracist, most of that book is actually set in Black spaces, is actually set in which I’m interacting with other Black people. And there are multiple chapters in that book on FAMU, in which I talk about how at FAMU I experienced and witnessed colorism, how at FAMU I experienced and witnessed beliefs that certain groups, Black ethnic groups, were better or worse than others. And how I went on to another Black space in African-American studies and found that there were certain views that Black men were better than Black women, or had it worse.And so I mention that because even within Black spaces, there may be a general consensus that there’s nothing inferior about Black people in general, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a recognition that there’s nothing inferior about any group of Black people, whether they’re dark-skinned Black people or Black women or Black poor people, or Haitian Americans or African-Americans. And so I’ve always, through my work on being antiracist, ensured that being antiracist was something that Black people most importantly needed to do. And so I’m excited to really show that and convey that and codify that in a Black space like Howard.

Yeah. I want to take a few minutes to really dive into your new book. So let’s talk about Malcolm Lives! How important was it to introduce Malcolm X to young readers for you? I would tell you that for me personally, reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X literally changed my life. I remember when I read it, I was in middle school. The book had been around, I don’t know if you remember, but the autobiography had a painted cover with a black background of Malcolm X on it. It was such a beautiful book, and I remember seeing it around the house, and I picked it up one day and just started reading it, and it literally shifted the trajectory of my life. So when I heard that you were writing this new book, Malcolm Lives! for young readers, I was just immediately excited.

Yeah. And frankly, what’s striking about Malcolm is, so many people like you have been completely transformed by reading his autobiography, or other people have been transformed by people who were transformed by reading Malcolm’s autobiography.

Right, right.

And so Malcolm’s story is truly transformational. And why should young people have to wait until, let’s say they’re in high school, to be able to be transformed too by Malcolm’s story, by Malcolm’s ideas? And so that’s one of the reasons why I thought it was critically important to write Malcolm Lives! and to write it for young people so that they can be transformed just like we have.

Yeah, I still remember going to see Spike Lee’s movie, Malcolm X, which I will argue with anybody is the greatest American biopic ever. And that’s all I have to say. But again, watching his life and taking in the lessons and the turns that his life made, it sounds like your book is concentrating on his life after he came back from his trip to the Middle East and Africa. Is that right?

So it narrates, certainly, his transformation after coming back from Mecca, after recognizing and realizing that nation of Islam theology that white people could not be Muslim and that they were inherently evil, that that simply was not true. Because he came across many white Muslims in Mecca and came across white people who treated him equitably and equally. And so him realizing racial equality, obviously, and narrating how he came to that, and also how he came to the importance of Pan-African, global Black solidarity through meetings that he had with leaders of African states, newly decolonized African nations, was absolutely pivotal. And I think it was also pivotal in Malcolm Lives! to show the ways in which as a young person, everything that he went through, which you can’t really understand Malcolm as an adult, you can’t really understand Malcolm as this revolutionary who’s become so clear and audacious in his challenge to global white supremacy and racism, without understanding the ways in which he was impacted by those structures as a young person constantly and consistently. And so I also wanted young people to see that and learn about that.

Yeah, you can’t understand Malcolm X unless you understand Malcolm Little and then understanding El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. It’s like the whole trajectory of it.

Definitely.

Last question for you, and this is a big one. Given that you are a historian, a public thinker, you’ve studied these movements for a very long time, where do you think we’re going?

So I think we’re headed for, I think this moment is actually quite similar to moments like the 1870s or even the 1920s in American history. And these are moments in which you had very powerful racist forces who were seeking to eliminate policies and practices and ideas that had been created to bring about more democracy and equity and equality. And so we’re literally right now in a very pitched battle for the future of justice in the United States, and frankly around the world. And so it’s hard to say where we’re going, but I can say what the battle is. And the battle is between equality and inequality, between justice and injustice, between democracy and dictatorship. And we all have to figure out what side of that battle that we’re going to be on.

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