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Bookers and Peggys; or Understanding Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo
Two figures recur every few years in the very profitable field of antiracism, the Booker and the Peggy. A Booker is a black person who is paid by white people to tell them what black people think. A Peggy is a white person who is paid by white people to tell them what Bookers say.
The Booker’s name was inspired by Adolph Reed’s 1995 essay, “What Are the Drums Saying, Booker?” Its title comes from a jungle movie cliche: When white heroes hear drums conveying a message they can’t understand, they ask a trusted black servant, “What are the drums saying?” Reed asks the question of Booker T. Washington because
Washington became the singular, trusted informant to communicate to whites what the Negro thought, felt, wanted, needed. Washington’s stature derived from skill at soothing white liberals’ retreat from the Reconstruction era’s relatively progressive racial politics. He became the first purely freelance race spokesman; his status depended on designation by white elites rather than by any black electorate or social movement. To that extent he originated a new model of the generic Black Leader — the Racial Voice accountable to no clearly identifiable constituency among the spoken-for.
Reed’s essay covers the most prominent black public intellectuals of the 1990s, Cornel West…
