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The Most Foolish Idea Taught by Identitarians like Ibram X. Kendi
In How Racism Relies on Arbitrary Hierarchies, Ibram X. Kendi does what the smartest identitarians do: he mixes interesting facts with mistaken beliefs. The most mistaken is this:
“It is one of the ironies of antiracism that we must identify racially in order to identify the racial privileges and dangers of being in our bodies.” —Ibram X. Kendi
That comes from his belief that being “White” and being racist are intimately linked:
“Some White people do not identify as White for the same reason they identify as not-racist: to avoid reckoning with the ways that Whiteness — even as a construction and mirage — has informed their notions of America and identity...” —Ibram X. Kendi
For Kendi, race is so important that it must be capitalized. He thinks “White” people need to identify as “White” to reckon with their racist “notions of America and identity”. But human notions of identity are far more complex than race reductionists can see. The large minority of us who have taken an Implicit Association Test for race and discovered a preference for a different race than our own can testify to that.
You cannot end racism by racializing yourself. Antiracism training appears to make people more racist because it teaches them to think about what divides us instead of what unites us, our membership in the only race, the human race.
This is the simple truth that universalists understand and identitarians cannot: The purpose of race is racism. To end racism, we must end race.
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