Ibram Kendi’s Thesis Could Use a Lot More Rigor

“For Kendi, it is policy first and racism second. Debatable? That is a racist question. Maybe a presentist interpretation of history? Also racist.”

Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part essay series by Jonathan Church examining where the work of Boston University professor and author of How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi, could benefit, in Church’s view, from more logical rigor—or where it goes awry entirely.

In recent years, Ibram X. Kendi has emerged as one of the most prominent and provocative voices on race relations in the United States. A lucid writer, he is the author of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning and has become renowned for his thesis that it is not racist ideas that lead to racist policies but, rather, racist policies that lead to racist ideas. As he writes: “Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America. And this fact becomes apparent when we examine the causes behind, not the consumption of racist ideas, but the production of racist ideas.”

In Stamped from the Beginning, he draws from a sizable corpus of historical research to make his case for why racism is all about policy, focusing on discriminatory policies that give rise to racial inequality. Discriminatory policies not only produce racial inequalities that would not otherwise occur because racial groups are inherently equal; they also engender racist ideas to justify such policies. “Committed to this antiracist idea of group equality,” Kendi writes, “I was able to self-critique, discover, and shed the racist ideas I had consumed over my lifetime while I uncovered and exposed the racist ideas that others have produced over the lifetime of America.” In shedding racist ideas, he aims to change the policies that have given us racial inequality.

In arguing that racist ideas are employed to justify racist policies, Kendi does not appear to believe that racist ideas can cause racist policies. “Racism,” he writes in How to Be an Antiracist, “is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas,” while “[a]ntiracism is a powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracist ideas.” Kendi’s core thesis is that policy always comes first.