Every era has its grifters, gurus, quacks and frauds.
This is an American tradition, from the snake oil salesmen to the pyramid schemers to the New Age prophets of the 20th century.
One might be tempted to dismiss them as ethically compromised, duping the gullible for personal benefit, but they’re something more than that: symbols of each generation’s hopes and anxieties.?
The past decade’s examples, who sold us on critical race theory, transgender medicine and other insanities, are no different.
Some Americans wanted to absolve themselves of guilt about race and sexuality and liberate themselves from the shackles of history and biology.
Prudent observers could have warned them about the impossibility of this enterprise, but the gurus, for a time, had seemingly unstoppable momentum.?
The most significant was Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi.
After the 2020 death of George Floyd, Kendi became America’s race guru, selling books, delivering speeches, lecturing corporations, advising politicians and everywhere preaching the new gospel of “antiracism.”
His key idea was that institutions must practice “antiracist discrimination” in favor of blacks and other minorities to make up for past “racist discrimination.”
His ideology was rudimentary critical race theory, his agenda rudimentary DEI.
Quack cashed in
The press heralded Kendi as a genius, a scholar and the moral voice of the Black Lives Matter era.?
In 2021, the New York Times was particularly fawning, publishing uncritical fare like “Ibram X. Kendi Likes to Read at Bedtime.”?
“You’re at the forefront of a recent wave of authors combating racism through active, sustained antiracism,” the Times opined.
“Do you count any books as comfort reads, or guilty pleasures?”
Kendi cashed in.
The professor signed a lucrative Netflix contract and switched to designer clothes.
He secured $55 million for his Center on Antiracist Research at Boston University, which promised to engage in scholarship and activism.
It all ended in calamity.
As the country emerged from BLM-induced mania, journalists began to cast a more critical eye on Kendi and his work.
The conservative press circulated embarrassing clips, including one in which Kendi could not define the word “racism” without deploying circular logic.
By 2024, the New York Times, no longer interested in his nighttime reading routine, exposed the professor’s shallow ideology and raised questions about his leadership at the research center.?
The reality was uncomfortable for Kendi’s cheerleaders.
The smarter critics, pushed aside during the BLM era, always knew that he was a lightweight.
The Center for Antiracist Research produced almost no research, despite millions in funding and dozens of full-time staff.
When Kendi was confronted with the evidence, he lashed out in signature fashion, blaming “racist ideas” for the negative coverage.
A market for black radicalism has long existed in America.
Kendi was never a creative exponent of that line of thought, whatever its merits.
Considered against more substantial figures like W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, James Baldwin or even Angela Davis, Kendi seems shallow.
His bedtime stories and picture books — “Antiracist Baby” and “Goodnight Racism” — would embarrass even a middling intellectual.
His “adult” books are only slightly less vapid.
The problem is not really Kendi, though, but the broader, predominantly white progressive left, which, in the wake of Floyd’s death, was desperate to find someone who would lecture them about “systemic racism” and instruct them how to “do the work” of healing themselves.?
They frantically searched through the catalog of black academics and, through some unknown combination of bad luck and human error, selected Kendi, the soft-spoken professor, as their racism whisperer.
In that sense, white “antiracists” set Kendi up for failure.
He was not capable of leading the nation through a “racial reckoning,” or of managing $50 million in charitable donations.
When this reality became undeniable and Kendi became a liability, the progressive machine cut him loose.
Failed to deliver
Last week, Boston University announced that Kendi would be decamping to Howard University and that his Center for Antiracist Research would close — the proverbial house of cards collapsing.
Kendi will no doubt find a receptive audience at Howard, but he will no longer enjoy the unqualified adoration of America’s prestige institutions, or be asked to lead “privilege walks” at Fortune 100 corporate retreats.
He will, in time, be seen as another American guru who failed to deliver — a symbol of the furious, destructive passions of the BLM era.
Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of “America’s Cultural Revolution.”