The Response of A Chinese American Educator to Ibram X. Kendi’s "How to Be An Antiracist"

Ideologies matter. I should know, I am a survivor of Communism: an ideology that has murdered more than 100 million and enslaved more than 1 billion people around the world.

Ideologies are mostly formulated, refined, remixed, and taught by professors in colleges and universities. In general, these professors are scholarly, kind, and respected by their students and colleagues. However, how their ideologies eventually flow to the society and influence policies and policymakers is beyond their control.

When Karl Marx was formulating his ideology, he could not foresee the horrible consequences of its application. He saw the horrific social inequality in Europe at the time and proposed a vision of a new world where everyone was equal. His means was through a socialist revolution in capitalist countries.

But Lenin and Mao both took his ideas one step further. The former believed that it could happen in a feudalist country like Russia and the latter in an agrarian country like China. Both believed in revolution through military power. Once they took control of their respective countries, they instituted a dictatorship government instead. Mao, in fact, murdered far more Marxists than his archrival, Chiang Kai-shek.

So to understand the consequences of an ideology, we need to look at both its end and means. Is the end realistic and achievable? Does the means serve the end? 

When I was reading Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be An Antiracist, I couldn't help but think about Communism. His ideology is a variant of Marxism, substituting class with race. The struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat is replaced with the struggle between racist and antiracist. Let us call his ideology Kendiism. It is useful to put a name to it; because there are many people in universities, mainstream media, the entertainment industry, and our public education system who have openly embraced his ideology. 

Let us examine its end first. Kendiism wants to achieve a world of racial equity. Kendi didn’t define racial equity explicitly, but by the examples he gave for racial inequity, we can deduce that it is a society where everything is in proportional representation to the racial make-up in the total population. For example, the latest update from the Federal Bureau of Prisons shows these percentages of inmates by race: whites 57.8%, blacks 38.4%, and Asians 1.5%. Compare this to the percentages in the general population as of 2019: whites 60.1%, blacks 12.2%, and Asians 5.6%. In Kendiism, this is the definite evidence of systematic and structural racism because the black prisoner percentage is more than three times that of the general population.

Of course, equity applies to every aspect of life in Kendiism’s ideal world. There should likewise be a proportional number of black CEOs, black teachers, black politicians, black college students, etc. But how can you make this happen? 

Kendiism’s means is through racial discrimination. Kendi wrote:“ The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” 

What does that mean? Take the aforementioned prison population, for example. The Asian prisoner percentage is only 1.5%. But Asians in the general population count for 5.6%. Should the court give a harsher sentence to Asians? To Kendiism, justice is not blind. 

Does this sound far-fetched? But similar things have already happened. 

In 2014, the organization Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard claiming that the college discriminates against Asian-American applicants in its undergraduate admissions process. 

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

“Peter Arcidiacono, a Duke economist testifying on behalf of the plaintiffs, concluded that Asian-American applicants as a group performed stronger on objective measures of academic achievement and extracurricular activities. Despite this, they received a statistically significant penalty relative to white applicants in the personal score and overall score assigned by Harvard officials. As a result, Asian-American applicants have the lowest chance of admission of all racial groups in the United States despite scoring highest in all objective measurements.” 

In 2018, among the admitted students to Harvard, the average SAT score of Asian Americans was 766.6 while for African Americans it was 703.7. Harvard has a racist policy against Asian Americans in the name of racial diversity and equity. 

In May 2021, the University of California announced that it would no longer take SAT/ACT scores into consideration for admission. This policy allows the university to play number games to achieve “racial equity” at the expense of hardworking students. 

Kendi’s parents’ generation believes that African Americans have to work harder to catch up. They recognize that past injustices damaged black family and community structures. The absence of fathers in black families makes social upward mobility much harder. They have worked hard to build up families and communities in the hope of achieving Dr. King’s dream, where his ”... four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

But to Kendiism, color-blindness is racist. Dr. King was a racist because he wanted a color-blind America. Kendiism asserts that there are no problems in African American communities as if the past racial injustices had not done any damage. It claims that the perceived inequality is solely the result of policies. Therefore, to achieve an equitable society, the only means is through policies and policymakers. 

This leads us back to Communism. Both of my parents were communists. They believed in the future of a just and equal society. But just like other communist countries, the means to achieve that dream created a hell on earth.

History teaches us that if you give a government the power to do good, it will inevitably misuse it to do harm. Lord Acton wrote his famous line in a letter: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Two frequently used words in How to Be An Antiracist are “race” and “power”. Kendiism wants power to bring racial equity. That kind of power would affect every aspect of people’s lives. The kind of government it would inevitably produce is totalitarian. 

As a matter of fact, Kendi himself made it very clear:“ Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist. They were birthed together from the same unnatural causes, and they shall one day die together from unnatural causes.”

He proposed to establish a Department of Anti-racism staffed by antiracist experts like himself which “would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.” 

Have we ever had such an agency with this kind of power in America? Never! But there were such agencies in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. There are still such agencies in Communist China and North Korea. 

Kendiism promises a future of racial equity, but its means would create a totalitarian government. It is not what it wants. But if history is a guide, we can see its inevitable end. Kendiism is neo-Marxism.

If you think Kendiism is radical, consider this: How to Be An Antiracist is a recommended read for teens and adults in many, possibly all, of America’s school districts. I urge you to read it and see what kind of harm and danger to our republic Kendiism will inflict through our public education system funded by our tax dollars.