Ibram X. Kendi: Inside you are two wolves. One of them is racist.

Decoding the Gurus

Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne

Science, Leisure, Social Sciences, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2021

⏱️ 163 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ibram X. Kendi is a Professor of history, director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, and a research fellow at Harvard University. He is also the author of several best-selling and highly influential books on race in America.

It seems like everybody has an opinion of Kendi, and when it comes to the online commentariat, those opinions can get pretty hostile.

Even among activists and anti-racists, he seems to spark division, with some grouping Kendi together with other controversial writers like Robin Di Angelo. Kendi is often accused of peddling a pop 'anti-racism' which is at best devoid of substance and at worst toying with totalitalitarianism. With his infamous proposal for a 'Department of Antiracism' that would have power over all aspects of governance, and recent illustrated children's book titled 'Anti-racist Baby', these criticisms are perhaps understandable.

But what about the man himself, who in his lectures and interviews, comes across as something of a calm and reasonable voice amongst the culture war maelstrom?

In this episode, Matt and Chris, until now famed for being not racist (honestly), courageously hurl themselves onto the pyre of American racial politics. Will they reveal their total lack of understanding of critical race theory and are they racist or anti-racist according to Kendi? Listen and find out.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're going to. Hello and welcome to the coding the gurus
0:18.0	podcast with two academics listen to content from the greatest minds
0:22.2	the online world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about.
0:27.0	I'm Matt Brown and with me is Chris Kavanagh. How are you doing today Chris?
0:31.0	I'm all right. I noticed you didn't use your title this time. What's going on?
0:36.5	I like to mix it up a little bit, you know, keep people in suspense. You're feeling more communist today that you know what what is this hierarchy of status
0:46.1	professors doctors it's all meaningless anyway equity my it's true it's true. I don't like to think of myself as a professor. I think of myself. Me,
0:58.0	Nila, I don't think of you as a professor. I just abide. I walk the earth and interact with other beings yeah it's good I want to
1:08.1	welcome you to our last episode of the coding the gurus before our cancellation. So yeah it's been a good run
1:18.1	it's been a good run but yeah this is this is it for us.
1:24.0	Yeah, this, this is the racism episode.
1:28.0	We're going to. That's right, yeah.
1:30.0	It's been all building up to this.
1:31.0	All of the rest was just a deep cover to get to our various issues with black academics and we've got a list of them.
1:40.0	We've got a lot to get off our chest.
1:42.8	So we've already, I think, got listeners out there
1:45.8	who are eager to take us out.
1:48.4	That's right.
1:48.9	We show our true colors here.
1:51.1	There's one in particular purported philosopher of color, Liam Bright.
1:58.0	They're infamous.
1:59.0	Yeah, it's very infamous and he's made threats to us online.
	...

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