When I say the name Ibram X. Kendi, what goes through your mind? Maybe you think of his books,

like the National Book Award winning stamped from the beginning. Or maybe you think about the

brutal reaction his work has gotten from conservatives,

which even now is kind of shocking to hear. Like here's Tucker Carlson back in 2021.

He starts out this segment by describing one of Kendi's books as a subliterate pamphlet

on how the United States is a disgusting, immoral country

that must be changed immediately and forever.

That tract is entitled How to Be an Anti-Racist.

It is written by a former University of Florida professor called Henry Rogers,

who now that he is rich and famous, goes by his revolutionary name,

Ibrahim X. Kendi. The condescension just drips from Carlson here. The book is garbage. Actually,

it's worse than that. Not only is it embarrassingly stupid, it is poisonous.

After 2021, things only got more complicated for Kendi.

He had been hired by Boston University to start up a center for anti-racist research.

That center eventually closed, and he got investigated by the university after allegations were made of financial mismanagement.

That investigation totally cleared him. Most of the

funds were in an endowment he could not access. But Kendi's innocence was not the point.

Dozens of anti-CRT and anti-DEI conservatives had a field day. To them, the center's failure proved a point.

Anti-racism is a con, and Kendi was a fraud.

For me, I think of Kendi as an avatar for the battered and bruised fight for racial equality in this country.

He's a historian who at one point offered very earnest advice about how we all might rethink our relationship with America's racialized caste system.

This was advice a whole lot of people were not ready to hear. So when I heard he had a new book, I had questions.

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