Finding Common Ground With Kendi

I’ve criticized Ibram Kendi plenty, but I also want to find common ground. In that spirit, let’s consider a couple of passages from his recent apologia in the Atlantic:

“Nowhere have I written that the racial gap is racist: The policies and practices causing the racial gap are racist. Nowhere have I stated that any intellectual explanation of the existence of a racial gap is racist. Only intellectual explanations of a racial gap that point to the superiority or inferiority of a racial group are racist.”

The first thing that pops out:

The “racial gap” is, at least in part, caused by racist “policies and practices.”

I have questions. By how much? What’s meant by “policies” and by “practices?” Are the primary culprits *current* policies and practices, or *past* ones (some long-defunct) that continue to impact contemporary institutions and systems? Do racist policies or racist practices underlie every single racial gap? And what other “intellectual explanation(s)”—presumably in which the explicandum is neither racist policy nor practice, past or present—would Kendi allow? He doesn’t tell us.

But on its face, Kendi’s claim seems undeniable and, indeed, obvious. The fundamental insight has been with us at least since 1961—long before Kendi (or CRT, for that matter)—the year the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity was established and the term “affirmative action” coined.

Like Kendi, I don’t believe any racial groups are, in any absolute or essential way, superior or inferior to any others. So why can’t we create “policies and practices” that close all the racial gaps??

Let’s consider just one area: corporate power. To mirror the demographics of the US pop,

[1] 13.4% of CEOs should be black (currently 5%).

[2] 13.4% of corp board members should be black (currently 4%).

[3] 13.4% of corp execs should be black (currently 3.2%).

What current racist “policies and practices” are sustaining these gaps??

Three thoughts:

[1] If we mean current public policy relating to corps, it’s hard to tell what’s racist (though I’m open to learning).?

[2] We could imagine creating brand new policies to address the gap, and there are such examples: Last year, CA passed AB 979, which requires corps to have a minimum number of directors from an “underrepresented community.” But AB 979 is already the subject of a lawsuit claiming it forces directors (who appoint new ones) to discriminate on the basis of “protected classes.” (SB 826, a CA law mandating a minimum number of women on corp boards, is currently the subject of a similar suit.) I don’t know what to think about these laws, whether they’re an appropriate (and constitutional) way to address the gap or not. The courts will make a decision. What do you think?

[3] What about racist practices? It seems evident that corp hiring practices are a culprit. Fortunately (and let’s give Kendi his due), public calls for equity have motivated corps to redesign job interview and candidate selection processes in order to eliminate racial (and other) bias. A good thing! Keep going!

Next, let’s consider another area with a big racial gap, one Kendi brings up in his essay, homeownership:

“In How to Be an Antiracist, I define racial equity as a state ‘when two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing.’ I proposed that an example of racial equity would be ‘if there were relatively equitable percentages’ of racial groups ‘living in owner-occupied homes in the forties, seventies, or, better, nineties.’ By contrast, in 2014, 71 percent of white families lived in owner-occupied homes, compared with 45 percent of Latino families and 41 percent of Black families. That’s racial inequity.”

Kendi is right: 71% vs. 41% is clearly cause for concern. And here, Kendi introduces the term “equity,” which WHO defines as “the absence of avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically or geographically.” That gap should offend us. Let’s apply the same test to it: Why can’t we create “policies and practices” that close the racial gap in homeownership? Adding the equity test, we might first ask if this gap, offensive as it is, is indeed “remediable?” Reasonable people might disagree, but it seems remediable to me.?

So, what racist “policies and practices” are sustaining this gap??

Three thoughts:

[1] Most of us know (or should know) about the history of housing discrimination, including GI Bill exclusion and redlining. But if we mean current public policy, it’s hard to tell what’s racist (though I’m open to learning).?

[2] As with the corp gap, we could imagine creating brand new policies to address the home-ownership gap, and there are such examples, including a bevy of affordable housing programs run by the fed and state govs. Most of us are familiar with at least some of them (e.g., Fannie Mae), but clearly, we need more. An array of local codes, some motivated by NIMBYism, are obstacles. It’s both a good and bad thing about our system that layers of governance and decision-making—including rights-bearing property owners and citizens who bring suit—can thwart attempts by any central authority to impose sweeping policy changes (whether those changes would be desirable or not). The Biden housing plan, which deftly navigates these layers and concerns about discrimination, looks *great* to me. What do you think?: https://joebiden.com/housing/?

[3] Finally, what about racist practices? It seems likely the real estate appraisal system and real estate industry are both culpable. Increasing the transparency of the appraisal process (this also belongs under “new policy”) and providing anti-bias training for realtors seem like no-brainers. Filing complaints with the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity may motivate reform of both policies and practices.??

Okay, I’ve done my best to make a start on finding common ground with Kendi. We don’t have to buy his more outrageous and silly proposals in order to share many of his convictions. For those who sincerely wonder why any of us (who aren’t abject white supremacists) might be wary of Kendi in the first place, let me remind you of his provocative plan for an antiracist constitutional amendment:

“It would establish and permanently fund Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA 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.”

This is shockingly illiberal, and Kendi should be grilled about it by every journalist, on the left as well as the right. But to sum up:

I’m not convinced Kendi’s telling us anything we didn’t know, and there’s still much I find objectionable about his ideas and remedies, but I can find common ground with him. He’s unquestionably a powerful voice of encouragement to many who are motivated to address the racial gap. Where else do *you* think we can find common ground with him?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/opponents-critical-race-theory-are-arguing-themselves/619391/?fbclid=IwAR2I9mf1UCaZZMq0vU_NYXELDmqXmTI_lGBjAqgMO_huJxh5KNlw5XEgN_o?