By Wade Lee Hudson

In a lengthy New York Times Magazine profile of Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How To Be An Antiracist and many other books about racism, Rachel Poser says Kendi “faces a reckoning of his own.” Numerous critics have criticized his theories and his administration of a well-funded center at Boston University.

Poser concludes, “In tying together racism’s two senses — the personal and the systemic — Kendi has helped many more Americans understand that they are responsible not only for the ideas in their heads but also for the impact they have on the world.”

However, she reports,

Kendi doesn’t like the term “systemic racism” because (he says) it turns racism into a “hidden and unknowable” force for which there’s no one to blame, so he prefers to talk about “racist policies.” He writes instead about “the ideas and psychological defenses that cause people to deny their complicity in (racism).” He affirms “individual transformation for societal transformation.”

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