Ibram X. Kendi | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Kendi in 2021 | |
| Born | Ibram Henry Rogers (1982-08-13)August 13, 1982 (age 43) New York City, U.S. |
| Spouse | |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Florida A&M University (BS) Temple University (MA,PhD) |
| Thesis | The Black Campus Movement: An Afrocentric Narrative History of the Struggle to Diversify Higher Education, 1965-1972 (2010) |
| Doctoral advisor | Ama Mazama |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | African-American studies |
| Sub-discipline | African-American history |
| Institutions | |
| Website | Official website |
Ibram Xolani Kendi (bornIbram Henry Rogers; August 13, 1982) is an American author, professor,anti-racist activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in the U.S.[1][2][3] He is author of books includingStamped from the Beginning,How to Be an Antiracist andAntiracist Baby. In 2019, theNew York Times referred to him as "one of the country’s most in-demand commentators on racism."[2] Kendi was also included inTime's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.[4]
In July 2020, he founded the Center for Antiracist Research atBoston University where he has served[update] as director,[5] having raised an initial funding of $55 million.[6] An internal investigation was launched into potential financial mismanagement of the center.[7] Kendi was cleared of financial mismanagement, but underwent an audit regarding his leadership and the center's culture.[8] In January 2025,Howard University announced that Kendi would join its faculty and lead its newly founded Institute for Advanced Study, created to investigate theAfrican diaspora.[9]
Kendi was born in theJamaica neighborhood of theNew York City borough ofQueens,[1][3][10] as Ibram Henry Rogers, to middle-class parents, Carol Rogers, a former business analyst for a health-care organization,[3] and Larry Rogers, a tax accountant and then hospital chaplain. Larry and Carol were both deeply religious and profoundly influenced byblack liberation theology. They met as student activists.[11][12] Both of Kendi's parents are now retired and work asMethodist ministers.[3][13] He has an older brother, Akil.[3]
From third to eighth grade, Kendi attended private Christian schools in Queens.[14] In 1997, then age 15, Kendi moved with his family toManassas, Virginia, after having attendedJohn Bowne High School as a freshman. He attendedStonewall Jackson High School, named for Confederate generalThomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, for his final three years of high school. He graduated in 2000.[15][13][14] In 2020, a petition circulated calling for the renaming of the high school. Warren Christian, a direct descendant of Jackson, called for the school to be rechristened in honor of Kendi. The school was instead ultimately renamed for Arthur Reed, a longtime employee.[12]
In 2005, Kendi received dualB.S. degrees inAfrican American studies and magazine production fromFlorida A&M University.[16] One of his professors, who taught a course on African history, described him as a student who sat at the front of class, participated in lively debate with other students, and was "engaged and attentive."[11] Originally intending to become a sports journalist or news broadcaster, he interned for bothThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution andThe Mobile Register as an undergrad. After these internships, he became more interested in pursuing a career that involved African American studies.[1] He also interned with theTallahassee Democrat and wrote a weekly column for Florida A&M's student newspaper,The Famuan. HisFamuan column was discontinued at the request of theDemocrat after he wrote an article claiming European peoplehad invented HIV/AIDS to fight off the "extinction" of their race.[17][18] According to theWashington Post, Kendi realized in college that "judging white people as a group is as racist as judging black people as a group."[3]
Kendi continued his studies atTemple University where he was advised by Ama Mazama, earning anM.A. in 2007 and aPh.D. in 2010, both in African American studies.[16] Kendi's dissertation was titled "The Black Campus Movement: An Afrocentric Narrative History of the Struggle to Diversify Higher Education, 1965-1972."[19]
From 2009 to 2012, Kendi was an assistant professor of history in the department of Africana and Latino Studies within the department of history atState University of New York at Oneonta.[16] From 2012 to 2015, Kendi was an assistant professor of Africana Studies in the department of Africana Studies as well as the department of history atUniversity at Albany, SUNY.[16] During this time, from 2013 to 2014, Kendi was a visiting scholar in the department of Africana Studies atBrown University, where he taught courses as a visiting assistant professor in the fall of 2014.[16]
From 2015 to 2017, Kendi was an assistant professor in the history department and African American Studies program at theUniversity of Florida.[16][20][21]
In 2017, Kendi became a professor of history and international relations at theCollege of Arts and Sciences (CAS) andSchool of International Service (SIS) atAmerican University in Washington, D.C.[22] In September 2017, Kendi founded the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, serving as its executive director. The same night that Kendi publicly introduced the center, someone vandalized American University by posting fliers depicting theConfederate flag with cotton balls stuck to them around campus.[3]
In June 2020, it was announced that Kendi would joinBoston University as a professor of history.[23] Upon accepting the position, Kendi agreed to step down from the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University and relocate to Boston University, and become the founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.[24][25] When he was hired at Boston University, Kendi was awarded its Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities, whose only prior recipient was author, activist, and Holocaust survivorElie Wiesel.[26]
During the 2020–2021 academic year, Kendi served as the Frances B. Cashin Fellow at theRadcliffe Institute for Advanced Study atHarvard University.[27]
In 2020, Kendi founded Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research under a five-year charter.[28] In August 2020, Twitter co-founderJack Dorsey donated $10 million to the center, and the center continued to receive $43 million in grants and gifts over the next three years.[29]
The center's Racial Data Lab produced the COVID Racial Data Tracker from April 2020 to March 2021, highlighting that Black Americans died at 1.4 times the rate of White Americans during the early months of theCOVID-19 pandemic.[29] In 2021, inspired by 19th-century abolitionist newspaperThe Emancipator, the center launched a news website calledThe Emancipator in partnership withBina Venkataraman ofThe Boston Globe.[30] In June 2022, the center published essays from 35 Anti-Bigotry Fellows, which provided legal and statistical analysis on various forms of discrimination.[29]
In January 2025, the Center for Antiracist Research's charter with the university was not renewed, as Kendi was hired byHoward University to serve as director of its new Institute for Advanced Study, which will focus on interdisciplinary research of theAfrican diaspora.[31][32]
In September 2023, Kendi announced mass layoffs of the center's staff, prompting Boston University to open an inquiry "focused on the center's culture and its grant management practices," later expanded "to include the Center's management culture."[29][33]
On September 24, 2023,Stephanie Saul ofThe New York Times wrote:
The center's struggles come amid deeper concerns about its management and focus, and questions about whether Dr. Kendi—whose fame has brought him new projects from anESPN series to children's books about racist ideas in America—was providing the leadership the newly created institute needed. Until the university established the center, the 41-year-old Dr. Kendi had never run an organization anywhere near its size … several former staff and faculty members, expressing anger and bitterness, said the cause of the center's problems were unrealistic expectations fueled by the rapid infusion of money, initial excitement, and pressure to produce too much, too fast, even as there were hiring delays due to thepandemic. Others blamed Dr. Kendi, himself, for what they described as an imperious leadership style. And they questioned both the center's stewardship of grants and its productivity. "Commensurate to the amount of cash and donations taken in, the outputs were minuscule," said Saida U. Grundy, aBoston University sociology professor and feminist scholar who was once affiliated with the center.[34]
During the investigation, Boston University professors attested to the center's issues, with one alleging that the center "was being mismanaged"[35] and another commenting, "I don't know where the money is."[36] Steph Solis ofAxios noted that the scandal "cast a shadow" over the center,[36] while Tyler Austin Harper, writing forThe Washington Post, characterized Kendi's work at the center as "grift".[37]
In November 2023, Boston University announced that its audit had "found no issues with how CAR's finances were handled, showing that its expenditures were appropriately charged to their respective grant and gift accounts." In the same announcement, the university stated that it had hired the management consulting firmKorn Ferry to conduct an audit on the center's workplace culture and Kendi's leadership.[38] Culminating in January 2024, that audit led Boston University to modify the center's organizational structure.[31]
Kendi has published essays in both books and academic journals, includingThe Journal of African American History,Journal of Social History,Journal of Black Studies,Journal of African American Studies, andThe Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. Kendi is also a contributing writer atThe Atlantic.[39]
He is the author or co-author of fifteen books, including eight children's books. Some of these are different versions of the same book adapted for younger age groups. Additionally, he contributed to the bookFour Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019, which he also compiled and edited alongsideKeisha N. Blain.[40]
Kendi's books include:
Kendi has said that his book,Stamped from the Beginning, was initially rejected by more than fifty literary agents.[11] Nevertheless, the book was eventually published in 2016 by Nation Books, and it earned Kendi theNational Book Award for Nonfiction that year.[55][56] He was the youngest author to ever win the prize.[57] Titled after an 1860 speech given byJefferson Davis at the U.S. Senate,[13][58] the book builds around the stories ofCotton Mather,Thomas Jefferson,William Lloyd Garrison,W.E.B. Du Bois, andAngela Davis.[3]
ANew York Times #1 Best Seller in 2020,How to Be an Antiracist is Kendi's most popular work thus far.[59] ProfessorJeffrey C. Stewart called it the "most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind".[60]Afua Hirsch praised the book's introspection and wrote that it was relatable in the context of ongoing political events.[61] In contrast,Andrew Sullivan wrote that the book's arguments were simplistic and criticized Kendi's idea of transferring government oversight to an unelected Department of Antiracism.[62]Kelefa Sanneh noted Kendi's "sacred fervor" in battling racism, but wondered if his definition of racism was so capacious and outcome-dependent as to risk losing its power.[17]John McWhorter criticized the book as being simplistic and challenged Kendi's claim that all racial disparities are necessarily due to racism.[63]
One of Kendi's key ideas is that "racist" is not a term correctly applied to individuals, but rather that it should be used to characterize policies and actions.[12] Further, there is no such thing as "not racist"—only "racist" and "antiracist."[2] He also says that white people suffer due to racism, not only because it leads them to compromise their own morals, but also because it limits pathways to achieving their own freedom in American society.[12] In a 2020GQ profile, Kendi said, "The elevator pitch to everyday people is that instead of thinking about what you could lose if we were to transform this country—because if you are struggling, you certainly are worried about losing—they should be thinking about what they could gain, especially folks who are low- to moderate-income."[3]
In his work, Kendi has maintained that "racist policies" against black people such as chattel slavery andredlining do not stem from "racist ideas," but rather the reverse. He contends that, throughout history, people in power institute "racist policies" to protect their own economic self-interests, and then propagate conceptions of racial superiority and inferiority to justify those policies.[3] His framework breaks down racist ideas into two types: segregationist and assimilationist. On the other hand, he also argues that "antiracist ideas" have also been developed to combat racist ideas.[12]
Kendi argues that policy outcomes are central in measuring and effecting racial equity. He has said, "All along we've been trying to change people, when we really need to change policies."[67] When speaking in November 2020 to theAlliance for Early Success, Kendi was asked if that even means abiding racist behavior and attitudes if it leads to winning an antiracist policy. Kendi answered with a definitive yes. "I want things to change for millions of people – millions of children – as opposed to trying to change one individual person."[67]
On May 27, 2020, Kendi appeared before theUnited States House Committee on Ways and Means about the disproportionate impact ofCOVID-19 on African Americans, saying, "This is the racial pandemic within the viral pandemic".[24][68][69]
Kendi has criticized police killings.[24] In 2020, speaking toThe New York Times afterHow to Be an Antiracist saw renewed interest during theGeorge Floyd protests, Kendi called the mood in the United States during the protests "a signature, significant distinct moment of people striving to be antiracist".[70]
Before the protests, Kendi published a proposal for aconstitutional amendment in the U.S. to establish and fund the Department of Anti-Racism (DOA). This department would be responsible for "preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won't yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate and be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas".[71]
In September 2020, Kendi provoked controversy when he tweeted aboutAmy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump's thirdSupreme Court nominee, and two of her seven children, who had been adopted from an orphanage inHaiti. Kendi's tweet was in response to another tweet byJenny Beth Martin, the co-founder of the conservative groupTea Party Patriots. Martin wrote, “With 2 adopted children from Haiti, it is going to be interesting to watch Democrats try to smear Amy Coney Barrett as racist.”[72]
In reply, Kendi tweeted:[73]
Some White colonizers 'adopted' Black children. They 'civilized' these 'savage' children in the 'superior' ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity. And whether this is Barrett or not is not the point. It is a belief too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can't be racist.
His remarks were interpreted as criticizinginterracial adoption. A substantial backlash against Kendi ensued. He later said his comments were taken out of context and that he had never said that white parents of black children are inherently racist.[74][75][76][77]
In a discussion with journalistDon Lemon, Kendi said that he was taught to fear the differences of gay and transgender people until he was "shown another way."[78] However, Kendi faced criticism in 2021 when he recounted an incident where his daughter expressed a desire to be a boy, which he described as "horrifying" for him and his wife.[79]
In 2013, Kendi married Sadiqa Edmonds, a pediatric emergency medicine physician,[3] inJamaica. Both sets of parents participated in a symbolic sand ceremony.[80] The wedding ceremony ended with a naming ceremony of their new last name, "Kendi", which means "the loved one" in the language of theMeru people ofKenya.[80] Kendi changed his middle name to Xolani, aXhosa andZulu word for "peace".[14][10] Kendi has said that he decided to drop Henry, the middle name he was given at birth, after learning about the key role that Portuguese explorerPrince Henry the Navigator played in beginning theAtlantic slave trade.[12]
In January 2018, while he was writingHow to be an Antiracist,[3] acolonoscopy indicated that Kendi had cancer. A further test revealed that he had stage 4colon cancer that had spread into his liver.[26] After six months of chemotherapy and surgery that summer, Kendi was declared cancer free.[81]
Kendi has been avegan since at least 2015.[82]
Wikidata ()If the word "racist" is capacious enough to describe both proud slaveholders and Barack Obama, and if it nevertheless must constantly be recalibrated in light of new policy research, then it may start to lose the emotional resonance that gives it power in the first place.
But though I don't condone Kendi's race grift, I do understand how easy it would be to become a grifter.
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