Book Review

How To Be An Antiracist 

by Ibram X. Kendi

pub. 2019

Condensed

A more accurate title for this book would be “How to Blame the White Man for Everything.” This book is not scholarly research. It is propaganda and a racist, hate filled diatribe against whites. Kendi doesn’t care about accuracy, only in fostering racial strife. In Kendi’s world, nothing is race neutral.

Problems with this book: 

1. Poorly researched with many factual errors.

2. You quickly realize Kendi is inherently racist, has a persecution complex, an obsession with race and blames racism for virtually every issue in society. 

3. Kendi supports some really evil people: Amiri Baraka, Louis Farrakhan and OJ Simpson.

4. This book, like others on this subject, spend considerable time trying to prove that the high crime rate of black America is not high.

5. ANY disparity between the races in ANYTHING is racism in Kendi’s warped mind - unless blacks are ahead. Then it’s okay. 

6. Like all good propagandists, Kendi cherry picks quotes to mislead people about what a person really meant to say.

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This book was published in 2019 - over 50 years after the Civil Rights movement began in earnest. Kendi refuses to recognize all the efforts by American society to bring blacks into the mainstream of society over the past 50 years.

Since the 1960s, TRILLIONS of dollars have been spent on urban renewal and the War on Poverty - largely benefiting blacks. Due to Affirmative Action programs, blacks have received preferential treatment in educational admission, employment opportunities, etc. All this was done for the purpose of redressing historic racial grievances.

Many companies across the country have voluntarily given large sums of money to black causes for decades. In August, 1981, Coca-Cola agreed to a $30 million give-away plan. In March, 1982, Heublein Corp agreed to pay $360 million to blacks - and the list of companies paying millions goes on.(1) There are many programs for blacks at the local level supported by local businesses.

The original Civil Rights movement was a high moral calling. Today’s civil rights movement is based on vengeance, spite and the ‘you still owe me’ attitude.

Disinformation by Kendi, Ava DuVernay, Robin Diangelo and others is undoubtedly a factor in the racial division plaguing the U.S. Nothing else needs to be done for civil rights for blacks. They have all the opportunity needed for success and they have had this opportunity for decades. 

Kendi is so consumed with victimhood he has “To Survival” printed on the flyleaf. Are blacks going to be put into the ovens like the Nazi’s did to the Jews? 

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Page 18 - “Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. Here’s an example of racial inequality: 71 percent of White families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to 45 percent of Latinx families and 41 percent of Black families." 

Comment: In 1940, 23% of blacks owned their own home, increasing to 42% in 1970. Between 1970 and 1994, black home ownership stayed at 42%, despite the Fair Housing Act becoming law in 1968. President Clinton and the Congressional Black Caucus intended to greatly increase black home ownership starting in 1993 using the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). 

While their intentions were good, the method used was catastrophic and was directly responsible for the economic crash in 2008. The CRA forced lending institutions to make bad loans to unqualified people so they could buy a home. Clinton and the Democrats threatened to drag banks into court and have them fined and branded as racists if they didn't go along with the left's Affirmative Action lending policies - all while federally insuring their losses. 

Even the New York Times warned on Sep. 30, 1999, that Democrats continuing to force banks into lowering their standards would lead to catastrophe. In Congressional hearings in Sep. 2003, democrats, particularly the Congressional black Caucus, openly ridiculed those who questioned the soundness and increasing amount of these subprime mortgages. Subprime mortgages grew from 5% of total originations ($35 billion) in 1994, to 20% ($600 billion) in 2006. 

In 2005, John McCain co-sponsored reforms that would have prevented the housing market collapse, but Democrats opposed these reforms. And then the crash of 2008 happened and the modest gains in home ownership vanished. (2)(3)(4)

In 1994, 42% of blacks, 70% of whites and 42% of Hispanics owned their own home. In 2006, two years before the economic crash, 47% of blacks, 74% of whites and 50% of Hispanics owned their own home. In 2016, after 8 years of Obama, home ownership had declined. Forty one percent of blacks, 71% of whites and 46% of Hispanics now owned their homes. (5)(6)(7)

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PAGE 19 - “As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

Comment: Johnson made this comment over 55 years ago. No longer applies. Time to move on.

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The following comments by Kendi on pages 18, 19, 20 and other places in this book reveal Kendi’s diabolical agenda - total dictatorship.

PAGE 18 - Racial equity is when two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing.” “Racial inequality is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. 

“A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups.”

“There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.”

Page 19 - “But if racial discrimination is defined as treating, considering, or making a distinction in favor or against an individual based on that person’s race, then racial discrimination is not inherently racist. The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.”

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.”

Page 20 - “Antiracist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities.” 

Comment: Kendi is proposing a de facto dictatorship - without calling it that. Kendi demands equality of outcomes, which could only be accomplished by a total dictatorship because everyone is different.  Some people are more ambitious then others; some are smarter then others; some went to college; some will never succeed due to self destructive lifestyles or just laziness. 

Attempting equality of outcomes would destroy the country, the economy and all incentives to work. The U.S. was founded on equality of opportunity - NOT equality of outcomes. The Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 promised the people equality. What they got was genocide and dictatorship. No form of government in history - dictatorship, socialist or otherwise - has ever produced a society where everyone was equal. Under Kendi, we would have equality of poverty, misery and hopelessness. Freedom & equality are diametrically opposed to each other.  

Granted, slaves had no opportunities until after the Civil War, but many schools and colleges were established in the years following the Civil War specifically for blacks. Today they are known as HBCUs - historically black colleges and universities. There WAS opportunity.

Kendi’s total hypocrisy is evident when he ignores the racial disparity in the NBA or NFL. Using Kendi’s logic, this disparity is caused by black racism. 

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Reviewing The Rest of “How To Be An Antiracist”

Page 6, 7 - Kendi claims that “to say something is wrong about a racial group is to say something is inferior about that racial group. I did not realize that to say something is inferior about a racial group is to say a racist idea.”

Comment: Facts are NOT racist. Let’s look at some crime statistics. The high crime rates of black violence are a matter of historical fact, not bigoted imagination. All crime is caused by self-destructive behaviors, bad attitudes and lack of morals.

Some crime stats:

*  “In 1921-22, the homicide rates in Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans per 100,000 Negro population were 103.2, 97.2, 116.9, and 46.7 respectively, while the corresponding rates for the white population were 15.0, 28.0, 29.6, and 8.4.”(9)

*  Homicide figures for Atlanta in 1931 show 106 Negros murdered. Seventy-six were killed by other Negros, 11 killed by policemen and 9 by whites. The other 10 were unknown.(9)

*  Blacks committed 52 per cent of all homicides between 1980 and 2008 - even though blacks are only 13 percent of the population.(10) 

*  In 2015, 51.1% of people arrested for homicide were African American, even though African American people account for only 13% of the U.S. population.(11)

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Page 14 - Kendi mentions his dad reading works by Amiri Baraka but ignores Baraka’s extreme racism. Baraka’s most famous quote is: "You can't steal nothin from a white man, he's already stole it. He owes you anything you want, even his life. All the stores will open up if you will say the magic words. The magic words are: Up against the wall motherf— this is a stick up!" (22)

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Page 20 -  “As Thomas Jefferson suspected a decade after declaring White American independence: 

‘The blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.'”

Comment:  That is not the entire quote. Kendi is intent on smearing Jefferson. He said a lot of things about blacks and slavery in his Notes on the State of Virginia, written in 1781 - 1782 and published in 1787. Jefferson said: “I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” (23)

Jefferson also praised blacks: “In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time. . .(23)

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Page 21 - “Do nothing climate policy is racist policy, since the predominantly non-White global south is being victimized by climate change more than the Whiter global north, even as the Whiter global north is contributing more to its acceleration.” “Human-made environmental catastrophes disproportionately harming bodies of color are not unusual:”

Comment: This statement borders on insanity. Are rising seas only going to flood black neighborhoods?

On page 132 Kendi says: ”White supremacists claim to be pro-White but refuse to acknowledge that climate change is having a disastrous impact on the earth White people inhabit.” So now it’s white people getting flooded by climate change. Before it was non-whites. Truth is the U.S. has spent billions to reduce CO2. 

The U.N. Says America Is Already Cutting So Much Carbon It Doesn’t Need The Paris Climate Accord.(30) 

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Page 22 - Kendi then rants about ‘voter suppression’ and repeats his claim on page 33. Kendi claims "Wisconsin’s strict voter-ID law suppressed approximately two hundred thousand votes - again primarily targeting voters of color - in the 2016 election.” 

Comment: This claim by ‘The Nation” of 200,000 voters being prevented from voting is based on bogus assumptions and is fraudulent claim. This ‘study’ claims that voter ID laws had “a disproportionate impact on African-American and Democratic-leaning voters.” So what this article is saying is that democrat voters are too stupid to figure out how to get proper ID so they can vote.  (33)

Wisconsin’s voter-ID law allows people to use the following as acceptable forms of ID: 

** A Wisconsin driver’s license.

** A Wisconsin state ID card.

** A military ID card.

** A U.S. passport.

The above documentation may still be used if they are expired, as long as they expired on or after November 4, 2014.

Other forms of acceptable identification include:

** A certificate of naturalization, within 2 years of issuance.

** A driver’s license receipt, issued by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT), within 45 days of issuance.

** An ID issued by a federally recognized Wisconsin Native American tribe.

Wisconsin students can also participate in the election if they bring BOTH of the following:

** A photo ID issued by an accredited Wisconsin university, college or technical college.

** An enrollment verification document, valid for 2 years from date of issuance.

Obviously this claim of voter suoppression is bogus.(34) If voter ID reduces the number of people voting, it is because it prevented people from voting more then once or prevented illegals from voting. 

Democrats are against purging voter rolls because it is so much easier to commit voter fraud. There is nothing wrong with voter purges. In fact, IT IS THE LAW!!

In August, 2018, Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and the state’s Bureau of Elections cleared the state’s voting registration rolls of about 1.2 million names since 2011, about 200,000 since 2016.

The breakdown of the 1.2 million total, according to Johnson’s office, includes about 563,000 once-registered voters who have died, about 500,000 who moved within the state and re-registered, about 134,000 who moved out of state and have registered as voters elsewhere, and — Secretary Johnson specifically points out — “3,512 non-citizens”. (35)

So voter purges are to ensure the integrity of the voting system.

Page 24 - “Just before that arrival [Kendi’s birth] as my pregnant mother celebrated her thirty-first birthday on Jun 24, 1982, President Reagan declared war on her unborn baby. ‘We must put drug abuse on the run through stronger law envorcement,’ Reagan said in the Rose Garden. It wasn’t drug abuse that was put on the run, of course, but people like me. . .”

Comment: Only a lunatic would call the war on cocaine, crack cocaine a war on unborn black babies. Or else Kendi doesn’t care about the destruction of inner cities due to drugs. Would Kendi feel better if Reagan said we should allow inner cities to destroy themselves with drugs and drug laws will not be enforced in black sections of town?

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Page 25 - “In 2016, Black and Latinx people were still grossly over-represented in the prison population at 56 percent, double the percentage of the U.S. adult population. White people were still grossly under-represented in the prison popoulation at 30 percent, about half of their percentage of the U.S. adult population.

Comment: So Kendi wants quotas in sentencing people to prison. Having a higher percentage of blacks in prison does NOT prove racism, it proves the black crime rate is higher then the white crime rate so more blacks should be in prison. Also, more blacks are sentenced to prison because they have prior convictions.

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Page 25 - Kendi claims Nixon launched his war on drugs in 1971 in order to devastate his harshest critics - Blacks and antiwar activists. Nixon aide John Ehrlichman allegedly  said: “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Comment: Noted writer Dan Baum (1956-2020) interviewed Ehrlichman in 1994 when he allegedly made this statement but never publicized this statement until 2012 - 18 years later and 13 years after Ehrlichman died. It is doubtful Ehrlichman ever said this, so this quote should not have been used. 

There is no known recording of this conversation. Baum tracked down Ehrlichman for an interview. Any good reporter would have audio of an interview, especially one as important as this.(38) 

There was no legitimate reason for Baum to leave this quote out of this 1997 book "Smoke and Mirrors," which is all about the failed war on drugs. He feebly claimed it didn’t fit with the book’s narrative style, according to CNN.  But Baum DID use the quote in 2012 in the book  “The Moment,” a collection of stories about moments that changed writers’ lives. It was now safe for Baum to report this alleged quote since Ehrlichman died in 1999 and couldn’t dispute Baum’s claims.

Ehrlichman’s 5 children don’t believe their father said it. "The 1994 alleged 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for the first time today does not square with what we know of our father. And collectively, that spans over 185 years of time with him. We do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John and 16 years following our father's death, when dad can no longer respond.”(39)

Former Nixon officials don’t believe Ehrlichman made this comment. “The comments being attributed to John Ehrlichman in recent news coverage about the Nixon administration’s efforts to combat the drug crisis of the 1960’s and 70’s reflect neither our memory of John nor the administration’s approach to that problem,” wrote Jeffrey Donfeld, Jerome H. Jaffe and Robert DuPont in a joint statement sent to The Huffington Post in March, 2016.

They added that Ehrlichman was “known for using biting sarcasm to dismiss those with whom he disagreed, and it is possible the reporter misread his tone ... John never uttered a word or sentiment that suggested he or the President were ‘anti-black.’” (40)

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Page 27 - “His [Reagan’s] “stronger law enforcement” sent more black people into the clutches of violent cops, who killed twenty-two black people for every white person in the early 1980s.” 

Comment: There is no source for that claim. What we do know is Blacks are more likely to resist police then whites and create a confrontation. We also know the black crime is far higher then the white crime rate. As an example: the race of persons convicted of felonies in state courts in 2006 were: blacks committed 51% of homicides, 33% of all property crimes (burglary, larceny, auto theft and fraud). 49% of all drug trafficking charges and 57% of robberies and aggravated assault. (44) 

From 1980 to 2013, 2,269 police officers were murdered. The racial breakdown of their murderers shows that 41 percent were black - although blacks comprise only 13% of the population.(45)

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Page 31 - Kendi claims Trump called Latinx immigrants “animals.” This is another LIE by Kendi. Even Snopes recognizes Trump was talking about deporting Mexican gangs, specifically MS-13 and they ARE animals. (47)

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Page 45 - “During the 2013-2014 academic year, black students were four times more likely than white students to be suspended from public schools.”

Comment: This does not prove racial bias. The black crime rate is far higher then the white crime rate, so there will be a higher suspension rate for blacks than whites. 

The Government Accountability Office in 2018 found that black students get suspended at nearly three times the rate of white students nationally, a finding consistent with previous analyses.”

However, the brilliant publication “City Journal” reports: “The GAO report ignores the critical question regarding disciplinary disparities: do black students in fact misbehave more than white students? The report simply assumes, without argument, that black students and white students act identically in class and proceeds to document their different rates of discipline. This assumption of equivalent school behavior is patently unjustified. According to federal data, black male teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at nearly 10 times the rate of white male teenagers of the same age (the category “white” in this homicide data includes most Hispanics; if Hispanics were removed from the white category, the homicide disparity between blacks and whites would be even higher).”

“The Justice and Education Departments recently released their annual report, “Indicators of School Crime and Safety.” Black students self-reported being in a physical fight at school at over twice the rate of white students in 2015—a data point certainly relevant to the question of racial rates of school discipline.  Schools that were 50 percent minority or more reported weekly gang activity at nearly ten times the rate of schools where minorities constituted 5 percent to 20 percent of the population. Reports of gang violence in schools with less than 5 percent minority populations were too low to be usable statistically. Widespread weekly disorder in classrooms was reported in schools with at least 50 percent minority populations at more than five times the rate as in schools with 5 percent to 20 percent minorities. More than four times as many high-minority schools reported weekly verbal abuse of teachers compared with schools with a less than 20 percent minority student body. Widespread disorder and teacher abuse at schools with less than 5 percent minority populations was again too low to be statistically reliable.”

After radical Mayor Bill de Blasio limited school suspensions, “A student was stabbed and killed in history class in a New York school where teachers reported a dramatic drop in discipline. The district attorney in St. Paul called the rise in attacks on teachers a “public health crisis.” The district attorney in Syracuse forced schools to return to traditional disciplinary policies after a teacher was stabbed. Charlotte is experiencing an increase in guns, drugs, and assaults on teachers; school assaults in Durham increased more than 50 percent last year. And the education of students, especially black students, is suffering as well. Wisconsin schools that adopted the non-punitive disciplinary measures advocated by the Obama administration (and now, the GAO) had lower reading and math achievement than schools that stuck with traditional discipline.”

“Teachers are among the most liberal professionals in the country. Yet we’re supposed to believe that once these social-justice warriors enter the classroom, they are unable to evaluate their black students fairly. Overcome by prejudice, they see disruption and defiance where none exists. The opposite hypothesis is more likely: teachers strive mightily to avoid removing black children from classrooms. They do so only after other means of discipline have been exhausted, and they do so in order to preserve the right of other students to learn in a safe and orderly environment and to instill a sense of consequences in students who break the rules.”(48)

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Page  56 - Kendi wanted to go to Louis Farrakhan’s ‘Million Man March’ in 1995.  Farrakhan is racist and anti-Semitic - like Adolf Hitler. Here is one of his quotes from 2018: “White folks are going down and Satan is going down, and Farrakhan, by God's grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew, and I'm here to say you're time is up – your world is through."

Comment: Anyone who embraces Farrakhan is evil and a racist. Period. (49) 

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Page 59 - On the subject of Africans selling millions of other Africans into slavery abroad, Kendi figures out a way to blame it on the white man. 

Kendi claims “European intellectuals created race between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, lumping diverse ethnic groups into monolithic races.” Therefore “Africans involved in the slave trade did not believe they were selling their own people - they were usually selling people as different to them as the Europeans waiting on the coast.”

Comment: Kendi’s claim is fraudulent - really laughable. Just because people had been grouped into different races doesn’t prove anything. It didn’t prevent Arab Muslims from going to Africa and bringing back blacks to be slaves hundred of years before the European slave trade began. Kendi ignores the fact that slavery - yes chattel slavery - was common in Africa BEFORE the white slave traders arrived.

While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans sahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%! While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service.(50)

This 19th-century engraving depicts an Arab slave-trading caravan transporting black African slaves across the Sahara. The trans-Saharan slave trade developed in the 7th and 8th centuries as Muslim Arabs conquered most of North Africa. The trade grew significantly from the 10th to the 15th century and peaked in the mid-19th century.(51)

While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive.While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth. (50)

It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States).(50)

A little known fact is that Islam’s founder, Muhammad, was a slave owner and trader. He captured slaves in battle; he had sex with his slaves; and he instructed his men to do the same. The Quran actually devotes more verses to making sure that Muslim men know they can keep women as sex slaves - 4 times -  than it does to telling them to pray five times a day (zero). (52)

Nearly all modern historians agree that the scenario depicted by Alex Haley in the movie Roots - that of white raiders penetrating the African interior to rout African villages for slaves is fraudulent.

Page 61 - “America must be kept American,” President Calvin Coolidge said when he signed the 1924 [immigration] law. 

Comment: Kendi has the date wrong. Coolidge made that remark in his State of the Union Address on Dec 6, 1923. Some people - like Kendi - claim this is a racist remark, but lets look at Coolidge's entire comment.

“American institutions rest solely on good citizenship. They were created by people who had a background of self-government. New arrivals should be limited to our capacity to absorb them into the ranks of good citizenship. America must be kept American. For this purpose, it is necessary to continue a policy of restricted immigration. It would be well to make such immigration of a selective nature with some inspection at the source, and based either on a prior census or upon the record of naturalization. Either method would insure the admission of those with the largest capacity and best intention of becoming citizens. I am convinced that our present economic and social conditions warrant a limitation of those to be admitted. We should find additional safety in a law requiring the immediate registration of all aliens. Those who do not want to be partakers of the American spirit ought not to settle in America.”(53)

This is not racist at all. It is brilliant. And this policy produced a united and proud America. The government didn’t cater to immigrants in their native language or lavish social welfare programs on them. Considering we have Mexicans waving Mexican flags in America and tearing down the American flag - while demanding ‘rights’ for illegals - Coolidge was certainly correct.(54)  

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Page 83 -  Nothing is too bizarre for Kendi: he defends ‘ebonics.’ “Ebonics had grown from the roots of African languages and modern English just as modern English had grown from Latin, Greek, and Germanic roots. Why is Ebonics broken English but English is not broken German? Why is Ebonics a dialect of English if English is not a dialect of Latin? The idea that Black languages outside Africa are broken is as culturally racist as the idea that languages inside Europe are fixed.”

Comment: Ebonics is ghetto English slang. English is not broken German, Greek or Latin.

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Page 101 - “The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies.”

Comment: There is nothing racist about taking the SAT. Taking the SAT is an American rite of passage. Along with the increasingly popular ACT, the SAT is critical in identifying student readiness for college and is an important gateway to higher education. Yet despite efforts to equalize academic opportunity, large racial gaps in SAT scores persist.

In February 2017, Brookings Institution did a study on SAT scores. The average black score on the math SAT was 428 in 2015; the average white score was 534, and the average Asian score was 598. 

The usual poverty explanations for the SAT gap don’t hold up. In 1997, white students from households with incomes of $10,000 or less scored better than black students from households with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000. (62) 

Proponents of racial preferences (Kendi, etc.) routinely claim that the SATs are culturally biased and do not measure actual cognitive skills. If that were the case, blacks would do better in college than their SAT scores would predict. In fact, blacks do worse. Further, the math test is not amenable to the “cultural-bias” criticism - unless one believes that math is itself biased. Presumably, 1 + 1 = 2 for blacks and whites. These gaps have a significant impact on life chances, and therefore on the transmission of inequality across generations. (63)

Yet companies around the country are fined if they don’t have the required race/ethnicity/gender Makeup. All quotas should be abolished and go back to hiring the best. When America did that in the past we WERE the best.

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Page 103 -  Kendi claims black schools are underfunded. Kendi is not aware of the 1985 test in Missouri.

For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, "You can't solve educational problems by throwing money at them." The education establishment and its supporters have replied, "No one's ever tried." In Kansas City they did try. 

In 1985 a federal district judge took partial control over the troubled Kansas City, Missouri, School District(KCMSD) on the grounds that it was an unconstitutionally segregated district with dilapidated facilities and students who performed poorly. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.

Taxpayers shelled out nearly $2 billion over the next 12 years to build new schools, integrate classrooms, and bring student test scores up to national norms. Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country. 

The results were dismal.  Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration. (65)

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Page 103 - “In Pennsylvania, a recent statewide study found that at any given poverty level, districts with higher proportion of White students receive significantly more funding than districts with more students of color.”

Comment: NOT true. Kendi forgot about Matthew Kelly, a Penn State education professor who acknowledged there were low-spending, high-achieving districts in Pennsylvania, but districts that spend more than others, but perform worse — such as Lancaster. (66)

A 2009 comparison between public and Catholic school SAT scores show that public school students had an overall average of 496 points on the critical reading portion of the test while Catholic school students scored 533 points on the same portion. Catholic school students outscored their public school counterparts by an average of 23 points. Catholic high schools spend $2,000 less per pupil than public schools. Class size are considerably bigger then public/private schools.(67)

Funding does NOT determine scholastic development - the students desire to learn is the most important factor. The United States turned out brilliant Americans in all fields using the old method of teaching.

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Page 110 - 113 - We now find out that light skin blacks have it better then dark skin blacks. “Dark African Americans are disproportionately at risk of hypertension. Dark African American students receive significantly lower GPSs than light students.” “ Is that why employers prefer Light Black men over Dark Black men regardless of qualifications?” And that’s not all.

“Dark sons and light daughters receive higher-quality parenting than light sons and dark daughters.” And Kendi “pledged to date only Dark women.” “White people and Dark people reject and envy Light people.”

Comment: Kendi is Insane. 

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Page 124 - Kendi claims many voters were disenfranchised after the November, 2000 election. The U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, under Mary Frances Berry, investigated the Florida vote. Mary Francis Berry   is a left wing radical activist who has no objectivity. Her ‘investigation’ into the Florida 2000 vote makes her findings unreliable and tainted with prejudice. 

Berry - who is black - has been quoted saying: “Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them.”  (73)

Berry encouraged lying about the Tea Party movement in July 2010: “Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.” (73)

The report made many accusations. However, the report also stated: “The report does not find that the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters. Moreover, even if it was foreseeable that certain actions by officials led to voter disenfranchisement, this alone does not mean that intentional discrimination occurred.” (74) 

The final report by Berry was severly criticized by two member of the commission, Abigail Thernstrom and Russell Redenbaugh, who stated: 

“The Commission’s report has little basis in fact. Its conclusions are based on a deeply flawed statistical analysis coupled with anecdotal evidence of limited value, unverified by a proper factual investigation. This shaky foundation is used to justify charges of the most serious nature—questioning the legitimacy of the American electoral process and the validity of the most recent presidential election. The report’s central finding—that there was “widespread disenfranchisement and denial of voting rights” in Florida’s 2000 presidential election—does not withstand even a cursory legal or scholarly scrutiny. Leveling such a serious charge without clear justification is an unwarranted assault upon the public’s confidence in American democracy.” (p1)

“What appears to be partisan passions not only destroyed the credibility of the report itself, but informed the entire process that led up to the final draft. At the Florida hearings, Governor Jeb Bush was the only witness who was not allowed to make an opening statement. The Chair, Mary Frances Berry, was quoted in the Florida press as comparing the Governor and Secretary of State to “Pontius Pilate... just washing their hands of the whole thing.” On March 9, six commissioners voted to issue a “preliminary assessment”—in effect, a verdict—long before the staff had completed its review of the evidence.” (p1,2)

“The majority report lays the blame for the supposed “disenfranchisement” of black voters at the feet of state officials—particularly Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris. In fact, however, elections in Florida are the responsibility of 67 county supervisors of election. And, interestingly, in all but one of the 25 counties with the highest spoilage rates, the election was supervised by a Democrat—the one exception being an official with no party affiliation.” (p5)

“The majority report argues that much of the spoiled ballot problem was due to voting technology. But elected Democratic Party officials decided on the type of machinery used, including the optical scanning system in Gadsden County, the state’s only majority-black county and the one with the highest spoilage rate.” (p5)

“The shoddy quality of the work, its stolen-election message, and its picture of black citizens as helpless victims in the American political process is neither in the public interest nor in the interest of black and other minority citizens. Do we really want black Americans to believe there is no reason to get to the polls; elections are always stolen; they remain disenfranchised? There is important work the Commission can do. But not if its scholarly and procedural standards are as low as those in this Florida report.” (p55)(75)

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Page 124 - “Earlier in the year, Florida purged fifty-eight thousand alleged felons from the voting rolls. Black people were only 11 percent of registered voters but comprised 44 percent of the purge list. And about twelve thousand of those people purged were not convicted felons.”

Comment: This charge is also debunked by the two disssenting members of the commission, Abigail Thernstrom and Russell Redenbaugh. 

More blacks were on the felon list “because a higher proportion of blacks have been convicted of felonies in Florida, as elsewhere in the nation. But there is no evidence that the state targeted blacks in a discriminatory manner in constructing a purge list, or that the state made less of an effort to notify listed African Americans and to correct errors than it did with whites. The Commission did not hear from a single witness who was actually prevented from voting as a result of being erroneously identified as a felon. Furthermore, whites were twice as likely as blacks to be placed on the list erroneously, not the other way around.” 

“The compilation of the purge list was part of an anti-fraud measure enacted by the Florida legislature in the wake of a Miami mayoral election in which ineligible voters cast ballots. The list for the 2000 election was over-inclusive, and some supervisors made no use of it. (The majority report did not bother to ask how many counties relied upon it.) On the other hand, according to the Palm Beach Post, more than 6,500 ineligible felons voted.”

“Based on extensive research, the Miami Herald concluded that the biggest problem with the felon list was not that it wrongly prevented eligible voters from casting ballots, but that it ended up allowing ineligible voters to cast a ballot. The Commission should have looked into allegations of voter fraud, not only with respect to ineligible felons, but allegations involving fraudulent absentee ballots in nursing homes, unregistered voters, and so forth. Across the country in a variety of jurisdictions, serious questions about voter fraud have been raised.” (p 45) (75)

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Page 127 - Kendi launches into a diatribe: “All those White policemen intinidating voters.” ”White people showed me they did not actually care about national unity or democracy, only unity among and democracy for White people.” 

Comment: Kendi is wrong - again. There is zero EVIDENCE police were intimidating voters. 
This charge was also debunked by the two disssenting members of the commission, Abigail Thernstrom and Russell Redenbaugh.

“As the chief of the Florida Highway Patrol, Colonel Charles C. Hall, testified in Tallahassee, there was one motor vehicle checkpoint, in Leon County, on election day. That checkpoint was not adequately authorized and resulted in one complaint. The equipment checkpoint operation lasted about 90 minutes (between 10:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.) and occurred more than two miles away and on a different roadway from the nearest polling facility. Of the approximately 150 cars stopped at the checkpoint, a total of 18 citations or notices of faulty equipment were issued to 16 different individuals, 12 of whom were white. The citizen who lodged the complaint testified that she had contacted the NAACP after she returned from voting, yet refused to meet with the FHP to assist their investigation. Despite this one, highly publicized incident, there has been no evidence whatsoever of police intimidation of voters.” (p 50) (75)

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Page 132-133 - “I kept reading, trying to find the source of White evil. I found more answers in Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop’s two cradle theory. . .” Diop’s two-cradle theory suggested the harsh climate and lack of resources in the northen cradle nurtured in Europeans barbaric, individualistic, materialist, and warlike behaviors, which brought destruction to the world. The amenable climate and abundance of resources in the southern cradle nurtured the African behaviors of community, spirituality, equanimity, and peace, which brought civilization to the world.”

Comment: Nice fairy tale, but Kendi is all wrong - as usual. Africa has had continuous wars like countries on other continents. Africa had slavery - including chattel slavery and slave markets. Some examples: 

Mungo Park toured central Africa between 1795 and 1797 and wrote a detailed account of his travels. 

"WAR: In a country divided into a thousand petty states, mostly independent and jealous of each other, where every freeman is accustomed to arms and fond of military achievements, where the youth, who has practised the bow and spear from his infancy, longs for nothing so much as an opportunity to display his valour, it is natural to imagine that wars frequently originate from very frivolous provocation.  When one nation is more powerful than another, pretext is seldom wanting for commencing hostilities.  Thus the war between Kajaaga and Kasson was occasioned by the detention of a fugitive slave; that between Bambarra and Kaarta by the loss of a few cattle.  Other cases of the same nature perpetually occur in which the folly or mad ambition of their princes and the zeal of their religious enthusiasts give full employment to the scythe of desolation."  (p 290)

"SLAVERY: "The slaves in Africa, I suppose, are nearly in the proportion of three to one to the freemen. They claim no reward for their services except food and clothing, and are treated with kindness or severity, according to the good or bad disposition of their masters.          

“the value of a slave, in the eye of an African purchaser, increases in proportion to his distance from his native kingdom: for when slaves are only a few days’ journey from the place of their nativity they frequently effect their escape; but when one or more kingdoms intervene, escape being more difficult, they are more readily reconciled to their situation. The slaves which are purchased by the Europeans on the coast are chiefly of this description.”

"The slaves which are thus brought from the interior may be divided into two distinct classes - first, such as were slaves from their birth, having been born of enslaved mothers; secondly, such as were born free, but who afterwards, by whatever means, became slaves. Those of the first description are by far the most numerous. (Page 287 - 289) 

The comparatively small proportion of free people to the enslaved throughout Africa has already been noticed. Thus when Mansong, king of Bambarra, made war upon Kaarta (as I have related in a former chapter), he took in one day nine hundred prisoners, of which number not more than seventy were freemen. This account I received from Daman Jumma, who had thirty slaves at Kemmoo, all of whom were made prisoners by Mansong." (Page 287 - 289) (80)—————————————————————

King Shaka Zulu  (1787-1828) - was a warrior in southern Africa. When Shaka’s father, Senzangakhona died in 1816, Shaka's younger half-brother Sigujana assumed power. He was quickly assassinated and Shaka became ruler. Shaka turned the Zulu tribe into a fearsome fighting force.  A tribe to the north, Ndwandwe, were raiding the Zulu but by 1819, Shaka had defeated them. Shaka Zulu then launched a devastating series of wars against neighboring tribes. 

After Shaka Zulu’s mother died in Oct, 1827, Shaka executed about 7,000 people who were deemed to be insufficiently grief-stricken. (81) In 1828, Shaka's two half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana killed Shaka and Dingane became leader of the Zulu tribe. Dingane continued the conquest of southern Africa and by 1840 had run the Soshangane, Zwangendaba, Ndebele, Hlubi, Ngwane, and Mfengu tribes out of southern Africa. This warfare resulted in 1 million or more black people being killed. (82) (83) 

Shaka created a ruthless determination in his army. If a soldier did not perform well in combat he was executed as soon as the fight was over. If one of Shaka’s army units was defeated a goodly proportion of the wives and children belonging to them were beaten to death on [Shaka]'s orders, and he would wait for the soldiers arrival to complete his vengeance by dashing out their brains. (84)

Mansa Musa was born is 1280 AD and rulled the kingdom of Mali from 1312 C.E. to 1337. A devout Muslim, he is famous for his journey to Mecca in 1324-1325 with 60,000 men and 12,000 slaves - each carrying gold bars. 

With an army numbering around 100,000 men, including cavalry with 10,000 horses. Mansa Musa attacked neighboring countries and doubled the size of Mali, making it second in size only to that of the Mongol Empire at the time. (85) 

Ewuare the Great - King of Benin. Ewuare rulled the Benin Empire from 1440 until 1473. Ewuare’s kingdom grew from a small group of villages to a substantial kingdom. Ewuare is credited with conquering at least 201 surrounding towns and villages during his reign. 

Ewuare also reformed the country’s administration with the creation of town chiefs and palace chiefs, who would collect tribute and deal with legal issues. Ewuare encouraged the freeborn population to work in the palace for small wages. (86)

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Page 143 - Kendi has a hissy fit over the 2004 Presidential vote in Ohio, claiming Bush stole it from Kerry. The problem with Kendi throughout this book is he never reads information from an opposing point of view. Kendi never challenges himself intellectually.

In June 2005, the Democratic Natioanl Committee issued its report on the 2004 prersidential election in Ohio. This report concludes:

“Despite the problems on Election Day, there is no evidence from our survey that John Kerry won the state of Ohio. Two (2) percent of voters who went to the polls on Election Day decided to leave their polling locations due to the long lines. This resulted in approximately 129,543 lost votes. However, these potential voters would have divided evenly between George Bush and John Kerry. A smaller group of potential voters (0.08 percent) were not given ballots at all due to registration challenges. These approximately 4,798 voters favored Kerry, according to the poll (extreme sample size caution).”

“Finally, a third group of voters (equivalent to 0.83 percent of the voting population) did not go to the polls at all because they did not receive their absentee ballots, or had heard about long lines, registration challenges, and confusing polling sites. We do not know the voting preferences of these approximately 47,979 voters. However, even if they had all chosen Kerry, his overall gain of 52,777 votes would not have erased Bush’s 118,000 vote margin in the state.” (87)    

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An incarceration rate under 2% is not mass incarceration - it is justifiable incarceration. (101)(102)(103)(104)

Kendi supports ‘open borders.’ Kendi refuses to recognize the difference between legal and illegal immigrants. This ignorant idea that Kendi and most democrat politicians hold is more reason to label democrats the traitor party - and vote republican.

Biden destroyed border security within 2 weeks of taking office. Results???   In addition to 1.73 million illegals caught by the border patrol in FY 2021 along the Mexican - U.S. border, at least 400,000 illegals entered undetected. It is certain that many more illegals entered undetected - and democrats don’t care!! Many were infected with Covid that Biden sent around the country. Some of them committed crimes. Many were bringing in fentanyl.(105)

Trump had the border secured. In all of FY 2020 under Trump, border patrol captured 458,088 illegal border crossers. (106)

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Page 189 - “Gender racism produced the current situation of Black women with some collegiate education making less than White women with only high school degrees;”

Comment:  Not true. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women in the same workplace who perform substantially equal work. Also, Kendi doesn’t say what kind of a degree these black women received. Many colleges today teach courses there are no jobs for. 

Studies showing wage gaps are a fraud. Federal government statistics shows women make 84 percent of a man’s average wage. This is a meaningless statistic. Government stats don’t take into consideration hours worked, length of service, experience, quality of work performance, etc. (110)

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Page 224, 225 - Kendi tells A LOT of lies concerning Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer - George Zimmerman - on February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida.

Comment: Trayvon Martin was NOT an innocent teenager. Martin attempted to kill Zimmerman because he was following him. Martin knocked Zimmerman down, got on top of him and began banging his head against the pavement. Zimmerman realized his life was at stake and shot Martin in self defense. Being followed would be irritating but not grounds for killing a person. 

Comment:  Zimmerman had a rock solid case for self-defense, but the police were forced to charged Zimmerman by the Obama Administration which turned this case into a kangeroo court. Even so, the evidence was overwhelming and Zimmerman was rightly found innocent. (119)(120)