kites-journal.org
1 April 2024
In what promises to be a stunning comeback from criticism over his handling of the millions of dollars in funding for his Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, Ibram X Kendi announced that his years of antiracist scholarship have culminated in a brilliant theory called “woke white supremacy,” which will be the title of his new book. Kendi explained that “firing much of the staff at my Center for Antiracist Research—an action that the growing labor movement among university faculty and graduate students did not protest—allowed me to divert funds towards this important theoretical work.”
Kendi’s theory of woke white supremacy draws on 19th-century eugenics to argue that white supremacy is the natural state of human existence, with anti-blackness having been around since the dawn of time. Yet unlike 19th-century racists, antiracist Kendi’s essentialism is not a work of pseudo-science falsely claiming biological evidence, but a work of pseudo-philosophy grounded in postmodernist theory while shitting on the Black radical tradition. It centers the question of white supremacist bias as an immutable characteristic of human existence, inherent even in most Black people, that cannot be changed through changing the material conditions of society, but can be forgiven by changing the material conditions of Kendi’s existence. As an example of the latter, Kendi explained that billionaire Jack Dorsey, who donated $10 million to the Center for Antiracist Research, “has done more to work on his internal bias and anti-blackness than any other white person in human history. John Brown ain’t got nothing on Jack Dorsey.”
In her foreword to Woke White Supremacy, Robin DiAngelo summarizes Kendi’s theory: “So basically, all white people are racist and there’s nothing we can do about it, which is a relief,” apparently unaware that comedian Ricky Gervais said the exact same thing, but sarcastically, in his most recent Netflix special. Asked whether DiAngelo’s book royalties and speaker fees at corporate antiracism workshops constitute wages of whiteness, whiteness studies scholar David Roediger clarified that “my theory of wages of whiteness was really about insisting that it is impossible for the white working class to join with Black proletarians in making revolution and ending all exploitation and oppression. I have no problem with members of the white petty-bourgeoisie making lots of money off of antiracism. Shit, where do think my money comes from?”
J Sakai, a strong critic of Kendi and DiAngelo, worried that radicals might start to notice theoretical and political convergences between his book Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern and Kendi’s Woke White Supremacy. “On the other hand,” Sakai mused, “the reason my readers, who are almost all settlers themselves according to the logic of my book, like my book so much is that it gives them a rationale for not interacting with oppressed people and not waging the necessary (armed) struggle to end all oppression. So I doubt they’ll think too much about the matter. It might not have been my original intention to rationalize capitulation, but since Settlers is selling so well with settlers, I really can’t complain.”
kites reached out to the Department of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University to ask them if they feel shame for giving Kendi a PhD while denying Muhammad Ahmad (known as Max Stanford when he was a leader of Revolutionary Action Movement) a permanent faculty position after his years of dedication to Black liberation, but received no response.
Ibram X Kendi’s Woke White Supremacy is slated for publication on August 1st, 2024. Due to an avalanche of corporate sponsorship, free copies of the book will given out at college freshman orientations all across the US in the Fall of 2024. Former Harvard University President Claudine Gay will be traveling the country leading required seminars on Woke White Supremacy at all Ivy League schools.
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