Did you catch Biden’s recent Executive Order on equity in the federal government? You did not, because it was announced on a Friday afternoon in the middle of summer. Biden basically mumbled it under his breath while everyone was headed to the beach. Friday afternoon is when the White House (any White House) breaks news about botched ATF raids, me-too’d White House staffers, indicted presidential relatives, and First Dog attacks on foreign dignitaries. And also wedge issues. Wedge issues most of all.
“Equity” is a Democratic wedge issue even though -- or maybe because -- there’s no agreement on what the word means. The entire left side of the political spectrum has decided that “equality” is passé -- it’s like saying “oriental”, you simply don’t -- but the successor word is a fuzzy grey cloud of nobody-knows-what. You can find definitions of “equity” that say it basically means “different resources for different people”, you can find ones that use it as a synonym for “impartiality”, and you can find ones that are bullshit self-fellation that prove, yes, it is possible to have too much education.
But, ultimately, Ibram X. Kendi’s definition is the one that’s causing all the trouble.
I’ve avoided writing about Kendi and Robin DiAngelo on this blog. Kendi and DiAngelo are the human growth hormone of Substack; a quick injection will make your performance numbers skyrocket. If you’re familiar with this newsletter, you’ve surely noticed that I reject concepts like popularity, success, or writing things that people enjoy. But you can draw a straight line between Kendi’s definition of equity and policy decisions Biden has to make in the near future, so...here we go.
Kendi defines racial equity this way (page 17 of How To Be an Antiracist):
“Racial inequity 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 anti-racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups.”
Kendi is talking about outcomes, not opportunity (his book makes that clear). I’m not going to mince words: I think Kendi’s theory is obviously incorrect. The idea that all disparities in outcomes can be explained only by racism is ridiculous. If true, it would be the first time in the history of social science that a complex phenomenon has been explained by a single variable. Kendi’s theory rules out factors like culture, environment, economics, and even geography, which clearly affect outcomes. It’s laughably simplistic, easily disproved, and should not be taken seriously as a scholarly work.
Hang on: I was mincing words there. I said I wasn’t going to pull my punches, and then I did. So let me try again: This is arguably the stupidest shit I’ve ever seen in print, and I’ve read Sean Hannity’s Conservative Victory. The fact that Kendi has been celebrated and elevated -- almost entirely by wealthy white people -- is such a humiliating example of white guilt that it makes me want to dig a hole and live 100 feet underground. I completely understand why Black intellectuals like John McWhorter are losing their minds over the fact that Kendi -- Kendi, the Dane Cook of Black academia! -- is arguably the country’s most prominent Black intellectual. If John McWhorter ever tries to strangle Kendi in a fit of rage, and I’m on the jury, I’m telling you right now: I’m voting to acquit.
But wait...I’m still not being frank. Let me stop beating around the bush; honesty is supposed to be a core principle of this blog, so let me dispense with the Victorian politeness of the previous two paragraphs. Kendi’s theory is so brain-meltingly stupid that the only interesting question it raises is why any adult human with a sense of dignity would claim to believe it. I think when someone reads How To Be an Antiracist, the mind refuses to believe that such a batshit theory could be the foundation of such a heralded book, so the reader’s subconscious nudges Kendi’s theory onto firmer ground. His argument becomes “racism is a major cause of unequal outcomes,” which is true, instead of “racism is the only cause of unequal outcomes,” which is a steaming horse apple in the center of Clown Town. This mental shift is essentially a coping mechanism; the brain reacts to the intense idiocy of Kendi’s theory the way it would react to a trauma suffered in early childhood.
Why do I feel this way? Of the roughly eight billion examples that disprove Kendi’s belief that unequal outcomes are always and only the product of racism (or sexism, or other forms of bias), the first one that springs to mind is standup comedy, the field where I began my for-lack-of-a-better-term “career”. Standup is disproportionately Black; as a very rough measure, Rolling Stone’s list of the top 50 standups of all-time is 26 percent Black, twice the Black share of the U.S. population. Why are there so many funny Black comics? I think the answer is obvious: Pryor, Murphy, Rock...even Bill Cosby -- fun fact! -- used to be known for standup comedy. Black standup is a thing, so of course that cultural popularity produced a lot of Black comics. But in Kendi’s world, disparate outcomes are always and only the product of racism. So, to solve this inequity, we’d have to...I guess...seek out all the Black club owners and TV producers discriminating against non-Black comics? Including, I suppose...in the ‘70s? This reductio ad absurdum doesn’t require much reductio.
Another example is improv comedy. Improv is extremely white. Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, the biggest improv theatre in New York, is whiter than a Ted Talk in Edmonton. This is true in spite of aggressive diversity efforts by UCB. So: Why is it so white? Once again, I think the answer is obvious: Most Black people want nothing to do with UCB’s bougie white nonsense. And I stand with those Black people: Fuck that post-graduate wank-fest. Racism can’t explain the racial disparities in improv; it can only be explained by the fact that the willingness to spend absurd amounts of time and money to get advice like “listen” and “don’t think” is a disease that disproportionately affects white people. Kendi’s theory discounts the choices people make, even when those choices make sense.
I’d love to ignore Kendi completely, but his conception of equity plays a major role in our discourse. Conservatives are up in arms about Kendi’s version of equity, and the reason’s pretty clear: It’s a continuation of the old “equal outcomes” versus “equal opportunity” debate.
The left has long been accused of favoring blunt measures to engineer equal outcomes. In extreme cases -- the Soviet Union comes to mind -- this accusation has had some merit. But the left typically expends energy ensuring people that we are not simply trying to equilibrate all outcomes via communism, Critical Race Theory, or whatever else Fox News is screaming about. When I was a long-haired twerp campaigning for affirmative action at The Evergreen State College, I was told to ensure people that we were not advocating racial quotas. If someone accused us of favoring quotas, I was to give them a brochure that looked like those tri-fold “So A Witch Has Cursed Your Colon'' pamphlets you get at the doctor’s office. The pamphlet stated emphatically that we did not favor racial quotas! Quotas? Where did you even hear that? Us? Quotas? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Quotas are the least-popular part of an unpopular policy.
Kendi’s version of equity requires quotas. Kendi is all about groups and numbers, and he’s clear: If the numbers are unbalanced, you fucking balance them. He’s gone so far as to propose a nightmarishly-power Department of Anti-Racism, which would be charged with “...preclearing all local, state, and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity”. It would consist of “formally-trained experts on racism” (as opposed, I guess, to informally-trained experts, i.e. someone who got hired by a racism company and learned on-the-job) who 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.” I find this just the eensiest bit Khmer Rouge-y. Kendi’s version of equity, and all that it implies, is extremely extreme. The question is: How much does the Biden administration share that view?
The answer seems to be: Not too much. Biden’s recent Executive Order uses the word “equity” 43 times, but here’s how it’s defined:
The term “equity” means the consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment.
This is a decidedly non-Kendi-esque definition; this is equality of opportunity, not outcomes. The EO does not, as some people have argued, require government agencies to achieve “perfect” racial balance. It requires them review their hiring processes to see if barriers to access exist, which strikes me as a good thing to do. It addresses many types of bias, even including discrimination against hillbillies (the EO calls them “persons who live in rural areas”, but we know who they mean). It’s a sensible, well-designed anti-discrimination measure. Which is probably why the White House downplayed it.
The religious left doesn’t want sensible, well-designed anti-discrimination measures; they want Kendi-style equity. It’s become common on the left to cite unequal employment numbers as if they’re ipso facto proof of discrimination (as opposed to possible evidence of discrimination). The demand is clear: Hire based on identity until the numbers look good. Sometimes this preference is made explicit. I think this way of thinking is completely toxic; I think it leads to bad policy and is political kryptonite. Majorities of all racial groups oppose racial preferences in hiring, and recent evidence suggests that trendy lefty policies can be death at the polls. If I was advising Biden, my advice would be: “Run from this. Run far, far away, change your name, sand off your fingerprints, and get plastic surgery so this dead-end ideology can never find you. Focus on policies that actually help non-white people like your American Families Plan.”
The Biden administration seems to still be workshopping its definition of equity. During the campaign, Kamala Harris took heat for a clumsily-worded equity riff, and the Covid relief bill distributed some money on the basis of race, which led to a lawsuit. Biden's Justice Department also has a major race-related decision coming up: They have to decide whether to weigh in on the Harvard affirmative action case. The Supreme Court has called for the DOJ to weigh in, thus thwarting Democrats' plan to hide under a pile of coats and hope this nasty wedge issue goes away. The good news for Biden is that the Harvard case isn’t a clear referendum on equity; the case rests entirely on whether Harvard’s policy is “narrowly tailored”, which is legal term meaning “itsy bitsy”. In fact, Harvard’s argument is that they don’t engage in racial balancing, which is telling: Even the defendant in the nation’s marquee affirmative action case doesn’t back Kendi’s definition of equity.
It would be nice if the left edge of the Democratic coalition would stop asking for things that are completely batshit insane. If they would knock it off, there would be fewer wedge issues, and Biden could loudly say that he believes in equal opportunity, not outcomes, instead of mumbling it under his breath. It would also let Democrats play less defense over culture war bullshit and allow them to play offense on issues that actually matter. Unfortunately, I don’t think the far left will stop being insane any time soon. So, for the time being, Democrats’ most declarative statements on sensitive issues will continue to be found in low-visibility press releases tossed out during beach season, Christmas, and the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl.
Just found this from your Oct19 link. Great stuff, first time I've seen anyone take on Kendi with the contempt he deserves.
I enjoyed Kendi’s book as a memoir; I didn’t realize at the time I was reading scripture.
In conclusion, one of my great life regrets was not going to see Sinbad when he performed on my college campus. Just wondering what comedians Evergreen hosted (not that it’s a competition but…)