{"id":549230,"date":"2021-06-02T10:36:02","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T14:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=549230"},"modified":"2021-06-02T10:36:06","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T14:36:06","slug":"shapiro-the-muddled-thinking-of-antiracism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shapiro-the-muddled-thinking-of-antiracism\/","title":{"rendered":"SHAPIRO: The Muddled Thinking of \u2018Antiracism\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">12<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fshapiro-the-muddled-thinking-of-antiracism%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=549230&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/GettyImages-1175990295-1.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>This week, a clip of America\u2019s most prominent racial grifter, Ibram X. Kendi, began making the rounds on Twitter. Kendi, the author of \u201cHow to Be an Antiracist,\u201d has undoubtedly made a fortune by indicting those who disagree with him as complicit in American racism \u2014 and by providing partial absolution to those who repeat his cultish ideas. In one particular clip from a recent interview, however, Kendi was asked to do one very simple thing: to define racism itself. Kendi failed signally in that task. \u201cI would define it as a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas,\u201d Kendi stated.<\/p>\n<p>The audience laughed out loud.<\/p>\n<p>Kendi then reiterated his definition and added: \u201cAnd antiracism is pretty simple using the same terms. Antiracism is a collection of antiracist policies leading to racial \u2026 equity that are substantiated by antiracist ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This, of course, is utterly nonsensical. No term can be defined by simple reference to the term itself. If someone asked you to define an elephant and you quickly explained that an elephant is, in fact, an animal known as an elephant, you would be adding no new information. If someone asked you to describe anger and you then defined anger as the feeling of being angry, you would leave the listener in serious doubt as to your sanity.<\/p>\n<p data-slot-rendered-dynamic=\"true\">Yet the left not only nods along to this; it champions it. For deep thoughts like Kendi\u2019s, CEOs pay millions: Jack Dorsey of Twitter gave Kendi\u2019s Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University $10 million last year; The Vertex Foundation of Vertex Pharmaceuticals is giving Kendi\u2019s center $1.5 million over three years; Bank of America has brought in Kendi to deliver his insipid message; The Boston Globe has teamed with Kendi\u2019s center to create a new media platform. To date, the Center for Antiracist Research has generated precisely zero research; its website reads, \u201cWe are now accepting proposals for our research and policy teams.\u201d The center is also accepting applications for its \u201cAntibigotry Convening.\u201d And, of course, the center has merchandise, including Antiracist Book Festival face masks (for just $25!).<\/p>\n<p>The goal of many on the left these days is not clarification but obfuscation, particularly on racial issues. Data is not only unnecessary; it\u2019s reviled. If the left wishes to promote the argument that racial inequalities are the result of historic injustices, one would hope that someone would bother quantifying to what extent those inequalities are the result of individual decisions versus the result of other factors. If, for example, differential poverty rates by community are highly related to single motherhood \u2014 and if single motherhood can only be avoided through personal decision-making \u2014 then focusing on historic racism to the exclusion of personal decision-making not only does little good; it does active harm. Yet that is precisely what Kendi proposes \u2014 and he calls you racist if you suggest otherwise.<\/p>\n<p data-slot-rendered-dynamic=\"true\">Kendi\u2019s solutions are the sorts of solutions the left likes. He has proposed a federal Department of Antiracism with the power to pre-clear \u201call local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won\u2019t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas.\u201d In other words, it\u2019s authoritarian dictatorship to establish Kendi\u2019s vaguely defined antiracism.<\/p>\n<p>The left embraces this loose thinking because it promotes a broader agenda: blaming institutions broadly for all problems and then remolding those institutions. In this task, obfuscation becomes profoundly important, lest Americans recognize that in a free America, the best path toward alleviating inequity is individual rights rather than a top-down rewriting of American society.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>member<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, a clip of America\u2019s most prominent racial grifter, Ibram X. Kendi, began making the rounds on Twitter. Kendi, the author of \u201cHow to Be an Antiracist,\u201d has undoubtedly &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1888346,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1888346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}