Anti-racism scholar Ibram X. Kendi on race relations in 2022: ‘In many ways it’s still 1962’

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Monday is Martin Luther King Jr’s holiday.

To reflect on King’s legacy today, researcher and author Ibram X. Kendi joined Sharon Brody, host of WBUR’s Weekend Edition.

Kendi is the founding director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. King earned his Ph.D. in theology at BU in the 1950s.

The highlights of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.

Interview Highlights

On his “snapshot” of race relations in the United States today

“For me, this image would be like re-enacting that era in the early 1960s, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against the filibuster, which he said was blocking civil rights legislation. and voting. And I think that would kind of remind us that in a lot of ways it’s 2022, but in a lot of ways it’s still 1962.

“…He called him a ‘filibuster Jim Crow,’ and he recognized that that was holding us back from building a multiracial democracy. And that is precisely what is happening today.”

On racial progress and what Kendi calls “the king’s nightmare”, the rise of racism

“We were taught and we are taught especially around King’s birthday as well as Black History Month that America’s racial history is that kind of singular force, that kind of marching forward. And sometimes we back off. But generally, we What I’m finding in my research are actually two historical forces that have not only in many ways defeated us furniture slavery, defeated Jim Crow forms, but racist policies themselves have become more sophisticated over time.

“Take voter suppression policies. Where a century ago the way they suppressed votes was… poll taxes and literacy tests, now the way they suppressed votes is, in some states, voter ID laws, or don’t allow people to hand out water in extremely long lines, or close polling places, which then increases the number of people. And so the tactics used are more sophisticated, and now the rationale is more sophisticated because it’s ‘voter fraud’, ‘voter fraud’, ‘voter security’, which of course is much more appealing to the people because every American thinks it’s good or important that our elections be fair, but in reality, it’s just propaganda to justify voter suppression.

“Not only have we in many ways overcome chattel slavery, overcome forms of Jim Crow, but the racist policies themselves have become more sophisticated over time.”

Abraham X. Possess

Backlash after the widespread racial justice protests of spring and summer 2020, and what drove this pattern

“In June 2020, a poll found that 76% of Americans agreed that racism exists and is a big problem. And that was the highest percentage ever. But by late summer 2020, that percentage had dropped by double digits.

“What happened was unbelievable propaganda…an assault that basically claimed the problem wasn’t really racism. The problem was ‘these violent Black Lives Matter protesters violently looting and destroying cities.’ the media tends to report on violent protests, unlike over 96% of spring and summer protests which [were] peaceful, it gave the impression that there was more violence than there actually was.

“And that’s the fundamental shock. Like, what’s the problem? Is the problem racism itself, or is the problem these people who were protesting against it? And since then there’s just been a incredible amount of propaganda to convince the American people that the problem [is] those people who demonstrate against racism rather than against racism itself.”

How much of this reaction is organic belief, and how much is politically manipulated

“In my work, I distinguish between the producers of racist ideas or, in this case, racist propaganda and the consumers. And so for me, a lot of that propaganda, a lot of those ideas have been manufactured by those whose power and policies were based on an unjust and unequal nation. They wanted to convince the ordinary American people, especially white Americans, that they were subjected to oppression, that they were wronged by these protesters, by opposition to the demonstrators themselves harmed by racism.

“To me, a lot of the propaganda was fabricated by some of the most powerful forces in our country. And unfortunately a lot of people believed in it and consumed it, and didn’t realize they were being manipulated and that they saw people who didn’t look like them or even looked like them as a problem, as opposed to these propagandists and the powerful forces behind them.”

How to repel “propaganda”

“Study after study shows that the inequalities and injustices in our society do not arise from the inferiorities of particular racial groups, but from the conditions, policies, structures and practices. So when you recognize this, affirmatively, then when propagandists try to convince us that the problem [is] ‘those people’, you know that’s wrong, and then you can kind of gravitate around those policy makers, those in positions of power who are trying to change those conditions. And then you can support these people so that we can create a healthier, fairer and safer society for all of us.”

On a key thought as people contemplate King’s legacy in 2022

“King, in his [‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’] in 1963, wrote that he suspected that the greatest black stumbling block to freedom was not “the Ku Klux Klanner”, as he described it, but potentially “the white moderate”. The person who says, “I understand your pain, but I don’t agree with the only solution that could actually end it.

“King was incredibly focused, especially at the end of his life. [on] support the most practical and radical solutions that can end human pain, misery and militarism, injustice, poverty and racism. I think that’s what made him great, not necessarily a march or a speech he gave, but his vision for creating a different kind of world.”

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