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+--- Thread: Article Ibram Kendi: why we need a new conception of “intellectual” that includes him (/thread-15693.html)
Ibram Kendi: why we need a new conception of “intellectual” that includes him - C C - Apr 5, 2024
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/03/31/ibram-kendi-why-we-need-a-new-conception-of-intellectual-that-includes-him/
INTRO (Jerry Coyne): Ibram X. Kendi (née Ibram Henry Rogers) has a short article in The Atlantic whose thesis is summed up in the subtitle below. And I think his thesis is both self-pitying and, worse, wrong.
I am not a Kendi expert, though I have read his book How to Be An Antiracist (not that impressive: a strange gemisch of autobiography and strong antiracism that brands everyone not actively working against racism as a racist). I’m told, though, that his earlier book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, is good.
But this essay is not good. It’s full of false claims about how nobody but straight white Christian men ever counted as “intellectuals”. No blacks, no gays, no Jews, and no women. Frankly, I’m surprised that The Atlantic published it, but it’s Kendi, Jake! (I suspect the magazine needs a fact checker for stuff like this.)... (MORE - details)