Looking at the book "How to be an Antiracist" - on the best seller list.
It is primarily a rather clumsy exercise in diagnosis, even though it claims to provide diagnosis plus policy advice. The latter seems to be confined to the necessity for antiracists to increase their power so they can transform the society - not clear what kind of transformation or how this should be done though.
As for the diagnosis, it is a mixture of old truths and vague falsehoods. What is true (there are different kinds of racism and they are all bad) is trivially true and not controversial (at least to the majority of us who are disgusted by racism). For the rest there is much vague assertion (America is still a deeply racist society), dangerous confusion (the category of racial capitalism) and assorted other vague confusions.
Starting with the uncontested idea that racism is horrible Kendi then proceeds to tie this to the proposition that universal truths primarily discovered and promoted by white people are "white ideas" [my term] and therefore to conclude that they are appropriate for other races is suspect. His work is just the latest to go from the idea that racism is bad to the idea that western classical liberalism is bad and to suggest that the only way to be antiracist is to be anti-western, anti-classical-liberal.
