This week a number of journalists have written on the fiscal challenges of the BU Antiracist Center. After having received millions of dollars in support the center has laid off a number of its staff members and is now undergoing investigation. I’d turn those interested to Adolph Reed’s “Why Black Lives Matter Can’t Be Co-opted” with one modification. I do think in this instance it’s worth thinking through the exact dynamics that may have caused the center to fail in the particular way it has. I got a chance to talk to Kendi four years ago about his first major work, and what struck me reading it was the deep religious ethos it contained. Here’s what I wrote:
I didn’t get a chance to talk too much about this in the hour or so we had before we opened the (packed) event up to q&a, but there’s an element to this that reads like part of a religious conversion project. One realizes that one is racist the same way one realizes one is a sinner. One struggles against racist ideas the way one struggles against sin.
Anti-racism to him was a religion…and he was its saint. Very few “saints” are good money managers. And while the best saints believe themselves accountable to a higher power, few work to ensure the type of accountability we’d recognize as being necessary to run an organization. Martin Luther King jr. for example ended up hiring Ella Baker when he realized it’d be difficult if not impossible to manage all of the money flowing into the Montgomery Bus Boycott without help.
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