RUTHFULLY YOURS

Having grown up in religious circles, I don’t find it hard to look at the modern anti-racist movement and see the parallels. Racial division may not be quite as prominent a topic right now as it was in, say, 2014 and the summer of 2020, as it takes a backseat to matters such as elections, the future of our political parties, and whether Thomas Jefferson actually invented the swivel chair. But this backgrounding can help us to see what the anti-racist true believers are really up to, and where the movement is currently placing its evangelistic — yes, that is the right word — focus.

Unsurprisingly, as with many actual religions, there’s a lot of lying and manipulation going on. Ibram X. Kendi, the high priest of the American anti-racist religion, has released his newest ‘sermon’ via Netflix: Stamped from the Beginning, an adaptation of his 2016 tome by the same name. The documentary is like virtual church for anti-racists, except without . . . well, there are very few positives to virtual church, so the analogy holds. It’s exceptionally well-produced and well-told. And it’s a 92-minute tour de force in advancing the profoundly dishonest and overbroad rhetoric of the anti-racist religion promising to liberate us from America’s original sin.

“What is wrong with black people?” Such is the hopeful note that the film kicks off with. It makes the dichotomy of Kendi’s visual sermon apparent from the get-go: disagree with the story that’s about to be told, or the applications made from it, and you’re part of the group that thinks there’s something wrong with black people. And quite possibly, you’re complicit in the prejudice that has marked American history. “Often we assume that race is only about the color of one’s skin,” says presenter Angela Davis. But no: “It is about slavery.” This is when Kendi starts doing the thing he, and thousands of faith-healers before him, might be best at: telling stories that are very compelling — so long as you don’t think too hard about the bill of goods that’s actually being sold to you.

Stamped from the Beginning discusses slavery, and pulls no punches. Let’s give Kendi his due. He’s one of the best figures in American public life at constructing compelling historical narratives. He brilliantly tells the heartbreaking story of Harriet Jacobs, an escaped slave who suffered sexual harassment and abuse before escaping her master. The fact that it receives some of the least commentary from Kendi and his acolytes of all the documentary’s stories is, I’m sure, a complete coincidence.

But this point A — slavery happened, and it was egregious — is hardly the issue. It’s point B, subtly (or not so subtly) thrown in for effect, that gives the whole thing away. Ten minutes into the documentary, it goes into a fast montage of anti-black sentiments ranging from the early-20th century and 1960s television to modern iPhone recordings of various apparently racially charged confrontations. This is point B (voiceovers of James Baldwin quotes over footage of BLM rallies are not merely a thematic or artistic choice): It’s a clear assertion that the cause of Black Lives Matter and Kendi’s well-oiled anti-racist machine is the same cause of the marchers in the 1960s. As with any sermon, its primary application isn’t to the general public but to the congregation: the viewers who already buy into Kendi’s premises. To viewers suited to such premises, the message is clear: Nothing has changed between America’s horrific racial past and America’s much-improved racial present. They are the same cause, says the preacher. And therefore, the enemy, too, must be the same.

In preaching only to the choir, Kendi and his fellow anti-racist clergy are freed from the persuader’s obligations of accurate framing and context. Kendi insists upon those things from his critics (read: heathens), yet seems remarkably unwilling (if not unable) to embody them himself. So it’s not surprising that Stamped from the Beginning, like many moralistic sermons, isn’t subtle. The documentary employs perhaps the most common tactic used by the kind of people who have two ideas and don’t know how to connect them: the voiceover. We see footage of KKK rallies, including ones at which KKK leaders bemoan and warn about the dangers of racial mixing. Immediately thereafter, we hear Donald Trump saying, “This is not just a matter of values, it’s also a matter of national survival. We have no choice.” The context, or at least what Kendi wants you to believe the context is, is clear. Never mind that the clip of Trump wasn’t of him talking about racial mixing at all, rendering such a comparison moot. It’s a lie, a damned lie — and, for Kendi, a completely justified lie to tell the audience. White supremacy is apparently such a fearsome enemy that facts, context, and honesty are acceptable casualties in the fight against it.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the case of Ronald Reagan. In the segment on crime, Stamped from the Beginning plays some of Reagan’s 1981 address to the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “From these statistics about youthful offenders and the impact of drug addiction on crime rates, a portrait emerges,” Reagan told his New Orleans audience. “The portrait is that of a stark, staring face, a face that belongs to a frightening reality of our time — the face of a human predator.” Kendi then intersperses the video of Reagan with videos of smiling people of color. The implication isn’t hard to pick up. Forget that Reagan never once mentioned race in his actual remarks. This is ridiculous, unserious, misleading BS from the Kendi school. It works because no one who believes in the modern anti-racist premise will ever fact-check it. It’s not lying, you see. It’s justified hyperbole. It’s a parable, you bigot.

In response to such claims, it’s not acceptable to say that ideas are ideas and people are people. Faith is what’s demanded. The anti-racist faith deems even the most innocuous and positive ideas unabashed blasphemy. Presenter Ruha Benjamin, a sociologist, slams the idea of assimilation. The examples of behaviors one assimilates to are working hard, valuing education, and caring about one’s health. The notion of assimilation through good choices is, in her words, a “different iteration of inferiority.” To accept Kendi’s premise is to accept that there is no meaningful difference between being told to “pull one’s pants up” and being told that having dreadlocks is culturally unacceptable. Really?

To buy into Kendi’s premise is also to accept that there’s no meaningful difference between the questioning of Phillis Wheatley, a poet in 18th-century Boston who faced undue skepticism from white New Englanders over her work, and the questioning of Ketanji Brown Jackson before her confirmation to the Supreme Court (and yes, Stamped from the Beginning places these episodes back-to-back). For Kendi, both are just examples of “white men [having] the right to ask you to prove your worth.”

Describing Stamped from the Beginning — and much of Kendi’s work, for that matter — as a parable isn’t an offhand comment or jab. Modern anti-racism actually does view itself as liberating America from its stains of racist history and policy in a manner that transcends actual politics and culminates in a triumphant victory of truth over power. Yet this transcendence of mission has led to a transcendence of the obligation to the very truth anti-racists say they believe in so much.

If anti-racism truly is so apparent and obviously true that any opposition to it constitutes racism . . . why lie? Why obscure context? Lying to defend the truth is no more legitimate in the realm of ideas than it is in the realm of religion. In fact, it’s a key sign of bad religion. When paired with a pointed intolerance for its critics and the allegedly “exploitative” environment that surrounds Kendi’s center at Boston University, it raises some serious questions about what kind of religion, exactly, the hardline leaders of the anti-racist movement are creating.

American history contains racial injustices. Promoting a bright future for the country means acknowledging them. You don’t have to lie and distort context to say that racial reconciliation in America has been a hard-earned struggle. But the anti-racist priesthood seems unable to do otherwise. How much wrong is Ibram X. Kendi willing to do to prove he’s on the right side of history?