14 Comments

What happens to kids like mine who can't possible answer the question "correctly" because of individual perception? If they say they are white/ non-Hispanic they are "bigots" denying their Cuban heritage and their father being a 1st generation college graduate (even though I don't think they are related, I have discovered the demographics lunatics do). If they say they are Cuban they are "stealing" opportunities from "disadvantaged" kids - how dare an upper middle class "mostly white" child who grew up going to private school do that? It's a catch-22 that applies not only to them, but at least 25% (possibly more) of their friends. This obsession with race is nuts. There is one human race (but they also can't write that because they'll be accused of being racist bigots).

Honestly, as a mom I just want my kids judged on their merits. I want them to attend a university that challenges them to de the best version of themselves. But where is that? i can't name one anymore (any yes, my husband and I both have masters degrees). The fact that universities deny merit as the most important factor to success in LIFE is a huge reason they are increasingly a waste of money that provides no higher learning, no enlightened anything, and no marketable skills training. If universities can't embody the strive for truth or excellence, how in the world do they think themselves capable of teaching young adults to strive for excellence in any particular field?

Expand full comment

Well written

Expand full comment

It worked for Elizabeth Warren.

Expand full comment

Lovely. So well-written and well argued. I'm daydreaming about folks walking around in T-shirts that read "Defund Ibram K"

Expand full comment

Kendi wants to "remedy" past discrimination with present discrimination against his notion of unfairly advantaged groups. People who want to go to college end up facing discrimination. Kendi's recently cancelled Peter Boghossian--blocked up on Twitter--and an hilarious parody of his "Antiracist Baby" book on YouTube vanished. A strong thinker would have welcomed criticism, I believe. Means people are thinking!

Expand full comment

What ever happened to teaching the reality that "life isn't always fair"? (pardon the pun!) It's a great disservice in preparing our children for adulthood if we lead them to believe that they will always encounter "fairness" in a world that can't accept that there are different paths to the same destination. "Their way" is the "right" way regardless of the destination. What a terribly self-defeating attitude.

As much as I would love to experience "heaven on earth", that happens only during fleeting moments which help to inspire my personal commitment to reflect love, compassion and empathy to whomever I encounter in my day to day life. That is often the best I can do while living in this, sometimes cruel and un-empathetic, world.

It seems that we all, until we come to understand better, live with "rose-colored glasses" in order to survive those who don't "do onto others". It's not a reality we can escape as we grow into adulthood but we, as individuals, can do our best to brighten the corner of someone's experience on a day-by-day basis showing the way of love and fairness by personal example.

Expand full comment
Sep 12, 2022·edited Jan 23, 2023

Kendi thinks he is helping his Black community, but he is not. Still waiting for Black leadership to wake up and smell the coffee - help their young to stay in school, not to get pregnant before they are married and to work on keeping their families together.

Expand full comment

Stephen Wright once said that “42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.“ I think today that can be modified to “42.7 percent of all 'facts' are made up on the spot.“ I think 42.7 percent may be a bit low, though.

Expand full comment

Talk about missing his own most pertinent point. 30% of white American college students are liars about their race. What kind of lies will they tell about more serious things? Duh...

Expand full comment

I'm not following this logic at all. From the Evolution is True writeup (Quillette is predictably behind a paywall): "Now clearly Kendi removed it (though he denies it; see below) because it appears to show that lying about your race if you’re white improves your chances of being accepted in college. I can see no other reason for the removal, especially given the pushback he got from people like Greenwald."

The original tweet, as we all know amounted to the following: 3/4ths of the 2/3rds of White students who allegedly lied about their race on college applications were accepted.

OK, so what? Is there any data showing that if they *hadn't* lied about their race they *wouldn't* have been accepted?

Talk about a tempest in a teapot.

Expand full comment

I’ve read Kendi’s book. Certainly no part of my takeaway was that we are solely constrained to membership in “set groups” but rather those groups that are a part of our identity, culture and history make up the complex pieces of the individual that we each are. We can recognize our diversity as well as different unique privileges and struggles within a community or as an individual without jeopardizing a pro-human position. It shouldn’t have to be a binary choice.

Expand full comment

Again you are rational, imagine if more ppl were. Loving your books Dr Reilly! Please go on tour in 2022 we need your voice to bring us back to true American ideals.

Expand full comment