Is “Antiracism” Really what Its Well-Meaning Activists Think It Is?

A Chinese American Looks at "How to Be an Antiracist"

From a cultural perspective, a certain segment of America’s immigrant population is shining a light on American blind spots. To be specific, the survivors of global Communism have a word for us.

Chinese American Dr. Ping was born and raised in Mao’s China. He came here by way of Canada after receiving a scholarship to do graduate studies in Vancouver. He recently posted a review of Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist. His conclusion? Kendi’s prescription for America is straight-up Neo-Marxism.

"When I was reading Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be An Antiracist, I couldn't help but think about Communism. His ideology is a variant of Marxism, substituting class with race. The struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat is replaced with the struggle between racist and antiracist."

For ease of discussion, he calls Kendi’s system of ideas Kendiism:

"Let us examine its end first. Kendiism wants to achieve a world of racial equity. Kendi didn’t define racial equity explicitly, but by the examples he gave for racial inequity, we can deduce that it is a society where everything is in proportional representation to the racial make-up in the total population."

For ideal racial equity, then, there should be a proportional representation of black CEOs, teachers, politicians, college students, etc. But how does Kendi propose to bring this about? Via overt racial discrimination implemented by government power. Dr. Ping continues:

"He proposed to establish a Department of Anti-racism staffed by antiracist experts like himself which 'would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.'

Have we ever had such an agency with this kind of power in America? Never! But there were such agencies in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. There are still such agencies in Communist China and North Korea."

Indeed, there were and are, and we would do well to listen to our Communist refugee neighbors. Rod Dreher wrote an entire book about totalitarian creep in America after being contacted in 2015 by the son of an elderly Czechoslovakian immigrant. His mother, now in her nineties, was deeply concerned about recent events in America, because they reminded her of what it was like when Communism first came to her home country. Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents drew from the USSR and the Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe, but the warnings of it resonate with Dr. Ping’s, here. He was born and raised in Mao’s China, and his analysis is apropos.

"Kendiism promises a future of racial equity, but its means would create a totalitarian government. It is not what it wants. But if history is a guide, we can see its inevitable end. Kendiism is neo-Marxism."

Salvo, too, has been highlighting these themes for some time. See State Purposes: Utopian Creep & the Struggle for Human Rights & Freedom, Statism’s Deadbeat Dad: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Wrong about Rights: How the New Social Justice Betrays Justice & Subverts the Just Society for just a few examples.

No doubt, the majority of antiracist voices in America mean well. They have no clue that when the Marxists came to power in the East, the well-meaning ones were the first to be shot and eliminated.