Reluctant to engage Ibram X. Kendi

I've been working my way through Ibram X. Kendi's How to be Antiracist. I'm about one third of a the way through. It's not a hard or difficult work, not bound up in abstruse theory. Its writing is easy enough for me to understand. But it's hard to finish.

The reason for the difficulty is only partially "because it challenges my white privilege." I'm sure that's part of it. I do believe I have privilege as a white person that non-white persons don't have.

But "the challenge to my white privilege" is not the whole thing, or the main thing. Rather, it's a combination of other things, too.

One is that it's a book that "I'm supposed to read." No, no one is forcing me to read it. But it's one of those books the title of which is in the air and is being "debated." That is, if you can call what's being said a "debate." Outside of the podcasts I've been listening to with Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, and Coleman Hughes, I've seen very little engagement with Kendi's book that goes beyond, "it's something all white people ought to read." 

Another reason is that what I've read so far appears to be way too reductionist to be serious, to be worthy of the accolades I've heard so many send the book's way. It seems Kendi argues that racism is the only thing to combat and that one can easily discern the antiracist choice. A racist policy is one that advantages one race over another, he says. Fair enough. But what about the argument that racism is so pervasive that any policy, even a putative antiracist one, can in some ways advantage one racial group over another. And no, I'm not talking about "reverse discrimination." I'm talking about how a program like race-based affirmative action can actually both benefit some persons of color and harm them at the same time, both those who benefit and those who can't attain the benefit.

Oddly, the book (or the first third of it that I've read) seems to acknowledge little in the way of group incentives or institutions that encourage people to make certain choices. It would seem that someone who sees racism as a cornerstone of American society would acknowledge that racist structures influence choices and that those choices may be something to criticize.

I don't deny that racism exists. I don't even deny that it's impossible to take a "neutral" stance toward racism. I don't deny that "antiracist" is different from "non-racist" or that I in some sense help sustain racism by choosing not to be antiracist. (I also, for what it's worth, count myself as a cautious supporter of race-based affirmative action.)

What I'm arguing against, is a certain simplistic notion that there is only right and wrong and nothing in between--and that right and wrong is easy to discern.

Kendi's approach, at its worse, seems to function mostly as a way to teach us (by "us," I probably mean "white people," but I'm not certain) certain scripts, certain things to say, or profess in order to demonstrate that we understand our original sin and orient ourselves to addressing the right. 

To be clear, Kendi's work (again, the one-third I've read of it) is not wholly to be criticized. Kendi focuses on actions and not on essences. He's not one of the antiracist "racial realists" that it's easy to accuses activists of being.