Opinion
The man who ushered in the concept of “anti-racism” continues to profit off his work with the latest release of a documentary on Netflix based on his book. After screening his film, Ibram Kendi spoke about what he believes the documentary means to humanity.
As usual, he received obedient adoration. The documentary claims to explore the origins of racism throughout world history told through the lens of prominent black women and Kendi.
The film’s predictable end state is a punctuation of the blame that continues to rest on the shoulders of all white people based solely on the fact that they are white. Only in America can someone characterize a grouping of people based on the color of their skin and depict them in an inherently negative way and be lauded for it.
Let’s look at this documentary and what Mr. Kendi had to say about white people that garnered him universal applause.
It’s Provocative, So It’s Good
Netflix released the documentary Stamped from the Beginning based on Ibram Kendi’s 2016 book titled “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.” The documentary starts with a question that begs to be answered:
“What’s wrong with black people?”
Throughout the documentary, Mr. Kendi and the “experts,” who are prominent black women, provide a visually trendy exploration of the world history of slavery and racism. Angela Davis is one of the black women picked to guide the viewer through this journey.
History has a curious way of revising itself over time, as witnessed in this documentary and, ironically, the background of one of its experts, Ms. Davis. The documentary claims Prince Henry of Portugal, commonly known as Prince Henry the Navigator, was motivated in the 1400s to “explore” the world so he could justify the enslavement of black people, ignoring the fact that during that time in history, there was no need to justify that sort of activity, given its widespread acceptance.
This sort of revisionist history is also used to describe Angela Davis, who, if one didn’t know better, would know her as an academic, activist, and philosopher. No need to recall her involvement in kidnapping and murder that had her as one of the FBI’s most wanted or her membership in the Communist Party.
The documentary is also hailed as being joyfully raw in its truth-telling with these same brave, bold black women spittin’ hard truths like:
- “Thomas Jefferson was full of sh*t.”
- criticising Vice President Kamala Harris is “blatant misogynoir”
- “seeing white folks walk their pit bulls makes me go to a frightened ancestral place”
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Sit In Your Whiteness And Like It
The real point of the documentary is in line with the ultimate narrative Mr. Kendi pushes regularly: white people are bad because they are white, and not acknowledging their inherent badness makes them even worse. Mr. Kendi artfully hits on this theme during the screening of his film:
“I don’t think white people worldwide have really reckoned with how much their own personal identity is shaped by constructions of whiteness,” he says. “Whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity.”
So what is ‘whiteness’? According to the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History website, whiteness is defined as, “Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared.”
This theory claims that all white people share the same customs, culture, and beliefs. What are the collective customs, culture, and beliefs of white people?
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I’ve had the pleasure of having traveled all over the world, meeting all sorts of different people of varying colors, including white people. I can tell you that not all white people in the world have the same customs, culture, and beliefs.
But whiteness is just the conduit towards the actual message.
It’s Not Racist, It’s Anti-Racist
When scrolling through the Smithsonian’s website, one eventually comes across the concept of “white privilege.” White privilege argues that being white means you benefit in the world based on your whiteness, whether you want to or ask for it.
The website says that “for many white people, this can be hard to hear, understand, or accept – but it’s true. If you are white in America, you have benefited from the color of your skin.”
Pay attention to the wording. It can be hard to hear, understand, or accept, but it’s true.
There is no actual proof of this alleged universal truth. Furthermore, the definitiveness of the statement alludes to no wiggle room for any counter-debate.
It’s true because they say it’s true, and to argue that it’s not is to be racist, which you are anyway. Mr. Kendi noted that he believes his documentary will “…liberate all of us because we’ve all been told a lie about ourselves and other people.”
This sentence garnered a gasp of amazement from the screening host and applause. How very deep and insightful, and in many ways accurate.
We’ve all been told lies about ourselves and others. White people are told lies all the time predicated on the very principles pushed by Mr. Kendi.
And black people are told lies about themselves, and more often than not told what they can’t achieve by the same principles. Mr. Kendi asks what’s wrong with black people.
The only thing wrong with black people, as the documentary ironically states, is that we think something is wrong with black people. To push the idea that black people can’t succeed due to inherent whiteness and white privilege goes fundamentally against the idea that there is nothing wrong with black people.
Mr. Kendi and those who conform to his ideology want to divide the world by race and use skin color as a means to validate their flawed arguments. That used to be called something specific….oh that’s right….it’s racist.
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