'Approximately 1,619 Kendis': Ibram Kendi arrives late to debate about quantifying racism, then fails to get the joke

Anti-white activist Ibram Kendi arrived late to a recent debate regarding the quantification of racism — but just in time to embarrass himself.

The set-up

A political science professor at Kentucky State University suggested in the pages of the National Review last week that intersectionality "is just a badly done 'woke' version of regression analysis."

Dr. Wilfred Reilly wrote that "racism or sexism can only be said to exist where we find that pretty much identical people, who differ only in terms of the characteristic of race or sex, are still being treated differently — after all of the other factors which might explain performance differences between them have been accounted for."

"This sort of real bigotry is, today, fairly rare," said Reilly.

"Many 'intersectional' studies that purport to find giant residual effects of race or sex on some specific thing — individuals' chances of going to prison, let's say — literally just consist of unadjusted comparisons between citizens in two or more different groups," continued Reilly. "This, however, is not how serious people conduct this sort of analysis."

Reilly's assertion prickled one Harvard Ph.D. student who apparently found himself in the unserious camp.

Kareem Carr, a self-described statistician, claimed on X that the argument that racism and sexism "are essentially non-existent because their effects on stuff like income disappear if you control for all relevant variables like education, work history and so on" is wrong.

Having indicated he could explain why Reilly and others were wrong, Carr suggested that "[s]ocial forces like sexism and racism aren't magical. They act through specific mechanisms in the physical world."

After granting sexism and racism special powers, Carr then had his followers imagine that the impact of the "racism" could be tracked and measured.

Carr later admitted that it is "hard to frame this issue objectively."

The Kendi scale

Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, responded to Carr's post, asking, "What is the scientific definition of 'racism' here? How do you measure it quantitatively? How do you determine the causal influence from racism to intermediary institutions to individual income?"

"With what controls?" added Rufo. "And what is the current quantity of racism in the United States?"

Colin Wright, the evolutionary biologist behind "Reality's Last Stand," had an answer ready for Rufo: "Depends on what units you use. But assuming you're using the Kendi scale, as is standard in the US, then approximately 1,619 Kendis."

Wright clarified, "For those not familiar with the Kendi scale, 1 Kendi refers to the quantity of racism, measured in Kendis, in order to reach 1 Kendi."

Ibram Kendi, originally Ibram Henry Rogers, is the identitarian academic who runs the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University — the race-obsessed center that recently fired half its staff and is facing an inquiry over allegations of employee exploitation, poor pay, failing to provide any halfway decent research, and a mismanagement of $43 million in donations, according to the Washington Post.

As the inquiry may soon confirm, Kendi's expertise is not managing think tanks but rather in accusing multitudes of Americans of racism. His antidote is, evidently, more racism.

"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination," Kendi wrote in 2019. "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

The figure Wright used in his joke appears to have been aimed at "The 1619 Project," Nikole Hannah-Jones' fact-averse revisionist history, which spun out a derivative containing direct contributions from Kendi.

Rufo pressed the joke further, writing, "Can't believe we're approaching 1,619 ku of racism in America, in 2024. We need the Department of Antiracism to shut it down—15 days to slow the spread."

On Sunday, Kendi seized upon Wright's days-old joke, writing, "In your imaginary, racism does not exist but the 'Kendi scale' does exist? I am not familiar with the 'Kendi scale' but I am familiar with racism."

"I suspect this is one reason why people like this become propagandists. It is easy to deny reality and make things up," added Kendi.

Colin Wright responded to Kendi, "It's just a joke dude."

Wright later noted with apparent glee, "Kendi thought my post about measuring racism in America using the 'Kendi scale,' which I said came out to '1619 Kendis,' was serious. I even defined the units of the Kendi scale with Kendi-esque circularity."

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