Self-proclaimed antiracists can still advance racist genetic theories of black inferiority.

Evidence

After Hernnstein and Murray decreed that racial inequality was due not to discrimination, but to genetics, Murray’s co-fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, almost on cue in 1995, decreed “the end of racism” in his challenging book, which used that phrase as its title. “Why should groups with different skin color, head shape, and other visible characteristics prove identical in reasoning ability or the ability to construct an advanced civilization?” asked the former Reagan aide Dinesh D’Souza. “If blacks have certain inherited abilities, such as improvisational decision making, that could explain why they predominate in certain fields such as jazz, rap, and basketball, and not in other fields, such as classical music, chess, and astronomy.” These racist ideas were not racist ideas to D’Souza, who wrapped himself in his Indian ancestry on the book’s first page in order to declare that his “inclinations” were “strongly antiracist and sympathetic to minorities.” D’Souza, the self-identified antiracist, rejected the antiracist notion that racism was “the main obstacle facing African Americans today, and the primary explanation for black problems.” Instead, he regarded “liberal antiracism” as African Americans’ main obstacle, because it blamed “African American pathologies on white racism and opposes all measures that impose civilization standards.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1143

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends chapter 36’s treatment of Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve; also exemplifies Kendi’s scheme where an assimilationist position (imposing ‘civilization standards’) is racist rather than antiracist.
• DEFINE: Shows how assimilationist logic (‘impose civilization standards’ on Black people) is classified by Kendi as racist, not antiracist, regardless of the speaker’s self-label.