“What seems clear enough is that Kendi and Minhaj both believed that they could reap all the rewards of the mass market and still maintain an edge and a sense of political purpose. And, while there are certainly differences between them—I don't agree with any of Kendi's prescriptions or, really, the concept of anti-racism, but I still believe he's a more sincere operator than Minhaj—they captured huge audiences filled, in large part, by well-intentioned white people who wanted a person of color to deliver the pabulum they wanted to hear.”

-- Jay Caspian Kang, “Ibram X. Kendi, Hasan Minhaj, and the Question of Selling Out,” on The New Yorker site

I hadn't heard about Ibram Kendi's problems (laying off much of the staff at his Center for Antiracist Research despite many millions in donations), and barely knew of him, to be honest; but I knew of Hasan Minhaj, I was just never a fan, so his controversy (fabricating stories of racism in his standup for greater moral authority) didn't exactly make me wring my hands. That said, “selling out” feels an odd way of getting at what connects these two. I think the quote above gets closer to it. Indeed, it made me flash on post-George Floyd, 2020, and how some white people were suddenly very, very earnest about establishing their anti-racist credentials and recommending X, Y or Z to watch, read or listen to. It got old fast. If it was ever young.

One over-recommended book was Robin Diangelo's “White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism,” whose very subtitle seems like a bulwark against criticism. I never read it, or even picked it up, I just remember asking someone for an example from the book. That example involved Jackie Robinson: How white people, according to Diangelo, think Robinson broke the color barrier because he was the first African American that was good enough to play in the Majors rather than the first that was allowed to play in the Majors.

Me, after a beat: Who the fuck thinks that?

Obviously I'm not the demographic here. I know too much about Jackie Robinson, for one, but it didn't take much. It wasn't work, learning about him and other race matters, but whatever non-work it was, a lot of people didn't do it; and then it felt like they wanted to lead the rest of us to where many of us had already been.

Anyway, I hope that time is over.