The Wheels Are Falling Off the DEI Snake Oil Bus

It was only a matter of time before the wheels started falling off the buses on which scamsters like Henry Rogers (aka “Ibram X. Kendi”), Robin DiAngelo, and Glenn Singleton crisscross the country to hawk their “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) snake oil. It appears the luxurious bus Kendi/Rogers has been gliding around on is losing most of its wheels at once. Boston University (BU) has launched a formal inquiry into the Center for Antiracism Research (CAR) that Kendi established and has kinda, sorta, maybe run since the death of drugged-out, belligerent career criminal George Floyd.

After years of promoting racism under the guise of “antiracism,” antiracism grifters saw the national meltdown caused by Floyd’s death as just what they needed to kick their projects into high gear. Make hay while the sun shines and hordes of antiracists are burning down cities.

It was then that Boston University offered Kendi his own fiefdom within its sullied Ivory Tower. It appears, however, that Kendi is far less skilled at team management and scholarship than he is at making bank by pontificating silly ideas. He recently fired over 50 percent of his staff, and they were none too happy.

In a stunning exposé, BU’s student newspaper The Daily Free Press reported that “Three years later, after at least $43 million in grants and gifts and what sources say has been an underwhelming output of research, the Center for Antiracist Research laid off almost all of its staff last week.”

The indictment of the Kendi vanity project is comprehensive, and includes criticism of CAR for secrecy, Kendi’s unavailability, projects that never got off the ground, and projects launched but abandoned.

Spencer Piston, BU associate professor of political science and faculty affiliate at CAR, claims “There’s been a lack of transparency about how much money comes in and how it’s spent from the beginning, which comports with a larger culture of secrecy. … The Center has very, very much failed to deliver on its promise. It’s been a colossal waste of millions of dollars.”

It appears that Kendi has grown too big for his tiny britches. One critic claims that “It was mostly about him, rather than the work.”

Two years ago, Saida Grundy, associate professor of sociology and former CAR employee, lodged a complaint with the Compliance Services Office that “detailed multiple high-level employees leaving suddenly and allegations of a workplace culture that included fear of retaliation and discrimination.” Well, don’t that beat all. Discrimination allegedly resides at the center of Kendi’s “effort across multiple disciplines to build a world where racial equity and social justice prevail.”

Further, Grundy shared that “to the best of my knowledge, there is no good faith commitment to fulfilling funded research projects at CAR.”

Clinical associate professor in the School of Social Work and former assistant director of the “Narrative” office at CAR, Phillipe Copeland, spent two years developing educational programming for Kendi's project but resigned in June due to CAR failing “spectacularly.”

Some may have forgotten “antiracist” Kendi’s comment following public discussions about the adoption of two black children from Haiti by Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her husband. When Candace Owens suggested that allegations of racism on the part of Barrett were belied by her adoption of those two children, Kendi tweeted,

Some White colonizers "adopted" Black children. They "civilized" these "savage" children in the "superior" ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.

In a classic example of circular reasoning, the anti-intellectual Kendi defines racism:

Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities. … A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups.

Confused? Well, don’t even try to extricate yourself from the labyrinthine circle of illogic. Just accept that you’re a not-okay racist, I’m a not-okay racist, and everything else is racist—oh, except for Kendi and any white person who buys his books and spends inordinate amounts of time self-flagellating. Those books include How to Be an Antiracist, How to Raise an Antiracist, How to be a (Young) Antiracist, and Antiracist Baby.

Kendi’s spectacular fall from DEI stardom coincides with corporate America quietly getting rid of DEI flotsam and jetsam, a jettisoning that has rattled DEI officers and organizations that collude with government schools. It’s important to note that DEI efforts don’t address solely “antiracism.” Central to DEI efforts is the normalization of the entire “LGBTQ+” belief system and promotion of its socio-political goals.

One such profiteering ideologue who foresees his well running dry is Shaun Harper, education professor at the University of Southern California (USC) and—wait for it—director of the USC Race and Equity Center.

Harper boasts on his curriculum vitae that he “is an expert on diversity, equity, and inclusion in educational and corporate contexts” who “has procured $21.8 million in foundation grants and $14.2 million in contracts for the center.” Just imagine to what better uses those millions of dollars could have been put.

Harper also boasts that he has “worked with” over “400 businesses, agencies and organizations” including Nike, Google, Microsoft, Mattel, NBC Universal, Anheuser-Busch, the NFL, Major League Soccer, and the U.S. Air Force. The military has plucked money from your pockets and dumped it into Harper’s.

Harper penned a piece for Forbes that outlined a "non-exhaustive" list of ten reasons, socially constructed by Harper, explaining why corporate America is giving the heave-ho to DEI officers. Those reasons include the abruptness of efforts to confront white people with their racism, “transphobia,” racism, misinformation, disinformation, corporate cowardice, and racism.

There’s a delish irony in social justice warrior Rogers/Kendi being exposed by his own disciples for the academic fraud he is. “Antiracism” conmen and conwomen (confolx?) from sea to shining sea are beginning to see the brass ring snatched from their grimy, grasping fingers—finally.