Ibram Kendi: Adopting Black Children Doesn't Make You 'Not Racist'

Ibram X. Kendi, director of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, wrote on Saturday that white people who adopt black children may be “racist,” joining a growing group of Democrats and leftists commenting on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Haitian son and daughter.

Kendi wrote on social media: “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.”

“And whether this is Barrett or not is not the point,” he continued. “It is a belief too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can’t be racist.”

Kendi concluded, “I’m challenging the idea that White parents of kids of color are inherently ‘not racist’ and the bots completely change what I’m saying to ‘White parents of kids of color are inherently racist.’ These live and fake bots are good at their propaganda. Let’s not argue with them.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) described Kendi’s posts as “a cruel, racist attack against Judge Barrett and her family.”

On Monday, Kendi opined more on whether someone can be free from racism: “we should eliminate the term ‘not racist’ from the human vocabulary,” he wrote. “We are either being racist or antiracist.” After receiving thousands of responses in backlash, he deleted the post, but he insisted to his critics that “not racist” is a phrase without meaning.

Kendi expressed support for expansion of the Supreme Court, known as court packing, if Barrett is confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.

“White supremacy” and “white privilege” are widespread phenomena in American society, Kendi regularly declares.

Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and How to Be an Antiracist, was recently a featured guest on Oprah Winfrey’s eponymous Apple TV series. Winfrey praised Kendi’s derision of America as a nation pathologized by racism primarily targeting black people.

Beyond Oprah Winfrey, Kendi’s narratives have been promoted by technology company CEOs like Jack Dorsey and left-wing media.