The New York Times
He redefined ‘racist’. Now he’s trying to build a newsroom
BOSTON – Ibram X. Kendi and Bina Venkataraman met last summer when their major Boston institutions, Boston University and The Boston Globe, struggled with racial justice protests. Venkataraman, the editor of The Globe’s editorial page, asked Kendi, the author of a book called ‘How to Be an Antiracist’, why he decided to set up the Center for Antiracist Research in a city known for the setbacks of buses and ‘where sports fans like athletes of color, ”she recalls in an interview. They started talking about their shared obsession with another Boston history, 19th-century abolition newspapers. Then they wondered what it would mean to establish a newspaper in 2021 in the spirit of William Lloyd Garrison’s legendary The Liberator. Sign up for The Morning Newsletter of the New York Times In particular, they wondered what it would mean to bring the sense of urgency with which Garrison started the newspaper in 1831 to American racism and a more gradual approach to slavery. to abandon. ‘I do not want to think, speak or write in moderation on this subject. No! no! “he began famously, saying that it would be like giving a moderate alarm to a man whose house is on fire.” Now, with the support of their institutions and a seven-digit- budget, they plan to launch an online publication later this year that mixes reports, opinions and academic research, some of which will appear in The Globe, hoping to revive the tradition of a generation of media that precedes the formal distribution of news and opinions in 20th-century American journalism. And they want to channel the energy that a year of conversations and arguments about racism has generated in the newsroom. “If there are no people moving for urgent change, it will be easy to just turn to other issues, “Venkataraman said in an interview.” And I think it’s an inspiring framework to think about why you need a publication or platform now, because you have it in people’s minds. must stick to the news cycle. ‘ Of course, this is not a simple project, the politics of the two venerable institutions means that the new publication will employ two editors – in – chief, one with a more academic approach and one more journalism, amid a national scramble for editorial The founders said they had prior talks with Wesley Lowery of CBS and Errin Haines of The 19th, a new nonprofit group focused on gender and politics that exemplifies The Emancipator. of the university and the newspaper, but also wants to raise money from foundations and individuals.And then there is the issue of the name.A Christian non-profit organization best known for the fight against marital equality, Liberty Counsel, has the trademark Marked ‘The Liberator’ for his newsletter, so Kendi and Venkataraman had to dig into some dark corners of the past for an available historical publication: The Emancipator, wa t was the newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society during the 19th century. But perhaps the most interesting challenge is defining what it means to start fresh after a year of internal debate in American newsrooms, including when the word “racism” should be used and what it even means. Should it be reserved for Nazis and Klansmen, and used with the utmost caution because it has such power? Or should it, as a new generation of writers have argued, be applied to daily characteristics of American injustice? Kendi played a central role in the debate with his book from 2019. “If ever there was a group of people who would argue the definition of a term, especially a seemingly politically charged term like ‘racism’, why would aren’t they journalists? “Kendi said in an interview Thursday.” They need to define the term based on evidence. “Kendi’s book, a memoiristic argument that Americans of all races should confront their roles in a racist system, drew attention and controversy because they drew the word “racist” away from the current usage as a hypercharged word reserved for the clearest cases. He believes the word should be attached to actions, not people, and should be used is to describe supportive policies, such as standardized tests, that yield a race-inequality outcome.The focus on outcomes helped put Kendi at the center of the long-running argument about the roots of inequality.But when he pushed his book blissful, he said, he struggled for criticism from the left. In some circles, it has become an axiom that Black Americans by definition cannot be racist. But the people who commit racist acts in his book include President Barack Obama and Kendi himself. And so Kendi’s work has influenced a growing debate in the newsroom about the use of the word descriptive, as an assertion about policy, rather than as a vague, loaded personal nickname. The book from 2019 and the intense focus on racism after the assassination of George Floyd the following year, also transformed Kendi from a reputed but low-key academic networker into a general, best-selling author whose book on the Logan airport for sale. He became what one of his friends called ‘Captain Black America’ – a black academic or journalist who becomes a lightning rod for the right and the object of white liberal worship, as Ta-Nehisi Coates did after his Atlantic article in 2014 in the case. for compensation. “If he did not exist, his critics would have to invent him because he is a person who can target them,” New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb said. Self-promotion does not come automatically to Kendi. But on his way home to put his daughter to bed Thursday, he subjected a brief interview in the foyer of a Boston university building, double-masked and wearing three layers of wool against the cold rain. While I was waiting, I read on Twitter about Alexi McCammond, a young black woman who was forced to resign as the new editor of Teen Vogue after a controversy over racist tweets about Asians that she posted as a teenager. I asked him how his view that ‘racist’ is not a permanent label for individual squares with an unforgiving social media culture and a growing corporate culture that has translated his work into formal training sessions – the subject of a recent critical opinion piece in The Globe. Kendi said he would not “police” how people use his work. “People need to be held accountable if they are racist, but I think people need to be able to repair the damage,” he said. “I do not consider ‘racist’ to be a fixed category.” He added that he did not believe that ‘if someone said something racist 20 years ago or even two days ago, that they were racist at the moment. This is not how most Americans, or most reporters, use the word. But it has a clarity and flexibility that makes it valuable, whether you buy into Kendi’s broader worldview, which includes comprehensive critiques of American capitalism. And The Emancipator is interesting in part because it is an opportunity to put his ideas into journalistic practice. But perhaps the biggest chance – and challenge of The Emancipator – is to find and capture an audience. It’s not easy: it’s noisy and competitive, and translating academic ideas for popular consumption can be more difficult than it sounds. However, the Emancipator has one of the great advantages in American journalism: it starts all over again. While mainstream news editors are wringing their hands over what it means to be neutral, The Emancipator – in theory – could offer the growing number of journalists who seem to be asking for it a chance to erase the 20th-century divide between news and opinion, and to mix reporting, data and arguments on how to change society now. As a model, Venkataraman cites a recent Washington Post project on reconsidering public safety by going beyond police reform. “For some of these things, trying something new is a more effective way of addressing the frustrations people have,” Haines said. She said she would stay in the 19th. (Lowery declined to comment on a query about the project.) “The ship turns at a heritage site – it’s hard.” And Kendi and Venkataraman said they did not expect to hack into a party line or accept Kendi’s work as orthodoxy. I asked him, for example, about the criticism that his standardist tests as racist could provide easy coverage for bad instructions for black students. “You both have people who see themselves as civil rights activists who are supportive, and there are people who see themselves as civil rights activists who oppose it,” he said. “It would be great to see how they discuss it on the pages of The Emancipator.” One thing that cannot be debated, Venkataraman said, is “that racism exists and is ingrained in American society in many ways.” She compared it to global warming coverage. “If you stop debating whether climate change or systemic racism is a reality and whether it is a problem, you can discuss the most important question you need to do about it,” she said. “To me, it’s reality-based journalism, not advocacy journalism.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company