On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme earlier this month, the broadcaster Amol Rajan gave the most misguided opinion on a book I have heard this year: he described Ibram X Kendi’s bestselling How to Be an Antiracist as “complex”. Kendi is many things, but he is not a complex thinker.
Regardless, he is venerated as the go-to thinker on racism. A professor of humanities and the founding director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, Kendi was last year awarded a MacArthur fellowship worth $625,000. Unofficially known as the “genius grant”, it is one of the most distinguished awards for intellectual excellence in the US.
Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month
Content from our partners
