I really appreciate the work that Ibram Kendi did with Stamped from the Beginning. Much respect to his scholarship and passion. I also really disagree with some of the foundational assertions in How to be an Anti-Racist, and I don’t recommend it as a guide.

I continue to recommend the original Stamped, alongside Nell Irvin Painter’s phenomenal History of White People.

I think the notion that Black people can be racist toward white people to be incredibly wrong and potentially dangerous. It will be used against Black people on the streets and in the courts in the coming years, and having a Black person say those things will help them do it.

I’m not commenting on Kendi’s intentions here. It’s clear to me he loves Black people. I just disagree with him about the road his assertions put us on.

Want to point out, as someone who does book reviews, it is increasingly hard to find venues for book reviews and author interviews. Increasingly few publications take these. Those that do don’t hire a lot of Black writers.

That’s one reason you haven’t seen a critical review.

With the potential demise of the National Book Critics Circle, I’m worried about the future of book reviewing as a genre.

There’s potential in here: to rethink book reviewing to more widely include the perspectives of people who are traditionally marginalized.