Not at all sure if I'm supposed to share the YouTube link to this Dr. Kendi event I signed up to watch and live-tweet, but...

It starts in about three minutes, and I'll tell y'all now, I don't have high hopes for this event or any tweets about it to be all that interesting. You never know, though.

Just over 40,000 people waiting for this stream (there are others as well). I hope at least 30,000 of them think about this crap like I do.

The YouTube video won't play, and when I try to get in the other way, I get this. Hmm...

I'm not interested enough in this to pursue it further. Oh well.

It's going to be really hard not to make a joke about punctuality and keeping schedules being features of "white supremacy" if it starts working here in a few minutes, as people are suggesting it may.

Someone sent me a different link, so I'm in, about 15 minutes late. Maybe it'll be fun.

"An anti-racist set of policies would standardize resources, not curriculums," and this then leads into changing the culture of teaching in terms of being a "multicultural nation." "If we're a multicultural nation, we need to act like it."

Okay, that's a fun point. Multiculturalism and pluralism aren't the same thing, and this is a huge point. Multiculturalism doesn't work well, it seems, but pluralism does. They want multiculturalism, not pluralism.

Now he's talking about how SAT scores are just a function of money, which apparently also means that it's a function of race because of "more likely to." The conflation and idiocy here is absolutely insane. "Being black in a classroom is criminal," he said. What?

I told y'all I'm bad at live-tweeting. Deal with it. LOL.

He's talking about how the SAT is intrinsically racist because it's a function of how much money the parents of the students have, which isn't racial (money doesn't have a race), but because there are statistical disparities, I guess it is. This is the poverty of Kendi's thinking

I can't even figure out how he got to "being black in a classroom is criminal." It came from the claim that more black students than others get in trouble. Again, he's COMPLETELY confused about the causes of circumstances and wants to remake education as a result. So bad.

He now says he isn't just challenging racism; he's challenging how people think about racism (thus most people won't be happy with him). No shit, Dr. Kendi. You're monkeying around with the fundamental meanings of really important concepts. It's not a small thing.

He says we have a "metastatic racism" that we can't even start to treat because we in denial about it. He's the one (among others) metastasizing it! This becomes the justification for saying that America isn't a very good nation and worse because it won't take its chemo.

Now the moderator is calling it the result of "metastatic denial." I'm watching concept creep and terminology invention in real time, and it's like, "MY ENCYCLOPEDIA CAN'T KEEP UP WITH THIS!"

We're off to Covid being racist now, though.

Our metastatic denying society called it the "great equalizer," then data started showing that black people were dying disproportionately, more denials, white people wanted to reopen states, black people taking it more seriously, oh, black people have pre-existing conditions.

That last tweet was trying to keep up with his Gish gallop where he's trying to explain "metastatic denial" of the fact that racism must be the reality of why black and brown people got and died of Covid, through lacking access to good air, jobs, water, care, etc.

"The reason that black people are 2.5x as likely to die of Covid-19 is racism and racist policy, not because there's something wrong with black people." -not a medical doctor.

Also, "wrong with black people" is such a shit interpretation of trying to understand the situation.

Now we're into the "racism is a public health crisis" thing, which he's really happy to see people taking up. Points out lacking running water in Detroit and lack of clean water in Flint preventing handwashing. Why, though? Racism. Why less health insurance? Racism. Obviously.

There's just absolutely NO attempt to try to lead the way to a rigorous analysis of any cause for any problem. It's just "racism" all the way down.

"What would an anti-racist Boston look like?"

Like anywhere else: clear assessment of racial disparities in [basically everything] and then figure out what are the policies that are leading to these disparities. Essentially eliminating racist policies.

Idiots.

His vision for an anti-racist city is one that assumes that racist policy causes all problems, then vague hand-waving about looking at the policies and eliminating any racist policies.

Kendi says that people don't have a definition for racism, or that they use a really narrow one, literally "anyone but me." So he wants to work with people to define "racist," "racist ideas," and "racist policy." Then... Jesus. really?

So he says he would challenge someone with his "very clear definition" of racism (that which creates racist outcomes) by asking them to explain some disparity, and then when they say "black people are lazy..." call them on racism.

What world does this hee-haw live in?

He got asked if black and brown people can be racist or not. He goes into his spill about there not being such thing as not-racist, only racist and anti-racist, depending on how they use their power to influence ideas and policy. This applies to all people, not just white people.

Moderator says we're at a real racial inflection point. Asks what work is needed.

"three out of four Americans recognize racial discrimination is a big problem, so will three out of four Americans support big solutions?" (Poll in June, during moral panic, lol of course)

He says we need to undertake "painful, massive solutions" to fix the "painful, massive solutions" to racism in our times, and we have to be able to tell our grandchildren what we did to make this better. "Right side of history" metanarrative.

Kendi: "I consider an ally someone who is willing to get into good trouble." This means someone willing to get themselves in trouble by standing up for ending or challenging some unjustice.

Good trouble.

All the harm, injustice, inequities buzzwords. This is supposed to lead people to ally with these black people who are fighting injustices. I suppose he only means the kinds of injustices that he defines as injustices. The goal is to "transform this country," into a Utopia.

I can't even keep up with this nonsense. He's just repeating a bunch of tropes and insinuating that all conservatives must be deeply racist and constantly speaking in racist dogwhistles.

Now he's going to tell us how to convince your friends and family to be anti-racist. Starting off with getting POC out of their "denial," which is due to buying into the lies that black people are representative of blackness or racism. Hmm. Gotta be the right kind of black.

Definitely just made the point that black people have to become experts in his understanding of racism or they're buying into lies and in denial about their complicity in racism.

Now he's been asked by a Latinx what he thinks about how the conversation about racism is all a black/white issue, and he's kind of waffling intersectional. Black people and Latinx should be allies with each other about the different kinds of anti-them racism.