The Civil Rights Movement has been a historic American success, and Americans of good will have always been glad for it. But playing the race card has, for many, been a ticket to money and infamy. 

Jesse Jackson perfected the tactic of extorting corporations with racial threats. His Rainbow PUSH Coalition, founded in 1971, raked in millions. Dealing with numerous health issues including Parkinson’s disease, and wheelchair bound, Jackson resigned as President of that race hustling organization in 2023. After his departure the Rainbow PUSH Coalition found extorting corporations not nearly as effective as it once was and has had a hard time keeping leaders.

The Founder of the National Action Network, Al Sharpton, eventually eclipsed Jackson, using the same race hustling tactics, but added a gig on MSNBC as playing the race card began to lose its effectiveness. Despite making untold millions, Sharpton has been notorious for evading taxes, and was given $500,000 by Kamala Harris’ campaign during the 2024 election cycle.  Sharpton’s race hustle, like Jackson’s, is becoming ineffective.

Like Sharpton, who capitalized on the 2020 rise of BLM and the “Summer of Love” riots, looting and arson, Ibram X. Kendi saw an opportunity to use Critical Race Theory and DEI for fame and fortune, as Christopher Rufo notes at City Journal:

Graphic: book cover scan

The most significant was Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi. After the 2020 death of George Floyd, Kendi became America’s race guru, selling books, delivering speeches, lecturing corporations, advising politicians, and everywhere preaching the new gospel of “antiracism.” His key idea was that institutions must practice “antiracist discrimination” in favor of blacks and other minorities to make up for past “racist discrimination.” His ideology was rudimentary critical race theory, his agenda rudimentary DEI.

The press heralded Kendi as a genius, scholar, and the moral voice of the Black Lives Matter era. In 2021, the New York Times was particularly fawning, publishing uncritical fare like “Ibram X. Kendi Likes to Read at Bedtime,” an article about his reading habits. “You’re at the forefront of a recent wave of authors combating racism through active, sustained antiracism,” the Times opined. “Do you count any books as comfort reads, or guilty pleasures?”

Kendi, and several others, were able to ride the renewed race hustle wave, but by then, race hustlers, including white congress critters, had been screaming “racist!” so hysterically and for so long they became a contemporary version of the boy who cried “wolf!” The race card was more and more canceled and branding people racists lost virtually all its power to extort cash or anything else from those feeling guilty about oppression they never did.

Still, for several years, Kendi managed to rack up quite a bit of celebrity and cash.  His “Center on Antiracist Research at Boston University made at least $55 million and had a full-time staff. We’ll likely never know, unless a non-weaponized IRS gets involved, just how much Kendi made, but he had not nearly as much staying power as Jackson or Sharpton:

It all ended in calamity. As the country emerged from BLM-induced mania, journalists began to cast a more critical eye on Kendi and his work. The conservative press circulated embarrassing clips, including one in which Kendi could not define the word “racism” without deploying circular logic. By 2024, the New York Times, no longer interested in his nighttime reading routine, exposed the professor’s shallow ideology and raised questions about his leadership at the research center.

It turns out, like so many professors of “studies,” Kendi was, at best, a poor and unproductive scholar. His “Center” produced very little “research,” and what was produced was embarrassing to actual scholars.

By 2024, the race hysteria kept on life support by the self-inflicted death of Saint George Floyd was already fading—fast. Americans no longer recoiled in horror at the thought of being called racist, and corporations, finally forced to admit DEI and CRT were death for their bottom line, began a rapid sprint back to capitalist reality. The election of Donald Trump has dramatically hastened “antiracism’s” demise.

On January 30, Boston University made a momentous announcement:

Ibram X. Kendi, the founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research (CAR), says he has decided to leave BU to join Howard University in Washington, DC. CAR will close when its charter with the University expires on June 30.

BU will pay Kendi's 12 remaining employees until then. 

It’s more likely Kendi was “encouraged” to make that decision. His hustle was probably, finally too much for even BU. And hopefully, the race hustling chapter of American history is drawing to its ignominious end. Another Republican term following Trump’s second term ought to put the stake through that particularly malicious and divisive vampire’s heart.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.