Ibram X. Kendi Backtracks After Tweeting on Study Some Say Undermines His White Privilege Narrative

Author and prominent critical race theory advocate Ibram X. Kendi has deleted a tweet after critics argued it undermined the racial narrative upon which he’s built his career.

Kendi, a humanities professor at Boston University, tweeted an article Friday by The Hill citing a study that found 34% of White students who applied to colleges and universities falsely claimed they were a racial minority on their application and that 77% of them were accepted.

Kendi summarized on Twitter: “More than a third of White students lied about their race on college applications, and about half of these applicants lied about being Native American. More than three-fourths of these students who lied about their race were accepted.”

Kendi’s critics pounced on the tweet, saying it undermined his life’s work. {snip}

Kendi later deleted the tweet without explanation and accused his critics of twisting his words.

“They lie about what I said to defend the lying of White college applicants,” he wrote. “Here is their tortured line of thinking: When White applicants *think* they have an advantage by lying about being a person of color then that means they *do* have an advantage which then means structural racism doesn’t exist.”

{snip}