Future generations will barely believe it, but this stuff had its moment. Kendi became a multi-millionaire off the Floyd agonists among liberal and corporate America, as I noted a year ago. The man had hustle and an easy way with conversational patter, as well as the willingness to fearlessly reductio his thesis all the way to absurdum. It captured a certain zeitgeist. No wonder he was showered with $55 million for his Boston University “antiracism center,” and no wonder he fumbled it all. It all collapsed when we shuddered ourselves out of the 2020–21 punch-drunk daze. Being surprised at the fact of Kendi’s mismanagement is like being surprised that you can’t really promote Eddie Murphy from street hustler to floor trader in the span of a month.

Strangely enough, I end with today’s “news hook” instead of beginning with it: The New York Times Magazine is out this week with an autopsy on the rise and fall (to date) of Kendi. The piece is of course written with all due sympathy — in this narrative, the audience is assumed to understand that Kendi is a well-meaning crusader beset by the cruelties of academic expectations — and for once I don’t particularly recommend it to you. It treats the entire phenomenon of Kendi-ism as the unique travail of one put-upon college administrator unused to disbursing large amounts of cash. (Ray Stantz once warned Peter Venkman that the harsh realities of the private sector would make him long for the cushiness of academia, but apparently academia has raised its game as well.) Great pains are made to distinguish his theories from those of Robin DiAngelo’s: For her, racism is a state of inexpiable white original sin that one must constantly apologize for. For Kendi, it is merely something you oppose by micro-interrogating every single action you take on a relentless second-by-second basis. The Times wants you to understand that his is the more sensible way to reckon with your failures.