Ibram X. Kendi: Compliance Will Not Save My Body

I have mixed views about Ibram X. Kendi.

The Atlantic:

“In 2019, the Houston Police Officers’ Union circulated the slogan “Comply Don’t Die. Live to Have Your Day in Court.”

That is an old sentiment. A century ago, the Ku Klux Klan and its powerful enablers delivered a similar message to Black and brown people. …

These questions are not about any individual cop. These questions are not individual. These questions are institutional. The question is whether the institution of American policing is good. …

Within their cloud of fear, they have come to believe that police violence is caused by a lack of compliance, rather than seeing it as the violent son of American slavery. …

Deciding not to defund, disarm, and draw down the police is an extremist, wasteful, violent, and anti-American position.

American defiance of our right to live is the problem. Political compliance—to abolish American policing as we know it—is the solution. …

The institution of American policing has never systematically complied with my humanity, and it never will. To believe otherwise is to comply with an alternative history, with a fantasyland, with wishful thinking, with an American dream that is my American nightmare.”

Allow me to explain.

The Bad