Ibram X. Kendi Quote
ON JUNE 25, 1890, W. E. B. Du Bois spoke at his Harvard graduation ceremony. He had now excelled, and had graduated from the most prestigious historically Black college and the most prestigious historically White college in the United States. He felt he was showing off the capability of his race. Du Bois’s brilliant and eloquent address, as judged by the reporters, was on Jefferson Davis as Representative of Civilization. In Du Bois’s rendering, Jefferson Davis, who had died the year before, represented the rugged individualism and domineering European civilization, in contrast to the rugged submission and selflessness of African civilization. The European met civilization and crushed it, Du Bois concluded. The Negro met civilization and was crushed by it. According to Du Bois’s biographer, the Harvard graduate contrasted the civilized European Strong Man to the civilized African Submissive Man.5
ON JUNE 25, 1890, W. E. B. Du Bois spoke at his Harvard graduation ceremony. He had now excelled, and had graduated from the most prestigious historically Black college and the most prestigious historically White college in the United States. He felt he was showing off the capability of his race. Du Bois’s brilliant and eloquent address, as judged by the reporters, was on Jefferson Davis as Representative of Civilization. In Du Bois’s rendering, Jefferson Davis, who had died the year before, represented the rugged individualism and domineering European civilization, in contrast to the rugged submission and selflessness of African civilization. The European met civilization and crushed it, Du Bois concluded. The Negro met civilization and was crushed by it. According to Du Bois’s biographer, the Harvard graduate contrasted the civilized European Strong Man to the civilized African Submissive Man.5
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About Ibram X. Kendi
In July 2020, he founded the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University where he has served as director, having raised an initial funding of $55 million. An internal investigation was launched into potential financial mismanagement of the center. Kendi was cleared of financial mismanagement, but underwent an audit regarding his leadership and the center's culture. In January 2025, Howard University announced that Kendi would join its faculty and lead its newly founded Institute for Advanced Study, created to investigate the African diaspora.