Ibram X. Kendi (born August 13, 1982, Queens, New York, U.S.) is an American author, historian, and activist who studies and writes about racism and antiracism in the United States. Through his books and speeches, he argues that racist policies and ideas are deeply ingrained in American society.
He was born Ibram Henry Rogers to parents who were student activists interested in liberation theology and the Black Power movement of the 1960s. While he was a teenager, the family moved from Queens, New York, to Manassas, Virginia. He majored in journalism at Florida A&M University and focused on sports reporting before concentrating on racial justice. In 2004 he graduated with a double major in journalism and African American studies. Rogers then worked at The Virginian Pilot newspaper before pursuing an advanced degree in African American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 2010 he earned a doctorate. Three years later Rogers married, and the couple chose a new surname. They settled on Kendi, which means “loved one” in Meru, a language of the Meru people of Kenya. At the same time, he picked Xolani (meaning “peace” in Zulu) for his middle name.
Kendi has taught at various universities, including Boston University, where he became the founding director of the Center for Antiracist Research in 2020. Through his work, he advances the theory that inequality among the races is the result of power and policy and that racist should not be considered a pejorative term. Rather, it should be used to describe one’s actions and not one’s identity. To that end, Kendi encourages individuals to investigate racism within themselves. His views attracted widespread attention, especially from the late 2010s and early 2020s, when calls for racial justice intensified in the United States after the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and a series of high-profile incidents in which Black people died as a result of actions by police, including Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, and George Floyd, among others. While many support his theories, Kendi is not without detractors, including white conservatives who reject his claims concerning the pervasiveness of racism in the United States.
Kendi’s books have been influential with both academic and mainstream audiences. His first book, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965–1972, was published in 2012. It examines Black student activism and the history of African American studies programs in both Historically Black Colleges and Universities and predominantly white educational institutions. For his next book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016), Kendi won the National Book Award for nonfiction. (In 2023 the book was adapted for Netflix into a documentary film that included scripted segments featuring actors.) Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020; written with Jason Reynolds) is the young-adult version.
Kendi also released the memoir How to Be an Antiracist in 2019. His other works include the board book Antiracist Baby (2020) and How to Raise an Antiracist (2022). Together with Keisha N. Blain, he edited Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619−2019 (2021). Kendi adapted folktales collected by Zora Neale Hurston as the board books Magnolia Flower (2022) and The Making of Butterflies (2023). In 2024 he published Barracoon, a middle-school-level adaptation of Hurston’s nonfiction book Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”. It tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, who was believed to be the last survivor of the Clotilda, the final ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. Kendi also publishes essays in academic journals.
In 2018 Kendi was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, and his treatment was successful. Kendi was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (commonly known as a “genius grant”) in 2021.