Others quickly supported Kendi’s racist smear. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a left-wing historian, added context to Kendi’s claim to perpetuate the idea that parents who adopt non-white children are somehow racist because of their ancestry.
“Many authoritarians seized children of color for adoption by White Christians,” Ben-Ghiat wrote. “Pinochet’s regime did this with indigenous kids and Nazis took Aryan looking Poles for German families. Trump takes migrant kids for adoption by Evangelicals.”
Jonathan Chait, a writer for New York Magazine, also came to Kendi’s defense, writing that Kendi is simply being misunderstood.
You can see Ben-Ghiat’s since-deleted tweet in this roundup by NewsBusters’ Curtis Houck, who notes that Kendi is also employed by CBS as contributor: