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I saw Kendi speak about his new book. He appeared to be scholarly when it comes to making his arguments. However, I was shocked and disappointed to find in his book accusations that the 1968 film, Planet of the Apes, and the 1976 film, Rocky, are a racist reflection of white America. He argues that 1968, the year Planet came out, Lyndon Johnson's State of the Union address called for law and order against the riots and protests, there were fears that a "violent black revolution could be on the horizon (p. 400). That may have been well and true. However, on the following page (p. 401), Kendi projects his own biased assumptions about the film by arguing that it was somehow a reflection of the white collective subconsciousness's view of black people as apes. However, it doesn't appear that he's ever seen the film or took the time to learn the film's message. He wrote, "When White astronauts land on a planet after a 2,000 year journey, apes enslave them" (Kendi, 2016, p. 401). Well, for starters the astronauts weren't all white. One was black! When actor Charlton Heston realizes he is on Earth upon discovering the Statue of Liberty partly buried on a sandy beach, he says the now famous line, "You blew it up, you basterds!" He says this because HUMAN civilization ended after a nuclear war, which was also a fear at that time. Kendi also made no reference to his interpretation of the film. He only commented, "Planet if the Apes took the place of Tarzan in racist popular culture." On page 422, Kendi wrote about Rocky, "Rocky's opponent, Apollo Creed, with his amazing avalanche of punches, symbolized the rising black middle class, and the real life heavyweight champion of the world in 1976, the pride of Black Power masculinity, Muhammad Ali. Rocky Balboa-as played by Sylvester Stallone-came to symbolize the pride of White supremacy's refusal to be knocked out of the avalanche of civil rights and Black Power protests and policies." Rocky is merely an American underdog story that Stallone wrote, based off of the 1975 heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner. A match that the white boxer nearly beat the World Champion. Like Planet of the Apes, the film was used by Kendi as well as his reference as a sort of rorschach test to project their own biases about the films being racist. If Kendi chooses to interpret both films in his spare time as reflections of collective white unconscious racism, that's fine and dandy. However, when I find these speculations in a book being touted as an achievement of black scholarship, I have to question what other liberties Kendi took with the truth in his book.