Stamped from the Beginning
The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
2016 • 592 pages
Ratings28
Average rating4.6
15
The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Ratings28
Average rating4.6
The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities. In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.
Reviews with the most likes.
Segregation and Anti-Rascism are relatively straightforward, but what Kendi does for the majority of this book is demonstrate how a third narrative in racism, Assimilation, has been interwoven into the fabric of the discourse. It's his handling of calls for assimilation and how they've historically been used to deepen racist agendas that is profound.
I've been listening to bits and pieces of this book for a long time. It's a great resource and definitely a must read for anyone wanting to know more about the history of racism and slavery till the civil rights movements and present day issues, from a different perspective.
It might have felt a little repetitive for me because I had already read and loved the YA remixed version of this book, but it's still a spectacular and eye opening read. Highly recommend. Hoping to dive into The 1619 project as soon as I get my library copy.
And do checkout my review for Stamped if you want to read in more detail what I felt about this book.
Impressive in its scope, approach, and depth. This book read a tad drier than I had thought it would based on its popularity but it's a well-researched and well-written history of racist ideas – exactly what it purports. Worth the acclaim it has garnered.
This is so detailed that I will definitely be reading it again. For this review, let me share a couple things I learned.
Racism and slavery go all the way back to Aristotle. At the time there was a guy, I don't remember his name, who was writing against Aristotle. Yet we don't remember that guy's name. We chose Roman and Greek thinking as the epitome of society, but we still ignored the anti-slavery guy.
WEB DuBois and Malcolm X learned and grew in anti- racist thinking and advocacy throughout their lives. So don't judge them for one thing they said, but the entirety of their life message.
I will be reading this again because there is no way to learn it all the first time.
