Review of Stamped from the Beginning: the Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Ibram X. Kendi’s award-winning, meticulously researched book Stamped from the Beginning (2016) should be a must read for all Americans during this period of renewed demands for an end to racism in America. The prose is available to all and gives the reader a broad overview of the intellectual history of racist and antiracist ideas in America from Cotton Mathers to Thomas Jefferson, to William Lloyd Garrison, to WEB DuBois, and to Angela Davis. He focuses on the distinction and conflict between racist ideas based on segregation or assimilation and anti-racist ideas. Kendi explains that contrary to what is normally taught that ignorance/hate leads to racist ideas which lead to discrimination is incorrect. He illustrates and explains that discrimination leads to racist ideas which lead to ignorance and hate. The text to some extent can be summarized in the words of Frederick Douglass (1854), “When men oppress their fellow men, the oppressor ever finds, in the character of the oppressed, a full justification for his oppression.” Highly recommended to all my students.