Stamped from the Beginning
The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
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4.6 • 9 Ratings
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
From the Puritans to the present, historian Ibram X. Kendi surveys centuries of racist ideas and policies in the United States. Kendi frames his narrative around five American intellectuals: slavery-endorsing preacher Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W. E. B. DuBois, and activist Angela Davis. The author uses these public figures’ words and actions to illuminate how racist thought contributes to hot-button issues like standardized tests and mass incarceration. A fascinating and urgent read, Stamped from the Beginning won the National Book Award for nonfiction the year after Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me took home the prize—and it’s just as essential for understanding racism’s impact on American life.
