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

Ibram X. Kendi

Apr 2016 · Sold by Bold Type Books

About this ebook

 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.

Ratings and reviews

It's easy to be negative about something when you only look and talk about the bad parts. Why it's easy for me to give you a one star review. America was the first nation in the world that started laws in which stopped slavery. Confederation Congress go look it up. As well as the constitution that every man, woman and individual would have the rights to freedom and their own lives, an American only ideology. The execution of America's value's and hopes has never been the greatest but our country is far from racist. We're not imprisoning an entire race like china with the Uyghurs. We were not rated the highest place for modern day slavery, i.e Africa where 9.2 million Africans still live in slavery. 29% of our people are not intolerant of black people like Denmark either. So I ask again is America truly racist? Or are you just pushing one sided narratives to push your agenda and sales. To profit for yourself while throwing your own country, your own people under the bus. Shame on you.

Ibram X Kendi leads a group of academics that study racism. Very thought-provoking. One need only look at the reviews from the dumbest degenerates to see why you should read this book. If white supremacists hate it that much, you know it must be good.

I cant view anything the same way anymore, although everything has its explanation most conflicts should now be resolved due to the expulsion of moral ideas back then. we have changed as people those realities shouldnt exist.

About the author

Ibram X. Kendi is a #1 New York Times-bestselling author, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is an Ideas Columnist at the Atlantic and a correspondent with CBS News. He is the author of five books, including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction; the New York Times bestsellers How to Be an Antiracist and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, coauthored with Jason Reynolds; and Antiracist Baby.