Stamped from the Beginning

Written by Ibram X. Kendi

Where did racist ideas in America come from, and who spread them?

4.5 Goodreads · 39,507 ratings

608 pages

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Bookroo's summary

A history of racist ideas in America from the colonial era to the present, told through the lives of five figures: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and activist Angela Davis. Ibram X. Kendi argues that these ideas were often created to justify discriminatory policies rather than the other way around, and traces how they were spread by people on all sides of the debate. Winner of the National Book Award.

From the publisher

A National Book Award winnerThe New York Times bestselling history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society."An engrossing and relentless intellectual history of prejudice in America." -Washington Post 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. 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. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched racist 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 and, in the process, gives us reason to hope.

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