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Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by [Ibram X. Kendi]

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Ibram X. Kendi

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

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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.

Praise for Stamped from the Beginning:

"We often describe a wonderful book as 'mind-blowing' or 'life-changing' but I've found this rarely to actually be the case. I found both descriptions accurate for Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning... I will never look at racial discrimination again after reading this marvellous, ambitious, and clear-sighted book." - George Saunders, Financial Times, Best Books of 2017

"Ambitious, well-researched and worth the time of anyone who wants to understand racism." - Seattle Times

"A deep (and often disturbing) chronicling of how anti-black thinking has entrenched itself in the fabric of American society." - The Atlantic

Winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction
A New York Times Bestseller
A Washington Post Bestseller
On President Obama's Black History Month Recommended Reading List
Finalist for the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Review of Books, The Root, Buzzfeed, Bustle, and Entropy

Print length

594 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Bold Type Books
Publication date

April 12, 2016
File size

3880 KB
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Popular Highlights in this book

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Racial discriminationracist ideasignorance/hate: this is the causal relationship driving America’s history of race relations.
Highlighted by 6,676 Kindle readers
My definition of a racist idea is a simple one: it is any concept that regards one racial group as inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.
Highlighted by 6,563 Kindle readers
Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America.
Highlighted by 5,969 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

An "engrossing and relentless intellectual history of prejudice in America...The greatest service Kendi [provides] is the ruthless prosecution of American ideas about race for their tensions, contradictions and unintended consequences."
—The Washington Post

"Kendi has done something that's damn near impossible: write a book about racism that breaks new ground, while being written in a way that's accessible to the nonacademic. If you've ever been interested in how racist ideas spread throughout the United States, this is the book to read."
—The Root

Stamped from the Beginning is "ambitious, well-researched and worth the time of anyone who wants to understand racism."
—The Seattle Times

"Kendi admits that he is not writing to change the minds of those who produce and espouse racist ideas. Rather, in his honesty about how deeply he himself had held multiple racist ideas before embarking on the historical odyssey of this book, he gives the reader permission to accompany him on that eye-opening journey...Kendi leaves plenty of room for self-questioning, and for drawing connections between the racist apologetics of the past and those of the present. The process makes for a compelling, thoroughly enlightening, unsettling, and necessary read."
—Vox

"Stamped from the Beginning centers on five figures: Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis. Through their lives, and with novelistic flair, Kendi details the American construction of white supremacy as a three-pronged tragedy of religion, government, and activism."
—The Stranger

"To structure his book, which he spent three years writing, Kendi built it around five major American intellectual figures: Puritan leader Cotton Mather, founding father Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, African-American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and activist Angela Davis. While showing the reader each of them grappling with questions of race, Kendi places them in the wider context of history with graceful, engaging prose and deeply researched details. Stamped is a book that connects everything from Mather's 17th century theological theories about the souls of Africans to Bo Derek's cornrows in the movie 10, and much more."
—Tampa Bay Times

Stamped from the Beginning provides "ever-relevant context for the white supremacist moment."
—The Dallas Morning News

"Ibram Kendi is an important new voice in African American intellectual and social history. This book, an intellectual history of racist ideas, promises to break important new ground for scholarly and general audiences interested in the construction of racism in America."
—Peniel E. Joseph, author of Stokely: A Life and Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour

"Both a penetrating treatise and a wonderfully accessible work of intellectual history, Stamped from the Beginning reveals the heritage of ideas behind the modern dialectic of race-denial and race-obsession. By historicizing our entrenched logic of racial difference, Kendi shows why "I don't see color" and other professions of post-racialism remain inexorable alibis for white supremacy. Stamped from the Beginning has done the cause of anti-racism a great service."
—Russell Rickford, Associate Professor, Cornell University, and author of We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination

"Richly sourced and engaging, Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning is a highly accessible yet provocative study that seeks to complicate our understanding of racist ideas and the forces that produce them."
—Yohuru Williams, Professor of History and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Fairfield University

"In this tour de force, Kendi explores the history of racist ideas—and their connection with racist practices—across American history. Racism is the enduring scar on the American consciousness. In this ambitious, magisterial book, Kendi reveals just how deep that scar cuts and why it endures, its barely subcutaneous pain still able to flare."
—Kirkus (starred review)

"In his ambitious, illuminating, and engaging book, Ibram X. Kendi seamlessly assembles sources from Cotton Mather to Angela Davis; the Great Awakening to Black Lives Matter; the Birth of a Nation to Hip Hop culture, to show how not only race but racist ideas are at the center of American thought."
—Paula J. Giddings, EA Woodson Professor, Smith College, and author of Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching

"This heavily researched yet easily readable volume explores the roots and the effects of racism in America. The narrative smoothly weaves throughout history, culminating in the declaration that as much as we'd like it to be, America today is nowhere near the "postracial" country that the media declared following the election of Barack Obama in 2008. The hope here is that by studying and remembering the lessons of history, we may be able to move forward to an equitable society."
—Booklist

"Stamped from the Beginning is a history of how racist ideas are built, and how they are built to last. Understanding this history is essential if we want to have any hope of progress. This book will forever change the way we think about race."
—Touré, MSNBC contributor and author of Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness

"Kendi's provocative egalitarian argument combines prodigious reading and research with keen insights into the manipulative power of racist ideologies that suppress the recognition of diversity. This is a must for serious readers of American history, politics, or social thought."
—Library Journal

"Stamped from the Beginning delivers a timely and bold corrective to the history of racist and anti-racist ideas that explodes our understanding of the root of anti-black violence as we know it today. Kendi's deft analysis of key thinkers from Cotton Mather to Angela Davis illustrates how racial thought, specifically debates about racial difference, take shape across space and time and influence racial policies and the persistence of racial discrimination. This book is a must read for those interested in working to unearth the foundational ideas and practices that hinder true racial progress."
—Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, Associate Professor, Brown University, and author of Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil

"Kendi upends many commonly held beliefs about how racism works, exploring the ideas and thinkers behind our most intractable social and cultural problem."
—The Boston Globe

About the Author

Ibram X. Kendi is an award-winning scholar and a New York Times bestselling author. He is Professor of History and International Relations and the Founding Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. His second book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction. At 34 years old, he was the youngest ever winner of the NBA for Nonfiction. Stamped from the Beginning was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and it was nominated for a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a NAACP Image Award. Stamped was named to several Best Books of 2016 lists, including by the Boston Globe, The Root, the Washington Post, and Buzzfeed.

Kendi is the author of the award-winning book, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972. He has published essays in numerous periodicals, including the New York Times, Salon, Time, the Washington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He has provided commentary on a host of local, national, and international radio and television outlets, including NPR, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Democracy Now, and Sirius XM. He has received research fellowships, grants, and visiting appointments from a variety of universities, foundations, professional associations, and libraries, including the Library of Congress, National Academy of Education, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Brown University, and Princeton University. He was named to The Root 100 2017, and recognized as the most 29th most influential African American between the ages of 25 and 45. His next book, which will be published by One World/Random House, is tentatively titled, How to Be an Antiracist: A Memoir of My Journey.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B017QL8WV4
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bold Type Books (April 12, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 12, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3880 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 594 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #48,414 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #8 in History of Race & Ethnicity
- #29 in Black & African American History (Kindle Store)
- #37 in Discrimination & Racism Studies

Customer Reviews:
11,397 ratings

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Ibram X. Kendi

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Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News racial justice contributor. Dr. Kendi is the author of many highly acclaimed books including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, making him the youngest-ever winner of that award. He has also produced five straight #1 New York Times bestsellers, including How to Be an Antiracist, Antiracist Baby, and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, co-authored by Jason Reynolds. In 2020, Time magazine named Dr. Kendi one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was awarded a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the Genius Grant.

His next two books, coming out in June, are How to Raise an Antiracist and the picture book, Goodnight Racism.

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Dojcin

To a Hammer everything looks like a nail.

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2020

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Kendi pathologically cherry-picks his data. When discussing race and health, he laments that blacks are more likely than whites to HAVE Alzheimer’s disease, openly implying that this demonstrates clear anti- Black racism in the medical field. Of course, he neglects to mention that Whites are more likely to DIE from Alzheimer, according to the Center for Disease Control.

In the same vein, Kendi notes that blacks are more likely than whites to die of prostate cancer and breast cancer, but he does not include the fact that blacks are less likely than whites to die of esophageal cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, ovarian cancer, bladder cancer, brain cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and leukemia.

By selectively citing data that show blacks suffering more than whites, Kendi turns what should be a unifying, race-neutral battle ground––namely, humanity’s fight against deadly diseases––into another proxy battle in the War on Racism.

The entire book is filled with this kind of imaginary stuff. Unfortunately, It would require 5 whole books to debunk all the errors in this publication. - This book was nothing but a rushed political propaganda published in an election year (2016). Unfortunately it did not work and it will work even less in 2020 as Trump has unprecedented black support for a republican candidate.

524 people found this helpful

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Anthony Pignataro

White people should read this

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2018

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This is one of the greatest history books I've ever read. I was highlighting passages on pretty much every page, mostly because so much of what's here was new to me. Hey, I'm an upper middle class white guy who's trying to examine my own privileges, understand more of why there's so much racism in this country and learn how I can do better. This book, which was undoubtedly extremely difficult to write, is an amazing resource, one I'll be referring back to probably for the rest of my life. We all owe Ibram X. Kendi a tremendous debt.

564 people found this helpful

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Sean Vermillion

Projects Racism Where There Is None

Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2019

I saw Kendi speak about his new book. He appeared to be scholarly when it comes to making his arguments. However, I was shocked and disappointed to find in his book accusations that the 1968 film, Planet of the Apes, and the 1976 film,
Rocky, are a racist reflection of white America. He argues that 1968, the year Planet came out, Lyndon Johnson's State of the Union address called for law and order against the riots and protests, there were fears that a "violent black revolution could be on the horizon (p. 400). That may have been well and true. However, on the following page (p. 401), Kendi projects his own biased assumptions about the film by arguing that it was somehow a reflection of the white collective subconsciousness's view of black people as apes. However, it doesn't appear that he's ever seen the film or took the time to learn the film's message. He wrote, "When White astronauts land on a planet after a 2,000 year journey, apes enslave them" (Kendi, 2016, p. 401). Well, for starters the astronauts weren't all white. One was black! When actor Charlton Heston realizes he is on Earth upon discovering the Statue of Liberty partly buried on a sandy beach, he says the now famous line, "You blew it up, you basterds!" He says this because HUMAN civilization ended after a nuclear war, which was also a fear at that time. Kendi also made no reference to his interpretation of the film. He only commented, "Planet if the Apes took the place of Tarzan in racist popular culture." On page 422, Kendi wrote about Rocky, "Rocky's opponent, Apollo Creed, with his amazing avalanche of punches, symbolized the rising black middle class, and the real life heavyweight champion of the world in 1976, the pride of Black Power masculinity, Muhammad Ali. Rocky Balboa-as played by Sylvester Stallone-came to symbolize the pride of White supremacy's refusal to be knocked out of the avalanche of civil rights and Black Power protests and policies." Rocky is merely an American underdog story that Stallone wrote, based off of the 1975 heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner. A match that the white boxer nearly beat the World Champion. Like Planet of the Apes, the film was used by Kendi as well as his reference as a sort of rorschach test to project their own biases about the films being racist. If Kendi chooses to interpret both films in his spare time as reflections of collective white unconscious racism, that's fine and dandy. However, when I find these speculations in a book being touted as an achievement of black scholarship, I have to question what other liberties Kendi took with the truth in his book.

297 people found this helpful

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Harold Rossow

Overrated

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2019

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Hasty, superficial and--unsurprisingly--biased. Badly written and hardly researched. There's a reason most of
the blurbs are from third and fourth-rate sources.

187 people found this helpful

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The Reader

A bit academic but worth the buy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 11, 2018

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It is not quite a focus on the characters in the book. It is more a vast history of racist and anti-racist ideas in America. The headline characters are more tools to navigate the history rather than a focus of the book. The book can be a bit academic at times with not much of a narrative flow but it does give some good insights and ideas into racism in America.

4 people found this helpful

Charlotte Elizabeth

Well Written & Eye Opening. ESSENTIAL READ!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 29, 2020

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I really recommend that everyone reads this book.

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Fab

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2018

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Great condition

2 people found this helpful

The Spyglass

For anyone interested in a deeper dive into race relations in America

Reviewed in Canada on August 3, 2018

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I bought this book for my father, as a Father’s Day gift. Although we are Canadian, my Dad is very interested in understanding the legacy of slavery in America and the indelible mark it has left.

The book was highly praised and recommended by people I trust. It did not disappoint. The book does a wonderful job of laying out the cyclical nature of civil rights progress and backlash. In many ways, what we are experiencing now, after 8 years of a black man in The White House, was inevitable. This author lays out the pattern that seems to be inescapable.

If you are interested in understanding more about why the pendulum seems to have swung so far the other way, I recommend this book.

8 people found this helpful

Serenus Zeitblom

Auf Englisch schon günstig als Taschenbuch erhältlich

Reviewed in Germany on July 5, 2018

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Viele Rezensionen hat Ibram X Kendi mit "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America" in den Medien erhalten, 2016 auch den Sachbuchpreis des National Book Award,
Der selbst afroamerikanische Hochschullehrer sieht die US-Geschichte einmal konsequent aus der Perspektive des Rassismus. Das ist nicht die gewohnte Betrachtungsweise - Schwarze, ihre Versklavung bzw. Diskrimierung werden meist sonst nur kurz angetippt - und dadurch aufschlussreich.

Mit dem Finger auf "die da" in den USA zu weisen, wäre aber falsch - "Stamped from the beginning" sensibilisiert eher für den täglichen abstempelnden Rassismus hier wie dort. Und gegen andere Diskriminierungen aufgrund von Geschlecht, Orientierung, Geld, Herkunft, ... Kendis aufmerksame Hinweise auf Rassismus damals wie heute lassen sich nämlich so übertragen.

Kendi verwehrt sich dabei gegen "Segregationismus" (getrennte Entwicklung), aber auch gegen einen Assimilations-Rassismus, dass Schwarze sich einfach nur angleichen müssten/sollten. Seine "antirassistischen" Vorbilder sind die aufbegehrenden Angela Davis und De Bois, und auch deren Irrwege stellt Kendi mit dar.
Gute viereinhalb Sterne.

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