Stamped from the Beginning

The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Electronic resource

English language

Published Jan. 4, 2017 by Bold Type Books.

ISBN:
978-1-56858-806-3
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
1056200924

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4 stars (12 reviews)

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 …

8 editions

Review of 'Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is, hands-down, the best book I've read this year, and easily all-time top 5 non-fiction for me.

I'm going to have to do some processing, and hopefully write a longer review. But I cannot recommend this highly enough. It is thorough, well-written, and will make you very uncomfortable.

Review of 'Stamped from the Beginning' on Goodreads

4 stars

Two ideas illustrated with detailed accounts from the last 500 years: 1) The history of racism in America is not one of steady nor bumpy "racial progress", but of the refinement and reinvention of racist ideas and occasional surges of anti-racist response. 2) Discrimination leads to racist ideas leads to ignorance and hate, not the other way round. Racism serves power.

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