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.