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

Young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts. The unemployment rate for African Americans has been double that of whites for more than half a century. And yet Americans cling desperately to the myth that we are living in a post-racial society, that the election of the first black president spelled doom for racist policies and racist beliefs. In fact, racist thought is alive and well in America; it has simply become more sophisticated and more insidious. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues in Stamped from the Beginning, if we have any hope of grappling with this stark reality, we must first understand how racist ideas were developed, disseminated, and enshrined in American society.
In this deeply researched, provocative narrative, Kendi offers a comprehensive history of anti-Black racist ideas— their origins in fifteenth-century Portugal, their arrival in England in the mid-sixteenth century, and...