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

Abstract

Reviewed by: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi Devin Thomas O'Shea (bio) stamped from the beginning: the definitive history of racist ideas in america Ibram X. Kendi Bold Type Books https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/ibram-x-kendi/stamped-from-the-beginning/9781568585987/ 608 Pages; Print, $19.99 Like Bertrand Russel's The History of Western Philosophy (1945), Stamped from the Beginning is a hulking 584-page narrative archeology of ideas. [End Page 89] Professor Ibram X. Kendi's argument lays out three competing ideologies which reveal themselves during discussions of race in America dating back to pilgrim days. First, there are segregationists who place non-white people in a fundamentally different category than themselves. Then there are assimilationists who largely believe non-white people could improve, and become whiter, if only they would straighten up a little. Finally, there are antiracists who believe these distinctions between races and cultures are largely bullshit. Russel's history of ideas traces a (fairly) straight line through schools of western thought which builds from one thinker to another. Eventually, Russel comes to the consensus that we've entered a brand-new school of thought, and in that way, philosophy progresses. So too for America's racist ideas—they move from body to body throughout history and evolve. Professor Kendi de-centralizes these ideas through many voices while also selecting a touchstone historical figure to represent an era. For example, pre-Revolutionary America is the realm of Cotton Mather. Mather's conception of race is a matter of religion; he was abnormally progressive in that Cotton believed slaves were human enough to be baptized. From there, we move to the era of founding fathers where Thomas Jefferson gets no gloss. Kendi's work is astounding for its breath of historical understanding; the sections on Jefferson and W. E. B. Du Bois seem especially familiar to the writer. Any question that Jefferson had realized something about slavery later in life (an idea I've read about often) is debunked. The only change in Jefferson's mind seems to be about how attractive Black women are. First they aren't attractive, then there's an epiphany sometime after Sally Hemmings, but there is no deathbed revelation. Kendi navigates pre-Civil War America through William Lloyd Garrison, and transitions to Du Bois for Reconstruction up through the Civil Rights Movement. From that point forward, the book moves at a gallop to cover ground including Sista Solider, The Bell Curve (1995), and Ferguson. Angela Davis is our touchstone intellectual who brings us up to the present, and while Davis's philosophy is covered well enough, this is the section of Stamped that feels hurried. It's bound to feel that way—this is the case with all projects that set out to account for hundreds of years of history. Eventually, the historian crosses a threshold where the debates are no longer dead. The [End Page 90] form changes, and suddenly Professor Kendi is explaining the recent ancestry of our modern debates. At the time of writing, Kendi is under the impression that the most dangerous racist idea of the Obama era is that we live in a post-racial society. That idea, Kendi argues, is what prevents antiracist action in the United States; modern producers of racist ideas have been working to put up "a portrait of America conveying that there was no longer any need for protective or affirmative civil rights laws and policies—and no longer any need to ever talk about race." There's no mention of Trump except for the introduction to the paperback edition (which I think Professor Kendi could have cut since the body of the book stands so well on its own). The US has historical amnesia, and by following the three ideologies—assimilationists, segregationists, and antiracist—Professor Kendi shows how language, profit motive, and technology keep racist ideas alive. These forces also de-claw antiracist efforts. Each step of "progress" in fact finds new ground to exploit. For example, the first half of the book concerns itself with religious ideas transitioning into scientific ideas. The debate over the souls...