Title: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Author: Ibram X. Kendi
Year of Publication: 2016
Thesis:
Argues principally that leaders develop racist ideas to justify inequality; systems developed by those leaders further reinforce the racial ideas. Kendi reevaluates a number of historical figures (mainly Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, WEB DuBois, and Angela Davis) under a three-part rubric of segregationists, antiracists, and assimilationists. The former identify Black people as the problem, where the latter blame systemic racism as well as Black people. Antiracists, however, look specifically at racism as the root cause. He further proposes that policy change should form the anchor of the movement as education has not resulted in anything approaching adequate change.
Time: 15th-21st centuries
Geography: U.S.
Organization:
Preface to the Paperback Edition
- Trump birther intro
"His election neither fit the Republicans' postracial narrative of the end of racial history nor the Democrats' narrative of the march of racial progress." (ix)
- Decides to skip over the typical narrative styles (covert, overt, progress, declension) (x)
- Instead sees a binary of dueling forces (racial progress/racism) vs. progress & backlash (x)
Prologue
- Writing under highly publicized murders of Black people (1-2)
- Identifies three groups:
--> Segregationists - describe Black people as "the problem"
--> Antiracists - blame police/racist system
--> Assimilationists - blame black people as well as racist system
Part I - Cotton Mather
1. Human Hierarchy
2. Origins of Racist Ideas
3. Coming to America
4. Saving Souls, Not Bodies
5. Black Hunts
6. Great Awakening
Part II - Thomas Jefferson
7. Enlightenment
8. Black Exhibits
9. Created Equal
10. Uplift Suasion
11. Big Bottoms
12. Colonization
Part III - William Llloyd Garrison
13. Gradual Equality
14. Imbruted or Civilized
15. Soul
16. The Impending Crisis
17. History's Emancipator
18. Ready for Freedom?
19. Reconstructing Slavery
20. Reconstructing Blame
Part IV - W.E.B. Du Bois
21. Renewing the South
22. Southern Horrors
23. Black Judases
24. Great White Hopes
25. The Birth of a Nation
26. Media Suasion
27. Old Deal
28. Freedom Brand
29. Massive Resistance
Part V - Angela Davis
30. The Act of Civil Rights
31. Black Power
32. Law and Order
33. Reagan's Drugs
34. New Democrats
35. New Republicans
36. 99.9 Percent the Same
37. The Extraordinary Negro
Type:
Intellectual
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