Stamped from the Beginning: Prologue Summary & Analysis

Ibram X. Kendi reflects on the historical moment in which he is writing Stamped from the Beginning—a moment in which both the murders of unarmed Black people and the #BlackLivesMatter resistance movement have gained particular prominence. At the time Kendi is writing, young Black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by the police than young white men. African Americans make up 13% of the U.S. population, but 40% of those are in prison and own only a 2.7% share of national wealth. In 2016, the U.S. is 240 years old and still gripped by racial conflict. 

Throughout American history, there have been three main camps of thought about these racial disparities between Black and white people. Segregationists argue that the disparities are due to Black people’s supposed inferiority to white people. Antiracists argue that the problem is racial discrimination, not Black people themselves. And lastly, assimilationists take a middle position, arguing that it is both the fault of discrimination and Black people themselves that inequalities exist. The existence of these three types of thinking means that anti-racist arguments face not one but two opponents.

Jefferson Davis, a Mississippi senator who went on to become president of the Confederacy, used the phrase “stamped from the beginning” in a speech he gave on April 12, 1860. In the speech, he praised white supremacy, arguing that in America, “the inequality of white and black races […] [was] stamped from the beginning.” This is a segregationist statement, which means it is more obviously recognizable as racist than an assimilationist statement would be. However, it is important to be aware of the fact that—although they have frequently been used in the fight for racial justice—assimilationist arguments are still racist, because they also characterize Blackness as a “stamp” of inferiority (albeit one that can be washed away).

Assimilationists believe that Black people should try to become more like white people and that this will solve the problem of racial inequality. The history of racist ideas is complex and unpredictable, yet the ideas themselves appear to many people as simple “common sense.” The conflict between racist and antiracist thought is far from a comfortingly straightforward divide between good and evil. This is partly because it is a “three-sided battle” with racist ideas split into two separate categories.

People rarely admit to being racist; instead, both segregationist and assimilationist ideas are disguised as being morally good, while for much of American history racist acts and policies have been legal. This has created confusion regarding what is a racist idea and what isn’t. To Kendi, an idea is racist if it implies that there is something wrong with a particular racial group—or, in other words, that this group is inferior in some way. Like all races, Black people are an extremely diverse group of people consisting of different ethnicities, nationalities, classes, and many other variances.

Moreover, Black people’s experience of racism is differentiated according to factors such as class, gender, and sexuality, a phenomenon the scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw terms “intersectionality.” Existing histories of racist ideas tend to neglect the way in which intersectionality shapes racism. Stamped from the Beginning examines the “entire history” of racist ideas from their origins in early modern Europe. The book revolves around five main figures, who serve as “tour guides” through the history of thinking about race. The first is colonial preacher and writer Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the son of two powerful New England Puritan families. Mather preached about Black inferiority in order to excuse slavery as a practice of “saving” Africans by converting them to Christianity. 

The second figure is President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), a slaveholder who managed to be both “antislavery” and “anti-abolitionist.” Third is William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), who spread assimilationist ideas about Black inferiority via his work as an abolitionist. Garrison argued that slavery had made Black people savage and brutal, which is a racist sentiment. The next figure is W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), an influential Black scholar whose views shifted from assimilationist to anti-racist over the course of his lifetime. Lastly is Angela Davis, a Black scholar who rose to prominence during the Black Power movement and has dedicated her life to fighting both racist myths and the myth that racism has ended.

Kendi selected these five figures because they “were arguably the most consistently prominent or provocative racial theorists of their respective lifetimes.” Stamped from the Beginning contests simple ideas of racial progress or racism suddenly becoming covert. While there certainly has been progress, racist ideas have also evolved, adapting to the new conditions created by anti-racist struggle. This makes sense when one realizes that racist ideas aren’t produced by ignorance and hate but instead usually develop in support of racist policies. They justify and excuse racist policies by blaming Black people themselves for the unjust and unequal conditions they face. The true causal relationship is that discrimination leads to the development of racist ideas, which then generate “ignorance and hate.”

Throughout American history, intelligent, educated, and powerful people have actively spread racist ideas for their own benefit. It can often seem strange that racism was not met with more resistance in the past, but part of the explanation for this is the power of racist ideas. In this sense, racist ideas are highly effective—including on Black people themselves. Kendi may be a professor of Africana studies, but he has still absorbed racist thinking. Shedding racist ideology means realizing that while individual Black people might have negative traits, there is nothing wrong with Black people “as a group.”

Through his research, Kendi was able to eliminate much racist thinking from his own mind, although he doesn’t believe that this switch in thinking is possible for those who are the main producers of racist ideas. He does, however, hope that the book will “liberat[e]” other people’s minds.