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

by Ibram X. Kendi

Black Americans’ history of oppression has made Black opportunities—not Black people—inferior. When you truly believe that the racial groups are equal, then you also believe that racial disparities must be the result of racial discrimination.

Like the Germantown petitioners in the 1600s, and John Woolman in the 1700s, Tiedemann showed that racists were never simply products of their time. Although most scholars made the easy, popular, professionally rewarding choice of racism, some did not. Some made the hard, unpopular choice of antiracism.

Then again, hypocrisy had normalized in the American reform movements. Racial, gender, ethnic, and labor activists were angrily challenging the popular bigotry targeting their own groups at the same time they were happily reproducing the popular bigotry targeting other groups. They did not realize that the racist, sexist, ethnocentric, and classist ideas were produced by some of the same powerful minds.

The intent-focused Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not nearly as effective as the outcome-focused Voting Rights Act of 1965. In Mississippi alone, Black voter turnout increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969. The Voting Rights Act ended up becoming the most effective piece of antiracist legislation ever passed by the Congress of the United States of America.

These Americans believed that Blacks had some strikes against them, but sometimes used that as a crutch. And they were totally unaware that this viewpoint was not only racist, but hardly made much sense. It was like saying that the game was rigged, but Blacks should not let that stop them from winning, and that when they lost and complained about the game being rigged, they were “using that as a crutch.”14