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

by Ibram X. Kendi

“Our domestic civil rights shortcomings are a serious obstacle” in US foreign policy, the commission stated, using the now acting secretary of state Dean Acheson as a source. But Gallop pollsters found that only 6 percent of White Americans thought these rights should be secured immediately—only

In voting for him, Black voters and civil rights activists were especially pleased with Truman’s use of executive power in 1948 to desegregate the armed forces and the federal workforce.

Truman’s Justice Department filed similar briefs for other successful desegregation cases in higher education during the 1940s and early 1950s, ever reminding the justices of the foreign implications of discrimination.

Combined with the New Deal and suburban housing construction (in developments that found legal ways to keep Blacks out), the GI Bill gave birth to the White middle class and widened the economic gap between the races,

“We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”27

Moreover, he pointed out that “the laws against color can be removed, but that will leave the poverty that is the historic and institutionalized consequence of color.”

But not many inside (or outside) of the Kennedy administration were willing to admit that the growing groundswell of support in Washington for strong civil rights legislation had more to do with winning the Cold War in Africa and Asia than with helping African Americans.

indoctrinated by the mythology of the antiracist North and racist South—refused to accept her persisting analysis of “why the whole ruling stratum in their country, by being guilty of racism, was also guilty of this murder.”6

the Civil Rights Act served to erect a dam against Jim Crow policies, it also opened the floodgates for new racist ideas to pour in, including the most racist idea to date: it was an idea that ignored the White head start, presumed that discrimination had been eliminated, presumed that equal opportunity had taken over, and figured that since Blacks were still losing the race, the racial disparities and their continued losses must be their fault. Black people must be inferior, and equalizing policies—like eliminating or reducing White seniority, or instituting affirmative action policies—would be unjust and ineffective.

Possibly no other American autobiography opened more antiracist minds than The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm

“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains[,] and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

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.

Since segregationists had first developed them in the early twentieth century, standardized tests—from the MCAT to the SAT and IQ exams—had failed time and again to predict success in college and professional careers or even to truly measure intelligence.

After triumphantly proclaiming to the United Nations their commitment to eliminating racism, local officials, state officials, the Supreme Court, and the US Senate executed or validated the racism that won a presidential election.

History is clear. Sacrifice, uplift, persuasion, and education have not eradicated, are not eradicating, and will not eradicate racist ideas, let alone racist policies.

Those who have the power to abolish racial discrimination have not done so thus far, and they will never be persuaded or educated to do so as long as racism benefits them in some way. I