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

by Ibram X. Kendi

Time and again, powerful and brilliant men and women have produced racist ideas in order to justify the racist policies of their era, in order to redirect the blame for their era’s racial disparities away from those policies and onto Black people.

The principal function of racist ideas in American history has been the suppression of resistance to racial discrimination and its resulting racial disparities.

Black Americans’ history of oppression has made Black opportunities—not Black people—inferior.