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

by Ibram X. Kendi

Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America.

Racial discriminationracist ideasignorance/hate: this is the causal relationship driving America’s history of race relations.

Racially discriminatory policies have usually sprung from economic, political, and cultural self-interests, self-interests that are constantly changing.

If Blacks did not violently resist, then they were cast as naturally servile. And yet, whenever they did fight, reactionary commentators, in both North and South, classified them as barbaric animals who needed to be caged in slavery.

Proslavery legislators repressed the very captives they said were docile, and restricted the education of the very people they argued could not be educated. Racist ideas, clearly, did not generate these slave codes. Enslaving interests generated these slave codes. Racist ideas were produced to preserve the enslaving interests.

Racist policies forcing free Blacks into menial jobs were being defended by racist claims that lazy and unskilled Black people were best for those positions.

“When men oppress their fellow-men, the oppressor ever finds, in the character of the oppressed, a full justification for his oppression.”

Someone was lynched, on average, every four days from 1889 to 1929.