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

by Ibram X. Kendi

Malcolm condemned the half-truth of racial progress, bellowing that you don’t stick a knife in a person’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and say you’re making progress. “The black man’s supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it’s still going to leave a scar!” He argued that White people were not born racist, but that “the American political, economic and social atmosphere… automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.” He encouraged antiracist Whites who had escaped racism to fight “on the battle lines of where America’s racism really is—and that’s in their own home communities.” He ferociously attacked “the white man’s puppet Negro ‘leaders,’” who had exploited “their black poor brothers,” and who did not want separation or integration, but only “to live in an open, free society where they can walk with their heads up, like men, and women!” But nothing was more compelling than Malcolm X’s unstinting humanism: “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”