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

by Ibram X. Kendi

Virginia lawmakers made slave patrols compulsory for non-slaveholding Whites; these groups of White citizens were charged with policing slaves, enforcing discipline, and guarding routes of escape.

And so the word mulatto, which came from “mule,” came into being, because mules were the infertile offspring of horses and donkeys. In the eighteenth century, the adage “black as the devil” battled for popularity in the English-speaking world with “God made the white man, the devil made the mulatto.”11

Slavery was as customary as prisons are today. Few could imagine an ordered world without them.

Were captives really lazier, more deceitful, and more crooked than their enslavers? It was the latter who forced others to work for them, treacherously whipping them when they did not, and stealing the proceeds of their labor when they did.

“A few white victims must be sacrificed to open the eyes of this nation,”