Stamped from the Beginning

The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

By: Ibram X. Kendi

Narrated by: Avery Kidd Waddell

Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America—it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.

In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W. E. B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis.

As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities.

In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.

©2016 Ibram X. Kendi (P)2023 Tantor

Thoroughness of topic coverage

I liked the vocal presentation of the reader and how the conclusion matched the historical evidence presented.

Assimilationists, Anti-Racists and Segregationists

I had never heard those three terms that describe the varied ideologies around the paradigm of ethnic differentiation until I read this book. Reading this book really helped give structure to the mechanisms of race and racial classifications in America for me.

Stamped outstanding

I’ll never forget this text. The very last chapter taught me something that I had never learned in all of my 62 years on this earth. White people believe that they are extraordinary and black people believe they are less than ordinary. Black been “Stamped” from the beginning…

My review can’t do this justice

You just have to hear it. Specifically as a white person hearing this, I appreciated that certain things were said by the narrator in a way I may not have picked up had I been sight reading. I think as a white person it’s particularly important to hear this from a Black voice as the author intended. I will likely also buy the physical book as a reference and go through it again. And again… and again.