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

Kendi pathologically cherry-picks his data. When discussing race and health, he laments that blacks are more likely than whites to HAVE Alzheimers disease, openly implying that this demonstrates clear anti- Black racism in the medical field. Of course, he neglects to mention that Whites are more likely to DIE from Alzheimer, according to the Center for Disease Control.

In the same vein, Kendi notes that blacks are more likely than whites to die of prostate cancer and breast cancer, but he does not include the fact that blacks are less likely than whites to die of esophageal cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, ovarian cancer, bladder cancer, brain cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and leukemia.

By selectively citing data that show blacks suffering more than whites, Kendi turns what should be a unifying, race-neutral battle groundnamely, humanitys fight against deadly diseasesinto another proxy battle in the War on Racism.

The entire book is filled with this kind of imaginary stuff. Unfortunately, It would require 5 whole books to debunk all the errors in this publication. – This book was nothing but a rushed political propaganda published in an election year (2016). Unfortunately it did not work and it will work even less in 2020 as Trump has unprecedented black support for a republican candidate.

I bought this book for a class that I’m taking in the fall, and I started reading it this weekend. I just completed part one, and while reading it I had to put this book down and weep multiple times. They say we don’t see the world as it is we see it as we are. We wake up every morning and open our eyes to a world that has been created for us. We breathe in ideas, thoughts, philosophies, opinions that created the world we live in. We believe what we have been told to believe. We think what we’ve been told to think. And until we trace the roots of our human history and the ideas they created it, we will never understand the world we live in or the world inside our own minds. Thank you, Ibram X. Kendi, for helping me to begin to trace some of the roots of the philosophies that rule our lives today. It is only in knowledge and understanding that we can undo the damage that’s been done. I am undone This book is incredible, brutal, devastating, truthful necessary. Read it weep . . . and then change yourself and your world.

This is one of the greatest history books I’ve ever read. I was highlighting passages on pretty much every page, mostly because so much of what’s here was new to me. Hey, I’m an upper middle class white guy who’s trying to examine my own privileges, understand more of why there’s so much racism in this country and learn how I can do better. This book, which was undoubtedly extremely difficult to write, is an amazing resource, one I’ll be referring back to probably for the rest of my life. We all owe Ibram X. Kendi a tremendous debt.

I saw Kendi speak about his new book. He appeared to be scholarly when it comes to making his arguments. However, I was shocked and disappointed to find in his book accusations that the 1968 film, Planet of the Apes, and the 1976 film,
Rocky, are a racist reflection of white America. He argues that 1968, the year Planet came out, Lyndon Johnson’s State of the Union address called for law and order against the riots and protests, there were fears that a “violent black revolution could be on the horizon (p. 400). That may have been well and true. However, on the following page (p. 401), Kendi projects his own biased assumptions about the film by arguing that it was somehow a reflection of the white collective subconsciousness’s view of black people as apes. However, it doesn’t appear that he’s ever seen the film or took the time to learn the film’s message. He wrote, “When White astronauts land on a planet after a 2,000 year journey, apes enslave them” (Kendi, 2016, p. 401). Well, for starters the astronauts weren’t all white. One was black! When actor Charlton Heston realizes he is on Earth upon discovering the Statue of Liberty partly buried on a sandy beach, he says the now famous line, “You blew it up, you basterds!” He says this because HUMAN civilization ended after a nuclear war, which was also a fear at that time. Kendi also made no reference to his interpretation of the film. He only commented, “Planet if the Apes took the place of Tarzan in racist popular culture.” On page 422, Kendi wrote about Rocky, “Rocky’s opponent, Apollo Creed, with his amazing avalanche of punches, symbolized the rising black middle class, and the real life heavyweight champion of the world in 1976, the pride of Black Power masculinity, Muhammad Ali. Rocky Balboa-as played by Sylvester Stallone-came to symbolize the pride of White supremacy’s refusal to be knocked out of the avalanche of civil rights and Black Power protests and policies.” Rocky is merely an American underdog story that Stallone wrote, based off of the 1975 heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner. A match that the white boxer nearly beat the World Champion. Like Planet of the Apes, the film was used by Kendi as well as his reference as a sort of rorschach test to project their own biases about the films being racist. If Kendi chooses to interpret both films in his spare time as reflections of collective white unconscious racism, that’s fine and dandy. However, when I find these speculations in a book being touted as an achievement of black scholarship, I have to question what other liberties Kendi took with the truth in his book.

It is not quite a focus on the characters in the book. It is more a vast history of racist and anti-racist ideas in America. The headline characters are more tools to navigate the history rather than a focus of the book. The book can be a bit academic at times with not much of a narrative flow but it does give some good insights and ideas into racism in America.

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