Review and Response to “Stamped from the Beginning” by Ibram Kendi -

“The title Stamped from the Beginning comes from a speech that Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis gave on the floor of the US Senate on April 12, 1860.” (Pg. 3) It’s the summation of so much. This is a book about the many forms that racist ideas have taken throughout the history of America told through the story of five significant figures in our nation’s past up to the present.

Kendi does a great job of talking about a difficult topic in a narrative form that draws the reader in because it shifts from racism being just another abstract political debate to something that impacts actual people. In these stories we hear how these individuals struggled with racism, fought against it, promoted it, and tried to find some kind of middle ground between racism and anti-racism. As with all stories of people throughout time, it is a story of how these people changed over time — no different than how racists ideas have changed too.

Throughout the book Kendi weaves the arguments that were being made by three distinct groups. “Historically, there have been three sides to this heated argument. A group we can call segregationists has blamed Black people themselves for the racial disparities. A group we can call antiracists have pointed to racial discrimination. A group we can call assimilationists had tried to argue…