Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Stamped from the Beginning, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Discrimination, Racist Ideas, and Ignorance
Segregationists and Assimilationists vs. Antiracists
Media, Institutions, and the Transmission of Knowledge
The Invention of Blackness and Whiteness
The Illogic of Racism
Summary
Analysis
The Great Hurricane of 1635 wreaks havoc on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritan minister Richard Mather is aboard the James, a ship that seems destined to be destroyed by the storm. However, the ship miraculously swerves around a dangerous rock, and the passengers arrive in Boston safely, which Richard credits as an act of God. Richard faced persecution in England; in America, he reunites with John Cotton, a fellow Puritan minister. Together, the men lay out a plan for life in New England. Mather is involved with the establishment of Harvard, the first college in colonial America, which is modelled after the University of Cambridge.
John Cotton and Richard Mather are two important figures in colonial history, who greatly influenced the development of the emerging nation. In particular, through helping to establish Harvard College, Richard Mather plays a decisive role in America’s intellectual history, influencing which ideas are spread among the colonial population.
Themes
Influenced by the study of Ancient Greek philosophy, the New England Puritans developed a hierarchical view of different people groups, claiming that Native Americans, Africans, and Anglicans are all inferior to them. Aristotle theorized that Africans were “ugly” and natural slaves because the hot climate in Africa had a corrupting effect on them; ideas like this were used to justify slavery in the ancient world. Once Christianity emerged, early believers claimed that slavery was ordained by God, even as St. Paul asserted that all souls were equal in Jesus. The ancient world was filled with ethnic and faith-based prejudice, but racism did not exist because the concept of race (chiefly whiteness and Blackness) had not yet been invented.
Kendi’s assertion that whiteness and Blackness did not exist in the ancient world might seem confusing. Because whiteness and Blackness are such deeply entrenched ideas in the contemporary world, it can be hard to believe that they did not always exist. Later in the chapter, Kendi will go on to explain how these concepts were developed, but for now readers should note the distinction between Aristotle’s specifically anti-African prejudice and the anti-Black prejudice that can only exist once the concept of a Black race is invented.
Themes
Back in the 17th century, John Cotton writes the first constitution of New England and legalizes the purchase of enslaved people captured during war. At this point, both Africans and indigenous people are being enslaved in the Americas. Puritans are quick to justify the enslavement of “Negroes” using arguments that preexisted colonial America. These arguments originated back many centuries previously. In the 14th century, the scholar and explorer Ibn Battuta journeyed to Mali, a resource-rich, thriving intellectual hub, and was astonished by its peacefulness. Another prominent Muslim scholar, Ibn Khaldun, rebuked Battuta’s report, arguing that “Negroes” were like animals and naturally suited to enslavement. This is the “climate theory” of Black inferiority.
The dispute between Ibn Battuta and Ibn Khaldun emphasiszes that any given point in history, it was never the case that everyone believed the same thing about race and racism. While of course particular historical periods were defined by fixation on certain racist ideas, these ideas were never shared by everyone. The history of racist (and antiracist) ideas is a history of disagreement, conflict, and debate.
Themes
Ibn Khaldun believed that dark-skinned Africans could improve themselves by migrating North, which would mean that their descendants would eventually have paler skin and more European features. At this point, Muslim powers were trading both Africans and Slavic peoples as slaves, yet Khadun’s assimilationist helped shift the slave trade toward Africans only. Even before this, there had already been another argument framing Black people as natural slaves. For centuries, certain religious scholars had been arguing that Black people were the cursed descendants of Noah’s son Ham, a figure from the Book of Genesis. Khaldun found this idea “silly,” but the “curse theory” of Black inferiority gained significant power over time.
One common racist argument is that Black people should get over the history of slavery because historically it is not only those of African descent who have been enslaved. Slavs have been enslaved, as have Jews and many other ethnic and religious groups. At the same time, as Kendi points out here, Africans were subjected to the unique dehumanization of having a theory about race produced in order to justify their enslavement (and over time to pretty much limit slavery to Africans only). This is part of why slavery is such an especially charged issue for Black people.
Themes
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