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
Remarkably enough, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. By this point, the abolitionist movement of the Revolutionary period has lost its power. Three years after the death of the two presidents, 23-year-old William Lloyd Garrison gives the address at the American Colonization Society’s Independence Day celebration. Garrison was raised by a poor and devout Baptist single mother in Newburyport, Massachusetts. As a teenager, he was an indentured servant to the editor of a local newspaper. After finishing his seven years of indenture, Garrison became an editor at a temperance paper in Boston. His passion for the cause was influenced by the fact that both his father and older brother were alcoholics.
The trajectory of Garrison’s career highlights the important differences between being an indentured servant and slave and between the material reality of Blackness and whiteness. While Garrison was contractually obliged to work as a teenager, this experience of indenture does not inflict him with stigma for the rest of his life. In fact, the experience he gains working for the newspaper editor becomes the basis for a flourishing career.
Themes
In 1828, Garrison meets Benjamin Lundy, the editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation. Garrison is deeply affected by hearing Lundy preach about the evils of slavery. It is likely that, up until this moment, Garrison shares the general sense of fatalism around slavery, believing that however evil it is, it will never end. However, this all changes after hearing Lundy speak of abolition. During his Independence Day speech, Garrison criticizes the colonization movement, saying that instead people should be fighting for the “gradual abolition of slavery.” Ten days later, he gives another abolitionist speech at a Black Baptist church. He then moves to Baltimore to join the Genius of Universal Emancipation as a coeditor.
Thanks in part to the inaction of leaders like Jefferson—as well as the steeply increasing profits from slavery during this era—many people who oppose slavery in principle at this point in time feel resigned to the idea that it will always exist. This demonstrates the importance of people like Lundy constantly and vocally reminding others that slavery is intolerable. Indeed, Garrison’s radicalization could even be seen to undermine Kendi’s argument that racist ideas cannot be persuaded away.
Themes
The following year, Garrison publishes an article calling for immediate abolition. In November, a “disciple” of Denmark Vesey named David Walker publishes an antiracist, antislavery pamphlet entitled Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Yet even this features references to Black inferiority and characterizes Africa as a wretched, backward place. Walker also blames Black people for being too politically divided to build real power, when in fact it is white people who are far more divided across the political spectrum. Despite these racist elements, the pamphlet is still overall “intoxicatingly antiracist.” He includes excerpts of the Declaration of Independence alongside his demand for freedom.
Some accounts of the abolitionist movement largely exclude Black people (with the exception of figures like Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass whose contributions are largely framed via white individuals and organizations). However, as Denmark Vesey’s and David Walker’s activism shows, Black people have always been at the forefront of the abolitionist movement, making the most urgent, clear, and antiracist demands.
Themes
As a believer in nonviolence, Garrison is wary of Walker’s Appeal, although he admits it contains some important “truths.” In the midst of the panic surrounding the Appeal’s publication Garrison is imprisoned for seven weeks. After being released he expresses no anger about his imprisonment, explaining: “A few white victims must be sacrificed to open the eyes of the nation.” Around this time Walker dies, but his ideas are taken up by others, including the early Black feminist Maria Stewart. Garrison moves back to Boston and in January 1831 publishes the first issue of a new abolitionist paper, The Liberator.
Garrison’s pronouncement of self-sacrifice has echoes of the rhetoric used by some white allies in the present. This can be a controversial tactic, as language of self-sacrifice can lead to the further centering and enshrinement of whiteness through the idea of martyrdom. Indeed, at the very end of the book Kendi will critique the idea of self-sacrifice as a largely non useful strategy against racism.
Themes
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From this point forward, Garrison commits to fighting for immediate emancipation, a cause he will support for the rest of his life. But he’s also an assimilationist, advocating for “gradual equality” and arguing that Black people should strive to become like white people. He claims that if Black people properly assimilate, racism will dissolve on its own. In reality, the history of the early 19th century indicates that assimilation and uplift suasion are ineffective at eradicating racism. During this time, sensationalist media begins to issue hysterical reports about Black neighborhoods, depicting them as overrun with depravity and crime.
Not only do assimilation and racial uplift not work as strategies against racism, American history indicates that they often make racism worse. When white racists see Black people becoming part of white society, “acting like” white people, and partaking in the benefits of assimilation, the result is often an outraged surge of racist violence.
Themes
Many of the poor European immigrants arriving en masse to America face ethnic prejudice of their own and retaliate by expressing anti-Black ideas. This period is when the country’s first minstrel shows take place, with white actors performing racist caricatures such as “Old darky,” Mammy,” “yaller gal,” and “Dandy”/“Zip Coon.” This last figure is a mocking representation of “an upwardly mobile northern Black male” whose assimilationist aspirations attract the scorn of audiences. Meanwhile, the young showman P. T. Barnum tours with an elderly Black woman “exhibit” who he claims is the 161-year-old former “mammy” of George Washington. Children’s books and games are filled with slavery imagery, encouraging children to adopt racist ideas.
Like early modern England, 19th-century America is overrun with racist ideas being mass disseminated onstage under the guise of entertainment. Indeed, the history of minstrelsy highlights the disturbing reality that racism isn’t necessarily associated with a racist’s feelings of anger or fear. Throughout history, racists have found racism playful, lighthearted, and fun.
Themes
On August 21, 1831, the enslaved freedom fighter Nat Turner kills at least 57 enslavers in a rebellion that lasts two days. Before being hanged, Turner testifies that his actions were the will of God. When asked if he repents, he replies, “Was not Christ crucified?” Garrison is disapproving of Turner’s rebellion’s violent method and concerned that it would dissuade people from supporting abolition. In reality, Kendi notes, Garrison misses the point that “some, if not most, enslavers would die rather than set their wealth free.” Racist thought refuses to accommodate enslaved people’s resistance. When the enslaved don’t resist, they are framed as inherently submissive and docile, but when they do, it is blamed on white “agitators.”
Although Garrison passionately believes in the cause of abolition, his patronizing view of Black revolutionaries like Turner and his unwillingness to consider violence as a reasonable tactic illuminates the limits of his thought. One could argue that Garrison’s racism prevents him from truly understanding both the reality of slavery and the urgency of abolition. It also makes him read the actions of people like Turner as examples of merciless brutality rather than as reasonable responses to the violence of slavery.
Themes
Turner’s rebellion pushes the government to start taking abolition seriously. Yet enslavers continue to develop racist ideas because they want to justify slavery—a process that Garrison does not grasp. In 1832, he publishes a critique of the ACS entitled Thoughts on African Colonization. This ends up being a devastating blow to the ACS, which never returns to its former power. It is not just abolitionists like Garrison that oppose colonization, however; many enslavers do as well. The proslavery opposition to colonization is summarized in Thomas Roderick Dew’s book Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1831 and 1832—a book that actually makes some fairly similar arguments to Garrison’s Thoughts.
Once again, this passage highlights a surprising alignment of people from oppositional ends of a given ideological spectrum. While some abolitionists oppose colonization because they do not believe it is feasible (or right) to send free Black people to Africa, enslavers also oppose it because they want to maintain a supply of enslaved labor in the U.S. Similarly, there are also both abolitionists and enslavers (like Jefferson) who support colonization as a solution to slavery.
Themes
Back in 1828, the U.S. Senate had already denied funds to the ACS due to concerns that relocating Black people to Africa would “create a vacuum in cheap labor in seaboard cities,” thereby raising labor costs. In 1833, a group of 66 abolitionists found the American Anti-Slavery Society, gaining the support of a number of wealthy and powerful individuals. Garrison is given a “minor” role in the organization. While the AASS proclaims to advocate for racial equality, in reality members are deeply concerned about the prospect of Black people becoming part of white society or seeming themselves as the true equals of white Americans.
This passage introduces another important theme in the history of racist and antiracist ideas: false claims of antiracism that attempt to mask the fundamental racism lying beneath them. The members of AASS proclaim to be in favor of racial equality, perhaps in order to advance their abolitionist arguments. But Kendi emphasizes that—like many white abolitionists—they are actually fairly resistant to the prospect of true equality.
Themes
