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
In 1854 the Missouri Compromise is repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. One of the figures who emerges as a leading antislavery voice during this time is Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois lawyer and congressman. At this point, Lincoln is an abolitionist in favor of colonization; he argues that it would be terrible to end slavery and maintain white supremacy, but he also opposes the idea of white and Black Americans living together as equals. Lincoln is originally from Kentucky, and some of his family members are enslavers. Despite being an abolitionist, he is firmly opposed to extending voting rights to Black people.
While Abraham Lincoln is often framed as an antiracist ally due to his legacy of “freeing” enslaved people, Kendi’s account paints a more nuanced picture of the man.
Themes
In the period leading up to the 1856 presidential election, the new Republican Party emerges as a leading antislavery voice in government, although Democrat James Buchanan is elected. In 1857, the Supreme Court denies the freedom suit of Dred Scott, thereby ruling the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and barring Black people from citizenship. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a former enslaver who freed his own captives yet continues to fight for enslavers’ property rights, argues that Black people were not counted as part of the American “political community” when the nation was founded and thus should not count now. This is actually a misreading of American history.
Proslavery advocates and other racists often reference the founding of the country in order to argue that only white people were there at the time and thus should be the sole full members of the American political community. Of course, this is untrue; before white colonizers arrived in the U.S., it was already inhabited by an enormous network of indigenous nations. Not only that, but the earliest white settler communities of course also included Africans.
Themes
In the aftermath of Dred Scott v. Sandford, a debate emerges between Lincoln and the Democratic senator Stephen Douglas. Douglas issues a warning about the “Black Republican Party,” claiming Lincoln wants to give Black people citizenship rights. In response, Lincoln maintains that he believes in the “physical difference” between Black and white people and that this means there will always be a hierarchical relationship between the races. Within this hierarchy, he adds, white people should remain superior. Yet Lincoln also uses this moment to double down on his opposition to slavery.
Lincoln’s response to the accusation that he views Black people and white people equally highlights the danger of capitulating to racist ideas. In assuaging racists, Lincoln ends up making a deeply racist statement himself. This is why, Kendi says, the only reasonable response to racist ideas is unequivocal antiracism.
Themes
In 1857 Hinton Rowan Helper, a critic from North Carolina, publishes a highly successful book entitled The Impending Crisis of the South. The book is a racist argument against slavery, proposing that slavery should end in order to promote the labor rights and economic opportunities of white workers. This is exactly what Lincoln and the Republicans had been waiting for. Meanwhile, the white radical abolitionist John Brown organizes a rebellion, which is crushed by Robert E. Lee. Garrison describes Brown’s revolt as “insane,” though he soon switches to characterizing Brown as a white martyr for the abolitionist cause. His death by hanging prompts a prolonged outpouring of mourning from white and Black people alike.
As strange as it might seem, many abolitionists are desperate to find an argument against slavery that is not grounded in Black people’s humanity. Indeed, Kendi points out that John Brown is one of the few white abolitionists in history who truly appreciates this humanity and acts with the urgency required to defend it. Yet even the reaction to his rebellion is another example of a white person receiving disproportionate attention in favor of countless similar Black revolutionaries.
Themes
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In 1860, Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis presents a proposal of unlimited rights for states and enslavers; he also objects to federal funds being directed toward Black education, claiming: “This Government was not founded by negroes for negroes.” He argues that the racial hierarchy of white supremacy and Black inferiority was “stamped from the beginning.” It briefly seems as if polygenesis will become the broadly accepted story about human origins once and for all. However, everything changes with the publication of The Origin of Species by the British antislavery biologist Charles Darwin. Rejecting the idea that every species was individually and specifically created, Darwin proposes that species evolve over time, moving toward “perfection.” He mainly focuses on nonhuman animal life, but the implications for humanity are enormous.
Polygenesis may have never had any basis in scientific truth, yet it did reflect other broadly accepted ideas about humanity at the time. Prior to Darwin’s intervention, most people believed that each species was created separately by God. Even when religious explanations of the world began to give way to more secular understandings, for a period of time it was still assumed that each species (and, for polygenesists, each human race) emerged in a distinct separate form. However, Darwin intervenes to show that this is not true.
Themes
After the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin and his work enter into dialogue with scholars across “the entire Western world.” Sir Francis Galton takes up his cousin Darwin’s work and invents the concept of “nature versus nurture,” before going on to advocate for a policy of social cleansing he calls “eugenics.” In 1871, Darwin publishes Descent of Man, a book that confirms that evolution also applies to humans and argues that there is intellectual similarity across people of different races. His comments about the future of the races are interpreted differently by assimilationists and segregationists, who both praise the text. Assimilationists believe Darwin proposes that Black people will “evolve into White civilization,” whereas segregationists believe he argues that Black people will go extinct.
The second half of this passage underlines the point that when one looks beyond the surface, there are usually more similarities between assimilationists and segregationists than there are differences. Indeed, the fact that assimilationists believe that Black people will become white is arguably just another way of claiming that Black people will become extinct. Both forms of racist thought, then, imagine that one day Black people will cease to exist.
Themes
In 1860, the proslavery journal De Bow’s Review concludes that no “moral, happy, and voluntarily industrious community” of free Black people exists on earth. The magazine also speaks about the necessity of Southern slave states seceding from the North. This starts with Southern Democrats leaving the Democratic Party. Douglass refuses to vote for Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election, despite admiring Lincoln’s courage and determination, because Lincoln had not proved himself an advocate of Black people’s rights while serving as a congressman for Illinois. Garrison, meanwhile, is scornful of the idea that Lincoln actually poses any threat to slavery. Meanwhile, the secessionist movement gains power through stirring up fear of slave rebellion.
The claim about no thriving Black society existing on earth is, of course, outlandish and unfounded. However, it also reflects a current of thought that still exists today. Consider how Western reporting on African and Caribbean countries often overemphasizes poverty, sickness, corruption, and violence, often without mentioning much else.
Themes
