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
As the new millennium approaches, investment in the idea of “multiculturalism” takes over the U.S. Many proudly describe the U.S. as a multicultural nation yet fail to acknowledge that if this were really true, Christianity, the English language, and other white European customs would not all be the norm. In 1998, Davis publishes a landmark study of sexuality, gender, race, and class in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, and in 2003 she follows this with the abolitionist manifesto, Are Prisons Obsolete? In it, she argues that in the U.S., the figure of the “criminal” has effectively been coded as Black.
Here, Kendi implicitly encourages readers to consider that the country’s original indigenous inhabitants speak languages and practice other religions, or that a large proportion of the population is Spanish speaking. Kendi argues that the ongoing implementation of English and Christianity are a manifestation of white (European) supremacy.
Themes
Back in 1973, the social psychologist invented the term “Ebonics” to replace “Nonstandard Negro English” as the descriptor of the distinct vernacular language of Black Americans. In 1996, the Oakland Unified School District recognized Ebonics as a distinct and legitimate language with roots in West Africa. This antiracist gesture was controversial, with even some Black figures lamenting it as a form of “teaching down” to Black children. Ebonics was castigated as “lazy,” “mutant,” and “ungrammatical.” Some assimilationists supported the use of Ebonics in the classroom but only if it was in service of teaching “standard” English.
In the present, the term Ebonics has largely fallen out of use and been replaced with AAVE (African American Vernacular English). The conversation that begins in 1996 around the Oakland School District’s decision foreshadows contemporary conversations about AAVE, which often revolve around the issue of cultural appropriation. AAVE is now culturally mainstream, yet Black people are still punished and dismissed for using it.
Themes
Conservative Black linguist John McWhorter argued that allowing bilingual education for Ebonics-speaking students was “self-sabotaging.” He claimed that white racism barely existed anymore and that Black people needed to let go of their “victimology.” He also claims that Black children would bully those who perform well in school for “acting White.” This latter issue, while not always complete untrue, is far more complex than McWhorter allows. Three years later, McWhorter goes on to argue that the majority of Black people blame the “culture-internal ideologies” of the Black community itself for the ongoing struggles and disparities it faces in Essays for the Black Silent Majority. In reality, only a minority of Black people hold this view—and they do not tend to be “silent” about it.
McWhorter is part of the minority of Black people who are responsible for producing new, highly influential racist views. The idea that Black children bully those who are high achievers at school on the basis that they are “acting white” is a particularly powerful idea because, as Kendi points out, it is not entirely untrue. Yet rather than being an act of “self-sabotage,” there are other reasons why this can happen, such as the fact that some parents do teach their children to “act white” either in order to protect themselves from racism or based on assimilationist, elitist ideas.
Themes
In June 2000, President Clinton holds a special event at the White House in which he unveils the first survey of the human genome and proudly announces that scientists have found “that in genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9 percent the same.” In the wake of this announcement, many segregationists continue to insist that the 0.1% of differentiation in human genes “must be racial.” In reality, this is not true at all, as University of Pennsylvania scholar Dorothy Roberts describes in Fatal Invention, which examines how race is a “political category” that is falsely assumed to be biological.
The fact that segregationists try to insist that the 0.1% variation in the human genome must account for race shows how stubborn people are in clinging to racist ideas that have long been disproven. Again, Kendi underscores that the conviction with which people hold onto racist ideas is not evidence of the plausibility of these ideas. Instead, it is a testament to the ongoing desire people have to commit to a racist worldview.
Themes
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In the 2000 presidential election, tens of thousands of Black Floridians are unable to vote (or do not have their votes counted), which allows George W. Bush to narrowly win the electoral college and thus the presidency. In August 2001, one of the biggest antiracist meetings in history takes place in Durban, South Africa. The United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance is attended by 12,000 people. However, the antiracist movement suffers a serious setback in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11. With anti-Islamic and anti-Arab racism on the rise and a new war in Iraq on the horizon, critical examination of U.S. anti-Black racism diminishes.
Just as, in Reagan’s view, the Cold War brought the American people together against a common enemy (communism), Bush uses 9/11 to create an artificial sense of unity based on the demonization of Arabs and Muslims. Of course, Kendi emphasizes that there is no such thing as real unity based on hatred of a particular group. But it nevertheless enables politicians like Reagan and Bush to posture as if they are bringing people together through instituting divisive policies.
Themes
In 2003, the Supreme Court upholds the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy in a ruling that comes as a surprise to many. However, standardized testing still remains firmly in place, fueled by the 2003 No Child Left Behind Act, which continues to place blame for achievement disparities on Black children themselves. The Act’s “No Excuses” maxim means that Black and Latinx children often find that the punishment for acting out in school is arrest. Meanwhile, Bill Cosby goes on what is nicknamed his “blame-the-poor tour,” giving a series of talks across the country in which he condemns poor Black people as responsible for the problems they face. A young, freshly elected Illinois senator named Barack Obama criticizes Cosby, pointing out that it is impossible for Black people to take “responsibility” without adequate resources.
The fact that the No Child Left Behind Act ends up further criminalizing and marginalizing vulnerable children is an example of the political doublespeak that Kendi has discussed throughout this section of the book. Doublespeak is a term invented by the English writer George Orwell for words that describe the opposite of what they mean.
Themes
