Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.

In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis.

As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities.

In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.

Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, a #1 New York Times best-selling author, and the youngest-ever winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He is also a 2020–2021 Frances B. Cashin Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where he will continue work on his next historical monograph, Bones of Inequity: A Narrative History of Racist Policies in America.

A professor of history, Kendi is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a correspondent at CBS News. His first book, The Black Campus Movement, won the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize. In 2016, he won the National Book Award for Nonfiction at 34 years old for his best seller Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. It was also a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

Professor Kendi has published numerous essays in academic journals and periodicals, including the Journal of African American History, Journal of African American Studies, Journal of Social History, New York Times, Guardian, Time, Chronicle of Higher Education, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, and Washington Post. 

He has received research fellowships, grants, and visiting appointments from a variety of universities, foundations, professional associations, and libraries, including the American Historical Association, Library of Congress, National Academy of Education, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Brown University, Princeton University, UCLA, and Duke University. 

In 2019, Professor Kendi was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and honored on The Root 100, listed as the 15th most influential African American between the ages of 25 and 45 and the most influential college professor.

Professor Kendi’s third book, the #1 New York Times best seller, How to Be an Antiracist, was hailed by the Times as “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.” How to Be an Antiracist has been named in several lists of best books of 2019, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Time, and NPR. He also coauthored the #1 New York Times best seller, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, a young-adult version of Stamped from the Beginning. He recently released his first board book, Antiracist Baby.

Professor Kendi earned his doctorate in African American studies from Temple University in 2010. He earned his undergraduate degrees from Florida A&M University in 2004. In addition to Bones of Inequity, Professor Kendi is coediting 400 Souls: A Community History of African American History, 1619–2019, an assemblage of 80 writers and 10 poets that weaves together 400 years of African American history.

Source: Boston University Center for Antiracist Research