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notesbynnenna 's review for:
Wow, where does one even begin in reviewing such a powerful book? This book is an education that everyone needs.
STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING took me on such a journey. To say that this book is eye-opening feels like an understatement. This book is perspective-shifting. It made me reconsider everything that I’d been taught in school growing up and recognize the huge gaps in the version of history I’d been told.
This book takes you through the history of America, starting with the formation of this country (and its years as a colony of Britain) and leading up to the near present day, ending in 2016 when this book was written. As far as the structure of this book, it’s divided into five parts around five individuals who are important to the history of racism in America: Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis.
There is a wealth of information here: it is so well-researched and well-written. Yes, it is dense with information, but I found it so very readable and digestible. There’s so much to unpack in this book and I couldn’t possibly do it justice here, but I thought I’d talk about a few ideas that really stood out to me.
1. History shows that racial progress and the progression of racism have been happening at the same time. When you see the full history of racism laid out before you, as it is in this book, it’s also easy to see that even when racial progress has been made, racism has never been eradicated. Racism continues to evolve and shift and rebrand itself over time and that’s something we must be vigilant about.
2. So many of the prominent American figures we were taught to praise in school were actually trash. Ok ok, that’s an oversimplification, but so is the version of history that is being taught in classrooms, or at least the classrooms that I was in growing up. For example, with Abraham Lincoln, we were given the top-level narrative of him as the “Great Emancipator” who freed the slaves, when in reality he did not care about Black people, did not believe they should be treated equally, and wrote the Emancipation Proclamation as a tactic to save the Union. This book just made me realize that we need to critically examine all these historical figures because none of them were perfect. If you dig a bit beneath the surface you’ll learn a lot more about the complexities of their lives, which is important in the context of understanding who they were as people.
3. I love how clearly and often Kendi points out racist ideas in this book. I had to admit that I’ve internalized certain racist ideas. I think it’s pretty hard not to when you grow up learning certain things in school and picking up on ideas that your parents have passed down to you. That’s the insidiousness of racism. Some of it is overt but a lot of it is subtle and you don’t realize how many racist ideas you’ve unknowingly consumed until you know. I remember being taught a form of respectability politics, being teased at school for “talking white” (I didn’t know how else to speak), thinking that a weave would make me prettier. It’s tough to let go of some of these ideas because I’m 30 years old now and I’ve been learning them for a long time. But that’s the work that I want to do and that we all need to do: unlearning and relearning.
So those are just a few of the thoughts I had as I was reading the book. I annotated a lot while I was reading this and participated in a big bookstagram read along for this. It was great having so many people to discuss it with and the two Zoom discussions we had were so much fun and absolutely enriching. In our second discussion, we talked about how Black women were often glossed over in the narrative, even in the Angela Davis section. I think that is definitely a valid criticism of this book.
I already know that I will be referring back to this book frequently and I’d like to read the YA version as well, at some point, to reinforce what I’ve learned here.
STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING took me on such a journey. To say that this book is eye-opening feels like an understatement. This book is perspective-shifting. It made me reconsider everything that I’d been taught in school growing up and recognize the huge gaps in the version of history I’d been told.
This book takes you through the history of America, starting with the formation of this country (and its years as a colony of Britain) and leading up to the near present day, ending in 2016 when this book was written. As far as the structure of this book, it’s divided into five parts around five individuals who are important to the history of racism in America: Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis.
There is a wealth of information here: it is so well-researched and well-written. Yes, it is dense with information, but I found it so very readable and digestible. There’s so much to unpack in this book and I couldn’t possibly do it justice here, but I thought I’d talk about a few ideas that really stood out to me.
1. History shows that racial progress and the progression of racism have been happening at the same time. When you see the full history of racism laid out before you, as it is in this book, it’s also easy to see that even when racial progress has been made, racism has never been eradicated. Racism continues to evolve and shift and rebrand itself over time and that’s something we must be vigilant about.
2. So many of the prominent American figures we were taught to praise in school were actually trash. Ok ok, that’s an oversimplification, but so is the version of history that is being taught in classrooms, or at least the classrooms that I was in growing up. For example, with Abraham Lincoln, we were given the top-level narrative of him as the “Great Emancipator” who freed the slaves, when in reality he did not care about Black people, did not believe they should be treated equally, and wrote the Emancipation Proclamation as a tactic to save the Union. This book just made me realize that we need to critically examine all these historical figures because none of them were perfect. If you dig a bit beneath the surface you’ll learn a lot more about the complexities of their lives, which is important in the context of understanding who they were as people.
3. I love how clearly and often Kendi points out racist ideas in this book. I had to admit that I’ve internalized certain racist ideas. I think it’s pretty hard not to when you grow up learning certain things in school and picking up on ideas that your parents have passed down to you. That’s the insidiousness of racism. Some of it is overt but a lot of it is subtle and you don’t realize how many racist ideas you’ve unknowingly consumed until you know. I remember being taught a form of respectability politics, being teased at school for “talking white” (I didn’t know how else to speak), thinking that a weave would make me prettier. It’s tough to let go of some of these ideas because I’m 30 years old now and I’ve been learning them for a long time. But that’s the work that I want to do and that we all need to do: unlearning and relearning.
So those are just a few of the thoughts I had as I was reading the book. I annotated a lot while I was reading this and participated in a big bookstagram read along for this. It was great having so many people to discuss it with and the two Zoom discussions we had were so much fun and absolutely enriching. In our second discussion, we talked about how Black women were often glossed over in the narrative, even in the Angela Davis section. I think that is definitely a valid criticism of this book.
I already know that I will be referring back to this book frequently and I’d like to read the YA version as well, at some point, to reinforce what I’ve learned here.