Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The title "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America" is in two ways not the best start. First, no serious intellectual historian would have the inflated self-regard to call his or her own work "definitive." (Intellectual modesty is not the author's strong suit. The book's introduction comes dangerously close to saying that any serious disagreement with its fundamental arguments can only be the product of closed-mindedness or racism.) Second, the book is not a comprehensive account of "racist ideas in America," but only deals with White racist views of African-Americans. Almost nothing is said about Euro-American racist attitudes towards Native Americans, Asian-Americans, or Hispanics (if you share Kendi's seeming view that the latter constitute a "race"). And it hardly needs saying that there is no mention of the anti-white racism of black thinkers such as Elijah Mohamed, for decades the leader of the Nation of Islam. Ibram X. Kendi defines "racism" in America very broadly. For him, American "racism" is the belief, held by anyone of any race, that undesirable human traits appear with greater frequency in Blacks as a group than Whites as a group, or desirable ones with lesser frequency. "Biological" racism holds that Black "inferiority" is innate or "genetic." "Historical/environmental" racism claims that African-Americans have been shaped for the worse in some way(s) by slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and past racial discrimination. For Kendi, these are not fundamentally different views, one racist and the other not. They are different sides of the same racist coin. In his view, the essence of racism is the belief in any kind of Black "inferiority"--not some theory about how it allegedly came into being, but the belief that it exists at all. "The only thing wrong with Black people is the belief that there is something wrong with Black people." African-Americans are, he tells us, culturally, sociologically, and psychologically "different" from White people, "different but equal," or "different and equal." He also thinks that today's "racial disparities" (e.g., in wealth) have one principal cause: ongoing (not past) racial discrimination. To believe otherwise, he says, is to assert that African-Americans and Euro-Americans are not "equal," and hence to engage in racist thinking. On the basis of these views (which are asserted/assumed rather than argued for), Kendi takes us on a long and detailed journey through six centuries of writers and thinkers, some famous and others obscure, from the first European slave traders to Barack Obama. He methodically places each author into one of three categories: "segregationist," "assimilationist," and "antiracist." (Some, of course, belong to more than one category. Among those who don't make the "100% antiracist" cut are William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the younger W.E.B Dubois, Richard Wright, Gunnar Myrdal, the younger John Hope Franklin, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Barack Obama.) The author moves through history as a moral judge, praising and blaming men and women of other times and places according to their success or failure (usually the latter) to share his own moral perspectives. Again, a large majority of serious historians would vehemently reject this moralistic approach. The genre to which "Stamped" belongs might be called "Quotation and Derision." But the book (somewhat confusingly) combines this extreme rejection of historical relativism with rhetorical nods towards multiculturalism and cultural relativism. The problem is that these three doctrines are so much akin that they must be accepted or rejected together. Multiculturalism, which Kendi clearly favors, is merely a very limited or "weak" form of cultural relativism. (An unqualified, completely rigorous, or "strong" cultural relativist would have to concede that the racial views of, for example, Southern slaveholders--surely an identifiable "group" with its own distinctive "culture"?--were equal in "value" to those of Kendi himself). Kendi argues that all previous strategies for achieving progress towards racial equality have failed and ought to be abandoned. He outlines these failures: Efforts to explain the lack of any scientific basis for "biological" racism are futile, because facts, logic, evidence, and argument have no effect on racist beliefs. Attempts to increase understanding by recounting the historical development of slavery, segregation, and racial prejudice are pointless for the same reason--and also because producers and distributors of racist ideas are already well aware of these facts (this last is a very strange claim). Trying to lessen bigotry through individual achievement ("uplift suasion") accomplishes little or nothing, since racists are as likely to resent as to respect African-American success, and to look on any outstandingly good or gifted Black person as an "exception" who is "not like the rest of them." Adoption of the ways of the dominant White culture ("assimilation") undermines Black identity and generates racial self-hatred by suggesting that Black people need to become "more like White people." Besides, racists will always focus their attention on African-Americans who have in some way "failed" to become completely assimilated. They will always find ways to turn "they are different" into "they are inferior." Passing laws doesn't work, because racists will never actually enforce them, and laws passed now can always be repealed or eviscerated later. Everything's been tried, everything's failed and will continue to fail. "Racism" and "the progression of racism" (the ability of racist beliefs to mutate into new forms, while retaining their fundamental power to rationalize racial domination) have developed along parallel tracks at roughly the same rate, both are "half-truths." Racial progress and racism progress have been more or less equal. In a very surprising conclusion, the author announces a promising replacement for failed strategies of racial progress. This "solution" makes painfully clear the inadequacy of the basic social/political model "Stamped" relies on: "self-interest" (sometimes "political or cultural," but usually economic) produces racial discrimination/domination, which in turn generates racist ideas to rationalize or justify the already-existing exploitation. White people didn't enslave Africans because they needed slave labor and thought that these particular people, since they were "inferior," were the most appropriate ones to enslave. They first enslaved them a) because doing so served White self-interest, and b) because they could. After the fact, Whites began to regard Blacks as "inferior" in order to justify to themselves and others what they had done. Kendi believes that new hopes for progress towards true racial equality can be based on the unquestionable truth of this model. For it turns out that racism is in the "true self-interest" of very, very few Americans! "[A] tiny group of super rich, Protestant, heterosexual, non-immigrant, White Anglo-Saxon males. These are the only people who need to be altruistic [i.e., self-sacrificing] in order to be antiracist. The rest of us merely need to do the intelligent thing for ourselves [i.e., pursue our own "true" self-interest]." Once this infinitesimal minority--far smaller than the infamous 1%--is swept aside, all will be well, at least in principle. If we could just take power from the ruling elite of 1896... Kendi's viewpoint resembles that once attributed to Bertrand Russell: "All human problems are due to the fact that human beings are behaving irrationally. The solution is for them to behave rationally instead." A minor modification yields Kendi's solution: "All American racial problems are due to the fact that most of us are not pursuing our own true self-interest. The solution is for all but a tiny number of us to pursue our true self-interest instead." This is a very odd proposal to come from someone who claims that facts, evidence, arguments, and logic have no effect on racist beliefs. Apparently Kendi believes that it's easier to change people's views about what their cultural, political, and economic "interests" are than it is to change their racial attitudes. Is this really a plausible way forward based on a realistic grasp of American society and politics? The "failed racial progress strategies" dismissed by Kendi seem to me rather promising compared to this nonsensical political fantasy. As a collection of little-known texts, "Stamped" is not without some good things and some useful things, and I learned from it. But I'm surprised that it was judged worthy of the 2016 National Book Award. Put aside its analytical problems. The book would have been much improved by more stringent copy-editing which did something about the author's often weird (though, in his defense, always clear) prose style, tendentious interpretations of texts and events, and downright historical errors. Both charity and brevity forbid examples here. For a long time, I've regarded complaints about the alleged cultural damage being done by "political correctness" as ridiculously overblown or just plain hysterical. The great acclaim for this very problematic book makes me wonder whether I have been paying sufficient attention to this question.