8 June 2020 STAMPED: RACISM, ANTIRACISM, AND YOU by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, Little Brown, March 2020, 320p., ISBN: 978-0-316-45369-1

“Make me wanna holler

The way they do my life”

-- Marvin Gaye (1971)

“The next day, Cotton Mather, one of New England’s greatest God-fearing scholars, was dead. But you know how death is. Your body goes, but your ideas don’t. Your impact lingers on, even when it’s poisonous. Some bodies get put into the ground and daisies bloom. Others encourage the sprouting of weeds, weeds that work to strangle whatever’s living and growing around them.”

“I can’t breathe.”

I grew up in a segregated suburban Long Island community, watching the Civil Rights movement on TV: non-violent protesters versus batons, dogs, tear gas, fire hoses, and firebombs. 

One summer night, when I was ten, there was a fire in the neighborhood. The next day, I pedaled my banana bike over in the direction of the previous evening’s lights and sirens. In a quiet cul du sac, I came upon a burned out, under-construction home. On the partially-charred sheathing, someone had scrawled hugely, in spraypaint, “N--’s Go Home. It was the first of two firebombings that the house and its eventual inhabitants endured. I started recognizing that racism was a problem everywhere in America, not just in the South.

As the past couple of weeks have once again highlighted, America’s issues of race have never been reconciled. There are many great adult books about the economic and social inequalities resulting from racism--the knee on the neck of Black Americans, as the Reverend Al Sharpton just characterized it at George Floyd’s memorial. But where and when did the stubborn plague of racism originate, and what sustains it?

STAMPED: RACISM, ANTIRACISM, AND YOU is a book for tweens and teens that delves into the “Why?” It’s based on Ibram X. Kendi’s STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING, which won the National Book Award. It recounts a plethora of discredited, often bizarre notions about Black people that were widely accepted by white people at various points in the past. 

In seeking to discover the source of racist ideas, Professor Kendi and Jason Reynolds transport us back more than 600 years and follow threads of medieval racist writings, thoughts, and actions right up through President Obama’s years in the White House. The book provides substantial evidence to explain why change has come so agonizingly slow.

The authors examine ideas and actions through the lens of three constructs: segregationism, assimilationism, and antiracism. Segregationists are haters. They hate anyone who is different from them. Assimilationists are essentially cowardly. They like those with whom they can relate. Antiracists are the ones who love you for being you, even if you and they have nothing in common except for humanity.

STAMPED: RACISM, ANTIRACISM, AND YOU provides a critical new look at the many of the nation’s white heroes, like Jefferson and Lincoln, as well as Black heroes like Du Bois, Washington, Wheatley, Jack Johnson, M.L. King, Malcolm X, Angela Davis and Barack Obama.

“And the people Angela Davis saw [dancing in the streets] and all the others around the world who were celebrating were not enraptured from the election of an individual; they were enraptured by the pride of the victory for Black people, by the success of millions of grassroots organizers, and because they had shown all those disbelievers, who said that electing a Black president was impossible, to be wrong. Most of all, they were enraptured by the antiracist potential of a Black president.

But, like my mother says, there’s not much payout for potential, is there? President Obama was a symbol. Yes, one of hope. One of progress. But also one of assimilationism. So much so that he was used to explain racism away. Used to absolve it. Obama fell in line with the likes of Lincoln, Du Bois, Washington, Douglass, and many others, who had flashes--true moments--of antiracist thought, but always seemed to assimilate under pressure. He rose to fame for calling out Bill Cosby for blaming Black people, then dived headfirst into assimilation shortly thereafter, critiquing Black people in the exact same ways. And just as with the Black leaders before him, the assimilation didn’t work. Segregationists climbed out of every hateful hole and out from under every racist rock. They hated him, worked tirelessly to destroy and discredit him, and used him as a way to demean Black people. To ramp up racist absurdity and stereotypes, once again calling back to their favorite bigoted playlist, playing all the classic racist tunes--Black savage, Black dummy, Black do-nothing, Black be-nothing. Anything to smear President Obama and Black people in the media. Racist politicians and media personalities worked to figure out ways to tamp down the ego that they assumed came with a Black president.

And came with being Black in the time of a Black president.

And came with...being Black.”

American teens need to read this book. Most American history textbooks contain a wealth of omissions, misinformation, half-truths, and slanted propaganda. This thought-provoking book will serve as an antidote to those shortcomings, and as an appetizer to further study and action. At this moment in our nation’s history, STAMPED is a welcome resource.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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