Stamped From the Beginning

I haven’t read anything recently so deeply profound, and as The Washington Post writes, relentless in its ability to show the vast depth of racism’s roots, and the insidious development of it from beyond an idea, into an institutional structure fortified by centuries, not just in America, but far far before it. Kendi writes that: “my definition of a racist idea is a simple one: it is any concept that regards one racial group as inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.” From this basis he reaches deep into antiquity, beginning not with slavery, not with economics, but rather fundamental structures of western thought.

It was Aristotle who developed and popularized one of the original lies — the “climate” theory of racism, that initiated a virus stretching throughout Greek and Roman society, survived through the dark ages, was greatly amplified during the rise of Europe (through and among countless others, the tragic story of Leo Africanus and Voltare’s playmaking), and washed onto the shores of colonial America. This concept not only served ever-present in the construction of Western governmental, economic and educational systems, but it also nearly erased knowledge of the eclectic histories of peer societies (in many cases more robust and powerful).

Even with limited space, it is worth quoting Kendi here: “Ghana, Mali and Songhay developed empires that could rival in size, power, scholarship and wealth any in the world. Intellectuals at universities in Timbuktu and Jenne pumped out scholarship and pumped in students from around West Africa. The world’s greatest globe-trotter of the fourteenth century (Ibn Battuta) …. decided to see Mali for himself” writing “‘There is complete security in their county. Neither traveler nor inhabitant in it has anything to fear from robbers or men of violence.”

It is the unconscionable historical depth of racist ideas (as well as the presence of anti-racism as a active but unfortunately always less powerful counterforce) that Kendi shows so empirically in this book, across examples like this from ancient history to present day. It is so much deeper (and cannot be seen as distinct) from the evils of today’s events. It is why we study volumes on Rome but not Niani. It is why the achievements across millennia of non-white civilization are not placed into the western dominated historical cannon, and rather minimized or erased in service of the continuance of a structure that doesn’t serve all equally.

Anyone who enters this book (as Kendi notes, with an open mind) will confront the dark history of modern society that is often left out of the simplified history of our Franklins, Lincolns (yes, even the Lincolns) and Jeffersons, and emerge with a much needed and far more balanced understanding of history. But it should just be a start. This is one of a series of books I plan to read — yes, inspired by the current events in our country of police brutality, but not as a short term bout of performative instagram activism. The act of reading — really reading — the histories of a deeply vast and complex set of cultures, the experiences of generations of marginalized people and of the often entrenched racist ideas underpinning today’s world and the necessary work to remedy this, and doing so as a permanent fixture of one’s learning, not during a blimp of time to signal something externally, is something I am committed to, and hopefully changes not only my mind and understanding but that of others around me.