Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

“Segregationists are haters. Like real haters. People who hate you for not being like them. Assimilationists are people who like you, but only with quotation marks. Like… ‘like’ you. Meaning, they ‘like’ you because you’re like them. And then there are antiracists. They love you because you’re like you.”

These key terms repeat throughout the entire book. They further break down the concepts of racism and antiracism, but still in manageable and functional segments. Segregation represents the most overt racist ideology that leads to violence. Assimilationism, often espoused by Black historical actors in the book, aspires to reach racial equality but only according to anti-Black ideals. Under this philosophy, Black people need to become white in order to please assimilationists. Antiracists do not believe in racial hierarchies at all. Reynolds reminds the reader that these are not perfectly fixed and all-encompassing categories. A person might drift between the three identities or morph from one into another over time.

“It’s like saying, ‘I look at my dog like I look at my children, even though I’ve trained by dog to fetch my paper by beating it and yanking its leash.’ But the idea of it all let the new enslavers off the emotional hook and portrayed them as benevolent do-gooders ‘cleaning up’ the Africans.”

This is how Reynolds illustrates the concept of benevolent slavery that emerged as a justification for keeping Africans in bondage. Defenders of slavery equated the Master-Slave relationship to other familial or mentor-mentee scenarios, suggesting that there was a mutual benefit in the system and that inferior Africans gained help and support from their enslaver. In reality, the relationship embodied an insurmountable power dynamic that left ample room for unmitigated abuse and control. The disconnect between reality and imagery justified the horrific institution—an early example of racist ideas circulating to justify racist policies.

“But Cotton Mather never stopped defending the Salem witch trials, because he never stopped defending the religious, slaveholding, gender, class, and racial hierarchies reinforced by the trials. He saw himself as the defender of God’s law and the crucifier of any non-Puritan, African, Native American, poor person, or woman who defied God’s law by not submitting to it.”

Cotton Mather, who lived in the late-17th and early-18th centuries, exemplified the ways in which powerful men ensured that ruling religious, political, and social systems protected and perpetuated the power of wealthy, white, conforming men. Most contemporaries denounced the witch hunt in Salem as a mistake and a tragedy, but Mather defended its cleansing properties, given that the executions mostly took the lives of socially outcasted or “deviant” women. We see this very early example of intersectionality, wherein the ruling class discriminated against, sought to control, and punished multiple identifying characteristics, including race. As time went on, the hold of strict, racist religious ideology loosened, but powerful people, almost exclusively white men, continued to leverage privileges and fuel racism, sexism, classism, and other bigotries.

“The British disapproval applied pressure to the American slavery system, which was the American economic system, and in order for America to feel comfortable with continuing slavery, they had to get away from, break free of, Britain once and for all.”

In this passage, the authors situate the American Revolution within the context of slavery. American revolutionaries used the image of slavery to describe their own relationship to Britain—the one they challenged with warfare—but did not renegotiate the system on American soil. As Reynolds notes, the entire American economy depended on the free labor of enslaved men and women. We also see in this passage an early example of foreign criticism for American slavery and American anxiety over addressing the issue. This pattern persisted into the 20th century Civil Rights Movement and beyond.

“Africans are not savages.”

This is the entire text of Chapter 7, which follows a chapter that recaps prevalent racist ideas discussed so far in the book. The racist ideas all center on the assumption that African people are “animal-like,” “unintelligent,” and “savage.” The false narrative of African savagery is so constant and powerful in American history, literature, and popular culture that Reynolds devotes an entire chapter to this simple yet essential reminder. This statement also invites the reader to reflect on the tragic necessity of such a basic assertion of humanity; no one should ever need to be convinced that Africans are not savages.

“Segregationists and assimilationists may have had different intentions, but both of them agreed that Black people were inferior. And that argument, that shared bond, allowed slavery and racist ideas to be permanently stamped into the founding document of America.” 

The document to which Reynolds refers in this passage is the US Constitution, which formally recognized each enslaved person as three-fifths of a human for the purposes of counting the population count and apportioning Congressional seats. The Constitution both protected the institution of slavery literally dehumanized the women and men in bondage by considering them only partial human beings. As Reynolds notes, this policy pleased segregationists who could continue encouraging Black people to work towards wholeness and full humanity, and it satisfied segregationists who agreed that Black people were subhuman. No antiracist successfully challenged the construction of foundational American law.

“He and other like-minded slave owners began forcing their men and women slaves to conceive children so that they, the owners, could keep up with all the farming demands of the Deep South. Slaves were being treated like human factories, birthing farming machines. Tractors with heartbeats. Backhoes that bleed.”

The “he” in the sentence is Thomas Jefferson, on whom this chapter and this section of the book focus most acutely. The push to “breed” the next generation of people held in bondage strengthened after Jefferson and his political allies passed a Slave Trade Act that outlawed international slave trading to the US. In large, bold capital letters, Reynolds stresses that this type of behavior represented an enormous contradiction. The practice of forced reproduction roughly quadrupled the enslaved population between the outset of the 19th century and the Civil War.

“Freedom right now. Immediately. Break the chains. Period. But (because there’s always a but) immediate equality, well…that was a different story and, according to Garrison, should be…in steps. Gradual. So physical freedom now, but social freedom…eventually.”

In his early career, William Lloyd Garrison and other white abolitionists were antislavery without being fully antiracist. They viewed freedom and equality as separate goals and prioritized the end of slavery rather than equalizing policies like Black citizenship, voting, and professional opportunities. This hesitancy to pursue full equality fed into the belief that Black people were too intimidating to simply live according to their own virtues and whims, and that they needed to earn improved status by comforting and impressing white people. This type of thinking, Reynolds reminds us, is assimilationist and embodies the strategies and goals of uplift suasion.

“When we think of Abraham Lincoln, we think Honest Abe, black suit, white shirt, top hat, beard. The Great Emancipator (hmmm), one of the best, or at least most, -known and -loved presidents in America’s history. That’s what we’re taught. But Lincoln wasn’t that simple.”

The analysis of historical figures in Stamped is often at odds with traditional American narratives visible in mainstream school curricula and popular culture. The statement that a particular person “wasn’t that simple” holds true throughout the entire book. In this introduction, Reynolds hints at what might be the most problematic element of Lincoln’s mythology: His leading role in emancipating Black people from bondage. In the rest of the chapter, Reynolds contextualizes Lincoln’s antislavery politics within his longer political career—one that was not always antislavery nor antiracist.

“Turned out, freedom in America was like quicksand. It looked solid until a Black person tried to stand on it. Then it became clear that it was a sinkhole.”

Abolishing slavery did not reign in an era of unbridled freedom for Black people. Instead, powerful racists scrambled to codify Black inferiority and white supremacy in any way they could. The book specifically discusses black codes and Jim Crow laws, which legalized discriminatory segregation and disenfranchised Black citizens once they won the right to vote. Antiracist Radical Republicans in Congress fought against the affronts to Black freedom to some avail, but Reconstruction ended without establishing racial equality. Reynolds cautions at several moments in the book that victories on paper don’t necessarily equal victories in practice. Winning freedom but not being able to exercise it freely represented such a disconnect.

“Du Bois believed in being like White people to eliminate threat so that Black people could compete. [Booker T.] Washington believed in eliminating thoughts of competition so that White people wouldn’t be threatened by Black sustainability.”

Both of these assimilationist platforms bore great influence at the turn of the 20th century. Though the modern reader might view these approaches as essentially similar because they shelter white people from their racism and fright, these two men considered themselves ideological opposites, as there was no comparable leading antiracist leader in the Black community to challenge the whole premise of assimilationism.

“For Black people, however, sports and entertainment were, and still are, a way to step into the shoes of the big-timer. It was a way to use the athlete or the entertainer—Johnson being both—as an avatar. As a representative of the entire race.”

Though the chapter focuses on Jack Johnson, there was a whole string of champion Black boxers in the early 20th century that gave Black communities a sense of pride, worth, and moments of victory against white racism. Social spaces might be segregated, but Black and white fighters stepped into the same ring and only one emerged victorious. When it was the Black athlete, the entire Black community could revel in the knocking out of a white man by a Black hand. Reynolds also reminds readers that sports still offers this opportunity. Though there are politics of access and belonging in sports, they remain venues in which Black people can triumph at the expense of white people, while other societal institutions systematically produce the exact opposite outcome.

“Rape isn’t something to be taken lightly or to be turned back on the victim as a sharp blade of blame. But during this time, allegations of rape were often used as an excuse to lynch Black men, rooted in the stereotype of the savagery of the Black man and the preciousness of the White women.”

False accusations of Black rape against white women fueled a catastrophic number of lynchings. Ida B. Wells-Barnett found in her studies of lynching reports that the vast majority of Black men lynched had not even formally been charged for rape—and the charge, of course, does not make the accusation true. Operating outside of the legal system, white people used violent, vigilante justice to indiscriminately kill Black men and protect supposedly vulnerable white women. Thus, this practice revealed sexist as well as racist stereotypes, all designed to promote the supremacy of white men. Sexual violence is a sensitive and serious topic with many fraught power structures determining outcomes of harassment and assault cases, but Wells-Barnett’s work also revealed that as white men killed Black men at the mere suggestion of sexual involvement with white women, white men raped Black women with impunity. This particular issue in the bigger picture of rape and victim-blaming that Reynolds alludes to illustrates the complexity of intersectional discrimination and the relative strengths of different privileges when pitted against each other.

“Listen, I could give you more of their lines, but I’ve said this a million times by now. They were arguing what they’d been arguing—that Black people were born to be less-than, and that mixing with Whites gave them a leg up because they weren’t ‘all the way’ Black. This would tie in with the creation of IQ tests and standardized tests, all skewed to justify the dumb Black, and the ones that did well must’ve had some White in them. Yada yada yada.”

Reynolds directly and informally addresses the reader to be blunt in this statement. He writes that the same stereotypes circulated in different historical moments and influenced many different spheres. In this case, the author refers to eugenics and race “science” that ranked what were thought to be distinct blood types (Nordic, African, etc.). These pseudoscientific ideas also associated intelligence and intellect with white blood quantum. The assumptions of white superiority and Black inferiority are, in this example, predictable based on the history, yet their persistence into the 20th century also reveal their insidious durability.

“The United States emerged from World War II, looked over at the ravaged European and east Asian worlds, and flexed its unmatched capital, industrial force, and military arms as the new global leader. The only problem was, America, the land of the free, home of the brave, still had a race problem. And that race problem was starting to affect its relationships around the world. American freedom wasn’t free. Hell, it wasn’t even real.”

As the US ascended to its status as world leader, it bore the racist baggage of several centuries. The cruel irony of fighting to protect a country that didn’t protect all of its citizens was an explicit concern voiced by Black commentators during the war in the “Double V” campaign. No amount of time or military participation by Black Americans, however, could overcome the racist hate leveled against them in the US. Even as antiracist critiques from around the world shamed and questioned US institutions, and even as President Truman pushed for civil rights legislation, members of both parties pushed back against progress. Racist Americans continued to push for segregation and uphold white supremacy.

“With the eyes of the globe on him, Kennedy—who really didn’t have much of a choice—introduced civil rights legislation. But it didn’t stop the momentum of the long-awaited March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Though it had been organized by civil rights groups, the Kennedy administration controlled the event, ruling out civil disobedience. Kennedy aides approved the speakers and speeches—no Black women, no James Baldwin (an openly gay Black novelist who’d become a bold and brilliant political voice through his writing) and no Malcolm X.”

Even as white politicians reluctantly engaged with Black civil rights leaders, they sanitized the public images of Black leadership and organization as much as they could manage. Endorsing educated, straight Black men represented a baby step toward listening to and amplifying Black voices but it came at the expense of essential leaders in the Black freedom struggle. Sexism and anti-gay sentiment were such widely-held biases that the nearly-all-male, nearly-all-Christian—and, on the surface, all-heterosexual—political establishment silenced speakers whom white audiences viewed as particularly radical and therefore feared and despised. In the following decades, more radical figures and platforms became major influences in and beyond the Black community.

“On paper [the Civil Rights Act of 1964] would mean that discrimination on the basis of race was illegal. But what it actually meant was that White people, even those in favor of it (in theory), could then argue that everything was now fine. That Black people should stop crying and fighting and ‘get over’ everything, because now things were equal.”

The disconnect between legislation and its enforcement and impact is severe. Even Black leaders like Malcolm X and Angela Davis doubted the efficacy of a single act of civil rights legislation to eradicate all the racism ingrained so deeply in American society. Under the guise of a solution, however, Americans could more easily ignore enduring racism and cite the fact that legislation formally addressed it. Racist backlash circulated notions of white victimhood and preferential treatment for Black people. Although Reynolds still credits the law as important, it foreshadowed the type of color-blind racism that would gain steam in the next half-century. 

“Enough. Enough! There was no more picketing. No more marching. The squawking mockingbird had stopped its pecking and had transformed into a panther, brandishing teeth.”

The year 1965 represented a turning point in the character of American racism and in Black resistance to it. Shortly after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which Reynolds holds up as uniquely effective antiracist legislation, Los Angeles exploded into rebellion following a violent escalation between California Highway Patrol and members of the Black community in the Watts neighborhood. The community reached a breaking point after so many years of suffering from racial profiling and racialized urban struggles, perpetuated by the American political establishment. The anger and frustration fueled direct pushback against the police for nearly a week until the National Guard sent troops to overwhelm protestors and suppress the unrest. The use of imagery of a panther baring its teeth represents a powerful animal poised for a fight and also the Black Panther Party for Self Defense that emerged the following year in Oakland as a community protection organization.

“Despite all the assimilationist vomit coming from the Black elites and the racist vomit coming from White segregationists, Carmichael and his Black Power mantra pushed on.”

Fed up with the slow pace of change through traditional channels, many Black people turned to the concept of Black Power, a more immediate path to Black freedom, safety, and self-sufficiency. Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, developed the new movement, which mirrored the ideology and goals articulated earlier by Malcolm X. Carmichael toured the country to spread his platform of Black Power in the face of accusations that he called for Black supremacy and violence. In 1968, Black Power grew even more after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Reynolds notes later that the downfall of the Black Power movement came in the form of sexism. Black men excluded Black women from much of the leadership.

“And the brilliant game plan (ugh) Nixon used to drive an even bigger wedge and get racists on his side was to simply demean Black people in every speech, while also praising White people. But the magic trick in it all—the ‘how did you hide that rabbit in that hat?’ part—was that he did all this without ever actually saying ‘Black people’ and ‘White people.’”

Nixon’s veiled racism under the guise of a return to “law and order”—law and order that promoted white supremacy at the expense of the Black community—set the tone for modern conservativism that reached its apex in the 1980s. Demonizing protestors and shutting down protests appealed to many white voters, and Nixon won the presidency in 1968. This rhetorical strategy differed from earlier conservative platforms that openly called for segregation. With segregation outlawed, racists expressed their desires more covertly, in this coded language of criminals and undesirables, that really meant Black people.

“Two years into Reagan’s presidency, he issued one of the most devastating executive orders of the 20th century. The War on Drugs. Its role, maximum punishment for drugs like marijuana. This war was really one on Black people.”

Ronald Reagan expanded law and order politics after he became president following the 1980 election. As with Nixon, Reagan targeted and persecuted Black people without having to openly admit it and appear racist. New drug policies demanded severe punitive measures for the sale or possession of the drugs most popular in the Black community and less prevalent in wealthy white communities, which use drugs at similar rates. The result of the War on Drugs was the incarceration of millions of Black people.

“[Angela Davis] was certainly the nation’s most famous Black American woman academic. But, more important, over the course of her career, she has consistently defended Black women, including those Black women who even some Black women did not want to defend. She had been arguably America’s most antiracist voice over the past two decades, unwavering in her search for antiracist explanations when others took the easier and racist way of Black blame.” 

Reynolds and Kendi praise Angela Davis more than any other historical figure mentioned in the analysis of historical antiracism. Her Black feminism and open anti-prison stance included more sectors of the Black community in conversations about racism and civil rights than past Black intellectual movements. Stamped celebrates Black feminism as the most promising path forward, a path forged over time by antiracists like Davis who looked beyond standard narratives influenced by assimilationism and segregationism.

“In the era of color-blind racism, no matter how gruesome the racial crime, no matter how much evidence was stacked against them, racists were standing before the judge and pleading ‘not guilty.’ But how many criminals actually confess when they don’t have to? From ‘civilizers’ to standardized testers, assimilationists have rarely confessed to racism. Enslavers and Jim Crow segregationists went to their graves claiming innocence.”

In the late 1990s, white commentators convinced Americans to end the race conversation and adopt a “color-blind” approach that ignored rather than acknowledged race. Pretending that racism didn’t exist did not end racism. The practice of diverting attention away from race allowed racism to bloom without formal acknowledgement and active resistance from people in charge of American institutions. People began championing multiculturalism as a form of equality, even as ongoing blatant examples of racial discrimination exposed the same old racist patterns in American institutions and behaviors.