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Stamped

Racism, Antiracism, and You
Nov 17, 2020kwylie04 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
"This is not a history book. I repeat, this is not a history book. At least not like the ones you're used to reading in school." These lines, the first in the very first chapter of this book, really struck me when I read them, and they stayed with me as I continued reading. Because Jason Reynolds is right. This is not like the history books I read in school (or since). That made it no less compelling and thought-provoking. As a kid growing up in a Midwestern state, I can recall being taught about the typical benchmarks of the United States' racial history - the Antebellum Period (which, as I remember it was basically EVERYTHING from before the Civil War - can't remember it being broken down any further than that), the Civil War (including the Emancipation Proclamation), Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. But as I remember it, that's where the lesson seemed to stop, and it seemed to me that the overall message there was that the problems of racism stopped there. It felt like the teacher was saying, "Look at how foolish our ancestors were, to look down on and persecute people based on the color of their skin, but no worries because Dr. King took care of things and it's not like that now." That, as I remember it, was the lesson taught to a white girl growing up and going to school in the 1990s. The lessons that girl learned afterward though, in the school that is Real Life, have long showed it for the lie that it was. And after reading this book, this adaptation of Dr. Kendi's 'Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America', I can say without reservation that this book needs to be in classrooms right now. Here we have the history of racism, from its beginnings via a bunch of people we'd never heard of before, through many people that we are (at the very least) somewhat familiar with, and to events that have occurred within, if not the lifetime of current students, then in the lifetime of their parents or slightly older family members. Here is the history, in a 'not a history book', written specifically to draw the interest of young people (and thus the polar opposite of so many of the history books that have apparently so turned young people off of the subject entirely). I've read this once, and I feel like I need to read it again, just to take it all in fully. Definitely one of those books that I'm going to be drawn back to again and again, and taking away something new each time.