Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
Ratings33
Average rating4.4
The best book I've read in a long time. This is the (not) History book that should be in classrooms, not the white-washed bullshit we have currently. Also unlike the history books in classrooms, i was engrossed and it held my attention, i didn't want to put it down. Highly recommend
read for psychology and the african american experience class
i loved how this book went through a lot of the history and things we learned in school and reframed them to be correct and how it also fits the history into the present. it's a great way to talk about racism and introduce people to the topic of being anti-racism.
Reynolds needs to write more non-fiction. It would improve the world immeasurably.
Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi take a look at the history of racism. It's a difficult book to read; it's a terrible story. But's an important story, and it's a story I'm glad I read.
And now...how do we go forward? What can we do in our lives and in institutions to make things good for everyone? What steps can we take to try to do better, much better, than we have done in the past?
Incredible! Kendi's adult book was revelatory for me and I think this will be for tweens and teens as well. Reynolds does such a great job distilling Kendi's points for this age group, but also it's great reading for adults. The idea that racism doesn't come from ignorance but rather that it has been engineered by powerful white people for economic and cultural gain is such an important truth. Side note, I listened to this and Reynolds is a great narrator, which will come to no surprise to most people who have heard him speak.
I knew this book would be great but it took me a little while to get around to reading it–I wanted to make sure I was in the right mindset to focus on it. Anyway: it's great. Great for teens, great for adults. Written very conversationally but with such a clear through line through history.
This. Audiobook. THIS. AUDIOBOOK! His work here is stellar. His writing is always phenomonal and humane and funny and current and real, but as a poet by trade he performs this book like a prose poem and it is a treat. I'm planning to re-read it as a physical copy as well, because some of his asides must look really interesting on the page. I very much appreciated that this was a remix, not just a straight YA retelling, of Dr. Kendi's work, with Jason's voice all over it. Because of this, he really focused on his own idol, Angela Davis, and highlighted her journey in each chapter. I definitely need to read more of her work, so I appreciate a lens on her. This would make an excellent lit circle book, and parts of the audio would be great integrated into Social Studies lessons. A must read for all ages. Thanks to Libro.FM for giving free audiobooks to librarians/educators - if you haven't signed up for their program, do it!
The author says this is not a ‘history' book, which is true. I learned some things but it took alot of words to tell it.
Summary: Jason Reynolds has taken the ideas of Ibram Kendi and written a young adult book about the history of racism.
I have read a couple of Jason Reynold's book and I like his young adult writing, even if I am not reading much young adult literature lately. And I have appreciated the two of Kendi's books I have read (Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist).
Stamped is clearly Kendi's ideas and Reynold's words and style. It is framed in Kendi's structure of there being three approaches to race, segregation, assimilation, and antiracism.
The antiracists say there is nothing wrong or right about Black people and everything wrong with racism. The antiracists say racism is the problem in need of changing, not Black people. The antiracists try to transform racism. The assimilationists try to transform Black people. The segregationists try to get away from Black people.
But what is really helpful with Kendi's approach is that he does not understand these three positions as fixed identities, but as he says in How to be an Antiracist, these are more like a “sticky name tag” that you can put on and take off, sometimes in the course of a single day. Here Reynolds says:
...it's important to note, life can rarely be wrapped into single-word descriptions. It isn't neat and perfectly shaped. So sometimes, over the course of a lifetime (and even over the course of a day), people can take on and act out ideas represented by more than one of these three identities. Can be both, and. Just keep that in mind as we explore these folks.
From these basics, the rough content is similar to Stamped from the Beginning starting with early slavery in Portugal and then Spain, the colonialism of the New World and the use of both Indigenous American and African slaves there. Reynolds then focuses on the ideas that justified slavery through Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson and others.
Eventually, the story proceeds to assimilationists and then slowly toward actual antiracism. I read this in part to see if this was a better recommendation for adults than the fairly long and academic Stamped from the Beginning. And while I think this is a good book for young adults and the content is good, I mostly would recommend Stamped from the Beginning.