Ibram X. Kendi at the Brattle Theatre

Harvard Book Store welcomes Dr. IBRAM X. KENDI—Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research—to discuss the revised edition of his landmark text Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. He will be joined in conversation by AMBER PAYNE—Publisher and General Manager at The Emancipator. 

Update on Event Masking Policies

Masks are not required for this event. As of June 1, 2023, masks are encouraged but not required for most Harvard Book Store events, unless otherwise specified. Please review individual listings.

Ticketing

Tickets to this event are sold out. 

PLEASE NOTE: Attendees are encouraged to leave bags at home. Security will be inspecting attendee’s bags upon arrival. Attendees must consent to a search of their person and anything they are carrying. Only attendees with tickets will be allowed into the theater for this event. Thank you for your cooperation and please direct any questions or concerns to info@harvard.com.

Each ticket includes one paperback copy of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America SIGNED by the author.

About Stamped from the Beginning

Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.

In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis.

As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities.

In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.

Praise for Stamped from the Beginning

"In his relentless odyssey through the making of America's particular brand of prejudice . . . Kendi challenges our assumptions about racism by exposing the development of racist ideas-and their connection to racist actions and policies throughout our history." —Stephenie Livingston, University of Florida

"Both a penetrating treatise and a wonderfully accessible work of intellectual history, Stamped from the Beginning reveals the heritage of ideas behind the modern dialectic of race-denial and race-obsession. By historicizing our entrenched logic of racial difference, Kendi shows why "I don't see color" and other professions of post-racialism remain inexorable alibis for white supremacy. Stamped from the Beginning has done the cause of anti-racism a great service." —Russell Rickford, author of We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination

"Ibram Kendi is an important new voice in African American intellectual and social history. This book, an intellectual history of racist ideas, promises to break important new ground for scholarly and general audiences interested in the construction of racism in America." —Peniel E. Joseph, author of Stokely: A Life and Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour