Stamped From the Beginning

Today I finished Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped From the Beginning, which is about the history of racist ideas in the USA. I found it insightful and eye-opening, and it gave me some meaningful perspective shifts on racism. I’m glad I read this book after White Fragility because the former book was much more lightweight, a very basic starter book compared to the scope and depth of Stamped From the Beginning. In particular I found it illuminating to consider that racist ideas ultimately arise from self-interest, which often includes economic interests but could also include social interests, political interests, career interests, and more. People and societies lean towards racist ideas when such ideas benefit the self-interest of enough people. This same self-interest leads to racist social norms and government policies as well. I appreciated learning about the relationship between racist ideas and racist policies, and it was helpful to consider how self-interest binds them to each other. When there’s a demand for racist ideas to fuel more racist policies to advance the self-interests of enough people who want them, more racist ideas are spawned, which leads to racist policies. Then those racist policies can produce outcomes that generate even more racist ideas and in turn more racist policies. For example, when Southerners wanted to take advantage of the demand for cotton production, this created more demand for new racist ideas to justify an incre...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Relationships Values Source Type: blogs