Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Kendi begins his chapter on W.E.B. Du Bois by connecting their family lives: both men were raised by mothers “who had defied [their families]” and raised children alone (263). Du Bois, known as “Willie” in his youth, first learned of racial difference on a playground in his Massachusetts hometown. From that moment forward, he began to enact and preach uplift suasion.

Fit in the larger context of Social Darwinism, Du Bois’s and other black people’s efforts mattered little. Though a young Du Bois complained about the 1883 Supreme Court decision that ruled the 1875 Civil Rights Act unconstitutional, “the united North and South hailed the decision” (264). The protections directed toward blacks seemed to show too much favoritism to them.

The “New South,” which rose in the 1880s, was a marketed phenomenon that reified the value of slavery by encouraging segregation. Though some, like Episcopal bishop Thomas U. Dudley, believed that races should mix, newspaper editor Henry W. Grady billed “the New South’s defense of racial segregation” by claiming that races should have “equal” “but separate” accommodations (265).

The “separate-but-equal brand” normalized the idea of racial progress, Kendi writes, making blame for racial disparity fall, again, on blacks (266).