A Banned Book on Racism Becomes a Gripping Netflix Documentary
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In the spring of 2022, Ibram X. Kendi was recognized as one of the most banned authors in America. The National Book Award winner’s passionate reporting on the permeation of racist ideas throughout American history riled up conservative proponents, leading to three of Kendi’s tomes being banned in six school districts across multiple states. Now, his efforts to expose racist ideology is the subject of a new Netflix documentary, Stamped From the Beginning.
Stamped From the Beginning, based on Kendi’s 2016 book of the same name, shines a light on Black female thinkers like Phillis Wheatley, a former slave whose poetry was largely criticized by white elites; abolitionist Harriet Jacobs’ reports on enslaved Black mothers; and Ida B. Wells’ recordings of Black lynchings. The film, directed by Roger Ross Williams (The Super Models, The 1619 Project), also stitches together scenes from Confederate America to present-day white nationalist movements to reflect how when it comes to racism, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Williams says he made the documentary to counteract the banning of Kendi’s books in the U.S.
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“You can’t ban Netflix,” Williams tells Rolling Stone. “You can ban Kendi’s books, you can ban the 1619 Project, you can ban all this stuff, but you can’t ban Netflix. It’s in every home.”
Discussions around the 92-minute documentary began after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 and the nationwide protests against police brutality in its wake. Kendi’s 2019 book How to be an Antiracist subsequently experienced a surge in book sales, reaching the top of The New York Times bestsellers list. Williams reveals it took three years to transform Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America into a film.
“Dr. Kendi is an incredible, thoughtful intellectual,” Williams adds. “He’s also the most banned author in America. He’s enemy No. 1 of right-wing conservatives. He gets death threats, he is really despised by them, but he’s just giving us facts on history.”
The book and documentary’s title, Stamped from the Beginning, comes from an 1860 speech given to congress by Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederate States of America. In the speech, Davis calls Black people inferior and “stamped from the beginning,” or subordinate since their creation.
“Black Americans are still suffering in this country and it’s because of these racist ideas and it hasn’t changed,” Williams says. “It has taken on a different form. It morphs into something else that is more contemporary, but it’s the same thing.”
Williams’ documentary particularly highlights the work of female academics and activists, such as Angela Davis, novelist Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham, scholar Jennifer L. Morgan, and activist influencer Lynae Vanee. The decision was intentional, Williams says, because he wanted the experts to complement their research with personal anecdotes. As an all-white panel interrogates Wheatley on her ability to pen a book of poems, for example, Jeffers notes in the doc, “Every Black woman has a Phillis Wheatley moment.”
“They are the ones doing this work,” Williams explains. “And Black women have always been at the forefront of resistance against racism and racist ideas in America.”
There were more than 800 book bans during the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, according to national free speech organization PEN America. During this period, Texas led the nation in book bans with 438, followed by Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina. As book bans rise, so do legislative measures to restrict school lessons on race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ people, according to PEN America. Of the banned books, 30% feature people of color or topics of race, while 26% include LGBTQ+ characters or themes.
At least three of Kendi’s books faced school bans in Florida and South Carolina last fall: Antiracist Baby, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, and Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You.
Kendi suspects that as people read his books and watch the film, they’ll begin to question, “Why didn’t I learn this in high school?” He’s also a believer that a person is either racist or antiracist with no in between. Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, which he founded and oversees, has largely downsized since it was established in June 2020. Kendi says the decision to slash its budget and halve its original number of employees was due to attacks on research examining racism. The center now serves as an antiracist residential fellowship program.
“I’ve tried to show people that if you are not actively seeking to deconstruct a society of widespread racial disparities and inequities, then those inequities and disparities are going to persist,” Kendi tells Rolling Stone.
As Williams asks at the top of the film, “What’s wrong with Black people?” one scholar can’t help but laugh. Others are bewildered by the off-putting question. Kendi says that his books serve as a medium to inform audiences that the origins of racist ideas and policies are the problem, not Black people.
“It’s liberating for Black people, as it will be for this film, for them to learn that they are not the problem,” Kendi says. “And when you feel liberated personally, you’re more likely to liberate your community.”
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