Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds
Available At: Air Academy, Challenger, DCC (HS), Liberty, Mountain Ridge, Timberview
Categories: Racism, Whiteness
Description: “This is NOT a history book. This is a book about the here and now. A book to help us better understand why we are where we are. A book about race.”
YA Label?: Yes
Notes: Despite claiming to NOT be a history book, the entire book is nearly an artistic readjustment of history to fit a narrative of racism against blacks. The theme is that one is either a racist or an antiracist (activist) – there is no in between.
Rating: 1
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Snippets
Page XI: “I somehow managed to write Stamped from the Beginning between the heartbreaking deaths of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin and seventeen-year-old Darnesha Harris and twelve-year-old Tamir Rice and sixteen-year-old Kimani Gray and eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, heartbreaks that are a product of America’s history of racist ideas as much as a history of racist ideas is a product of these heartbreaks.”
Page XV: “I did not fully realize that the only thing extraordinary about White people is that they think something is extraordinary about White people.”
Chapter 8: “Britain had ended slavery (at least in England, but not in the British colonies). America refused to do so. Britain looked at America as…dumb. America said, ‘Mind your business, Britain.’ Britain said, ‘You are my business, America.’ America said, ‘Well, we can change that.’”
Page 66: “It’s important that you keep this in mind, because it would be the cornerstone of assimilationist thought, which basically said: Make yourself small, make yourself unthreatening, make yourself the same, make yourself safe, make yourself quiet, to make White people comfortable with your existence.”
Page 186: “While Tarzan put the racist conquering of Africa and Africans on the screen, Planet of the Apes stoked the racist fear fire by showing the dark world rising against the White conqueror.”
Page 200: “Rocky symbolized the pride of White supremacist masculinity’s refusal to be knocked out from the thunderstorm of civil rights and Black Power protests and policies.”
Page 204: “Two years into Reagan’s presidency, he issued one of the most devastating executive orders of the twentieth century. The War on Drugs. Its role, maximum punishment for drugs like marijuana. This war was really one on Black people.”
Page 206: “And to offset that image, or at least attempt to, another television show was created portraying the perfect Black family. The Cosby Show.“
Page 213: “President Bush danced around the issue. Appointed a Black Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, to replace Thurgood Marshall, as if that were supposed to pacify an angry and hurt Black community.”