KPFA Radio 94.1FM and St. John’s Presbyterian Church present:
Thursday, May 4, 7:30 PM
First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland, CA
Advance tickets: $12: brownpapertickets.com :: T: 800-838-3006
or Marcus Books, Books Inc/Berkeley, Pegasus (3 sites), Moe’s, Walden Pond Bookstore, Diesel a Bookstore, Mrs. Dalloway’s
$15 door
FREE PARKING & WHEELCHAIR ACCESS
As National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi states in his brilliant new book, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, if we have any hope of grappling successfully with the stark reality of racism, we must first understand how racist ideas were born, developed, disseminated and enshrined in American life.
Kendi offers a deeply researched, provocative narrative that is a comprehensive history of anti-Black racist ideas—their origins in fifteenth century Portugal, their arrival in England in the mid-sixteenth centurey, their blossoming in the United States, where they became foounding principles in our nation’s institutions and guarantors of its power. Contrary to popular conceptions, these ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. Instead, they were devised and honed by some of the most brilliant minds of each era, including men like John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.
Kendi narrates this history through the lives of five major characters in American history: early America’s most prolific and influential intellectual, Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. President, fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, and the brilliant anti-prison activist Angela Davis.
“A staggering intellectual history of racism in America that is both rigorous and…readable.”
—The New Republic
Kendi shows how racist ideas are easily produced and consumed, yet also easily discredited. In illuminating the long, dark history of racism, Kendi offers us the tools we need to overcome all the hatred and injustice. He gives us authentic reason to hope.
Ibram X. Keni is an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida. He also authored the award-winning book, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972. He has received numerous grants and research fellowships. His writings have appeared in numerous publications.
Kevin Cartwright has been a radio producer, media trainer and music programmer for Pacifica Radio station KPFA-FM since 1994. He has produced and contributed to a number of local and national public affairs programs that have included Living Room with Larry Bensky, Democracy Now, the KPFA Evening News, The Morning Show, as well as having created KPFA and KPFB radio programs, Education Today and 1440. Additionally, Kevin is a communications strategist who continues to work with a number of local, state and national social change organizations across the United States to help improve their overall communication and pr strategies, framing and messaging apparatus, media engagement and social media. Currently, Kevin is completing two short fiction works, Oakland and Slow Dancing In Babylon, as well as a suite of dramatic plays covering the past 60 years of West Oakland.
KPFA benefit