The book opens with a letter from Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, the historian who wrote Stamped From the Beginning, the monograph about the history of racist ideas on which Stamped is based.

Kendi stresses that the point of interrogating history or studying a social construct like racism isn’t to understand what happened a long time ago or build an intellectual awareness of an abstract concept—it’s to understand the present in a practical sense.

He also explains some central vocabulary and concepts. Kendi writes, “[A] racist idea is any idea that suggests something is wrong or right, superior or inferior, better or worse about a racial group” (ix). The book itself centers on anti-Black racism, ideas and policies that assume the inferiority of Black people, and white supremacy, which is rooted in the belief of the superiority of white people. He also explains, “an antiracist idea is any idea that suggests that racial groups are equals” (ix). Therefore, the opposite of racism is antiracism.

Stamped from the Beginning traced the histories of racist ideas among both segregationists and assimilationists. While both groups perceive something wrong with Black people and “think Black people are to blame for racial inequity” (xii), assimilationists aim to transform Black people as a group while segregationists aim to separate themselves from Black people—or separate Black people from them.