Reddit mentions of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (National Book Award Winner)

>Enthroning Kin Cotton, the cotton gin made the value of southern lands skyrocket and quickly dethroned rice and tobacco. King CoTton incessantly demanded more and more to stabilize its reign: more enslaved Africans, more land, more violence, and more racist ideas. Annual cotton production slammed through the ceiling of about 3,000 bales in 1790, reaching 178,000 bales in 1810 and more than 4 million bales on the eve of the Civil War. Cotton became America's leading export, exceeding in dollar value all exports...

Page 126. Footnote for this passage points to Peter Kochin's American Slavery and Holt's Children of Fire. Kendi gives a long and sustained analysis of the relationship between economics and slavery. I remember Zinn making similar points as well.

Before I get to your question, let's be clear about the historical record on affirmative action.

For nearly the first 200 years of U.S. history, affirmative action was white. In every facet of American life -- jobs, access to housing, access to political power, et cetera -- white people received incredibly preferential treatment. One legacy of this is reflected in the current amount of wealth controlled by the median white family vs. the medium black family White affirmative action accounts for these differences, especially considering that white people not only received preferential treatment, but black people got purposefully ruinous treatment from every level of government. Review for a book about this idea

A family's wealth is created over generations. My family for example - my white grandpa and family were bean pickers during the Depression. After WWII, he got a middle class job in a steel mill with only an 8th grade education at a time when it was perfectly legal for blacks to be the last to be hired and first to be fired. With that job he bought a house in suburban Baltimore. He did it with a government insured mortgage thanks to the GI Bill. Keep in mind, due to perfectly legal housing discrimination, i.e. redlining, blacks were shut out from suburbs and mortgage loans when my grandpa bought. With his income and home equity, he sent 2 out of his 3 children to college, and helped them with home down payments. His home was purchased for $30k in the 1960s and sold in 2010 for $300k. That money helped finance my college education. Did my grandpa work hard? Absolutely. Was he advantaged over black people every step of the way because of his skin color? Absolutely. Did his skin color also advantage me? Absolutely. Historic white affirmative action directly affects me in a positive way.

Regarding your question: What we typically think of as "affirmative action" for black people started during the 1960s, and it only applied to federal government hiring and federal contractors, not the private sector. Racial/gender quotas were declared unconstitutional in Regents of University of California vs. Bakke in 1978. And nowadays the only sort of affirmative action that exists is really marginal. In fact in [Gratz V. Bollinger (2003)] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger) university admissions that gave some small benefit in the admission process points systems to minorities were declared unconstitutional. So in reality affirmative action never happened on a large scale and was mostly scaled back in 1978 and then eviscerated in 2003. Affirmative action was never done vigorously across hiring. So to answer your question, affirmative action wasn't effective because it happened to a vanishingly narrow extent.

Regarding university admissions, legacy preferences, which give an advantage to children of graduates, are still perfectly legal and widespread. Legacy preferences obviously also advantage white people.

> Because, to me, it seems like black people have not improved intellectually

I'm curious as to why you think this. Do you mean this with regards to the racial achievement gap in schools, or wealth disparities, or some other quality? I heard an interview with a historian for this book he wrote. He made a really interesting point. Regarding lower outcomes (wealth, incarceration) generally for African Americans there are only two possible explanations: (1) There is something wrong with black people or (2) Discrimination (housing, employment, justice system) and intentional roadblocks to black success created the current situation of racial inequality.

Which explanation do you think is right? And why do you believe black people have not improved intellectually? Do you think it is bigoted to make a statement like the one you made?

Several commenters here are still falling into the racist trap of believing black people are inferior, but only because conditions have made them inferior, rather than an innate inferiority. I posted this interview (starts at ~6:04 in the video) a little while ago, which addresses this exact issue. The book, Stamped from the Beginning, is also very good and highly recommended.

Have you read Kendi's recent book on race in America, Stamped from the beginning? It would be a good (accessible, informative, and well-regarded--it just won two national awards) starting point for your research: https://www.amazon.com/Stamped-Beginning-Definitive-History-National/dp/1568584636

If you're interested in this (how policies that are racist are a manifestation of self-interest), I really recommend this book that just came out: Stamped from the Beginning.

Ah yes, the wonderful human nature argument. Despite the fact that humans have been hunter-gatherers who had little to nothing in the way of private property for 99% of human history, you believe that capitalism is human nature.

You believe that there is no connection between capitalism and racism, despite the obvious fact that neither can exist without the other.

You are socially liberal but fiscally conservative, meaning that you're okay with LGBTQ folks as long as they accede to being exploited by capitalists.

You believe it's better to live in a society in which the 0.1% possess absolute power, rather than a society in which the economy would be democratized.

You believe that communism is responsible for tens of millions of deaths, but that capitalism has never harmed anyone anywhere.

You believe that a child mining the rare earth metals for your phone in the Congo has just as much of a chance of success as the children of billionaires.

Despite being unable to define the systems that you support, you believe that they will succeed. Absolutely, this is a recipe for success: proceeding with total unawareness of the world around you.