Yes, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You Is Banned!

Stamped is not a history book. As Jason Reynolds announces on the first page, it’s “a present book.” Reynolds takes the scholarship of Ibram X. Kendi’s National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning and remixes it for young readers, tracing how racist ideas were created, spread, and used to justify everything from slavery to mass incarceration. The book identifies three strands of thought throughout American history: segregationist, assimilationist, and antiracist, showing how each has shaped the country. Written in Reynolds’ conversational, engaging voice, it makes complex historical analysis accessible and urgent.

Stamped has been one of the most targeted books in the wave of challenges against books dealing with race. It was among the titles banned by the Central York School District in Pennsylvania in a case that drew national attention when students organized protests demanding the books be returned. With over 130 total challenges, the book has been removed from shelves in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee. Challengers argue it promotes “critical race theory” and is “anti-white,” claims that Reynolds and Kendi have called a misunderstanding of both the book and the concept. The banning of a book that literally explains how racist ideas are propagated has struck many observers as grimly self-illustrating.