Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

From his chapter on the Black Exhibit to his description of Barack Obama as, in many people’s eyes, an “extraordinary Negro,” Kendi tracks the bodies and performances of black people as exceptions and spectacle throughout American history (483). His examples range from Sarah Baartman, whose hypersexualized body was transported across Europe, ogled at in the media, and violated by scientists upon her death, to Obama, whose “public intelligence, morality, speaking ability, and political success” seemed, in the eyes of White America, to stand apart from typical black behavior (483).

Famous trials are part of the exhibition of black behavior. These trials have become media sensations that can be used to fuel segregationist, assimilationist, and antiracist ideas; they happen not only in courtrooms but also in popular publications, scientific laboratories, and civil rights groups. The judgment of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who could not be included in leadership of civil rights groups for her rebellion against gender racism, is a good example of defining trials that shape the motions of antiracism. Angela Davis’s trial is another similar example.

Exhibition and display is also closely tied to the black body. Baartman’s body was not the only black body to become an exhibition (and, later, an exhibit).