Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America - it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. He chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities. This book offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.