Summary

In the preface, the author, Ibram X. Kendi, writes about how the American political climate has changed since he began working on this book. He started working "squarely in the middle of the presidential age of Barack Obama" (ix). Now, he is writing this preface with Donald Trump as president, "the candidate of angry bigots" (ix). Trump's electoral win does not fit with the narrative of racial progress or with the alleged existence of America as a post-racial society. This fits with Kendi's theory that there is no "singular historical force arriving at a post-racial America" (x). Rather, racial progress marches forward with "the simultaneous progression of racism" (x).

In the prologue, Kendi writes about the historical moment in which he is writing: the era of #Black Lives Matter and police shootings in which "young Black males [are] twenty-one times more likely to...