Historian and Author
Ibram X. Kendi is an American historian, author, and 2021 MacArthur Fellow whose work focuses on racism and antiracism in the United States. His bestselling book How to Be an Antiracist became a cultural phenomenon in 2020, and his earlier work Stamped from the Beginning won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
by Ibram X. Kendi
Kendi argues that there is no neutral position on race: every policy, idea, and person is either racist or antiracist based on whether it produces or reduces racial inequity. He rejects the category of 'not racist' and narrates his own evolution away from internalized racist ideas through chapters on biology, class, gender, and culture.
The books Ibram X. Kendi references, cites, and recommends most frequently.
by Steven Pinker
Pinker dismantles the blank slate doctrine - the idea that culture alone shapes human nature. Acknowledging innate traits doesn't undermine equality; it grounds social policy in reality.
by Philip Zimbardo
Zimbardo uses his Stanford prison experiment to argue that good people turn evil through situational forces, not character flaws. Systems and authority corrupt more reliably than personality.
by Robert Wright
Wright uses evolutionary psychology to explain human nature, from jealousy to self-deception. Our moral intuitions are strategies shaped by natural selection to serve genetic interests, not gifts.
by Jonathan Haidt
Haidt argues that moral judgements are driven by intuition, not reason. We are fundamentally groupish, and understanding our innate moral foundations explains why good people disagree politically.
Who Ibram draws from, and who draws from Ibram — aggregated across every book in this collection. Counts show the number of citation links, not the depth of each one.