Carol and Larry attend a Soul Liberation concert and encounter Black liberation theology for the first time.

Kendi's maternal grandparents leave cotton fields in segregated Georgia and migrate north to New York City.

Young Kendi visits Grace Lutheran School with his parents and asks a Black teacher why so few Black teachers work there.

Kendi's White third-grade teacher ignores a Black girl in class; Kendi protests and is sent to the principal's office.

Kendi mocks his African classmate Akeem with Coming to America jokes, an act he later regrets as ethnic racism.

Kendi wins the Prince William County MLK Jr. oratorical contest with a speech loaded with anti-Black stereotypes about youth.

Kendi writes a Famuan college newspaper editorial describing Europeans as 'a different breed of human,' alarming White readers.

Kendi's supervisor at the Tallahassee Democrat gives him an ultimatum: pull the controversial editorial or lose his internship.

Kendi moves to North Philadelphia's poor Black neighborhood to attend graduate school at Temple University.

Kendi asks Temple professor Ama Mazama to be his dissertation advisor; she advises him to simply 'tell the truth.'

Kendi speaks at Temple's Black Student Union meeting about the Jena 6 and proposes a national automobile caravan to Washington D.C.

After Trayvon Martin's death and George Zimmerman's exoneration, Kendi begins exhaustive research for Stamped from the Beginning.

Kendi's future wife Sadiqa is diagnosed with cancer shortly before their planned wedding.

Kendi is diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer while running the Antiracist Research and Policy Center.

Kendi completes cancer treatment, becomes cancer-free, and declares that Americans can survive 'metastatic racism' with antiracist policy.

The book opens with Kendi's parents discovering Black liberation theology at a Soul Liberation concert, a moment that shapes the household Kendi grows up in. From an early age, Kendi confronts racism at school and among peers, developing a racial consciousness before he has language to name it. His college years at Florida A&M expose him to his own internalized racist ideas, including a controversial newspaper editorial that becomes a turning point in his education. Graduate school at Temple University deepens his thinking, and his activism around the Jena 6 case forces him to reckon with the limits of outrage-driven strategy. His wife Sadiqa's cancer diagnosis and his own Stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis ultimately give him the central metaphor of the book — that racism, like metastatic cancer, spreads and kills without aggressive treatment.

Kendi's personal journey from childhood awareness to antiracist scholar.

Carol and Larry return to New York City, leave their conservative churches, and join the Black Power movement.

Kendi's paternal grandmother dies from Alzheimer's disease, which Kendi identifies as a condition disproportionately affecting Black Americans.

Black classmate Smurf pulls a gun on Kendi at John Bowne High School in New York.

Kendi grows up in Southside Queens dreaming of becoming a professional basketball star.

After moving to Manassas, Virginia, Kendi's arrogance about Northern Black culture's superiority costs him a spot on the JV basketball team.

A classmate encourages Kendi to enter the Prince William County Martin Luther King Jr. oratorical contest.

Kendi dates a light-skinned Black woman at Florida A&M University whom his Black male peers consider highly desirable.

Kendi watches Florida A&M University's marching band perform and finds himself revising his colorist ideas about race.

Kendi proposes his theory that White people are 'aliens' to his college friend Clarence, who ridicules him for it.

Kendi begins a second major in African American studies after the Famuan editorial controversy motivates him to learn more.

Ohio's Black Secretary of State Ken Blackwell blocks Black voters from accessing provisional ballots, suppressing votes for Bush's reelection.

Kendi discovers the African American studies program at Temple University to be a transformative and affirming Black intellectual space.

Kendi's Black women colleagues Kaila Story and Yaba Blay help him directly confront his internalized sexism and homophobia.

Kendi teaches as a dissertation fellow at SUNY Oneonta and befriends colleague Caridad, whose husband recently died from metastatic cancer.

Kendi establishes the Antiracist Research and Policy Center, shifting his focus from changing racist minds to transforming racist policy.

This pool traces the secondary but essential moments in Kendi's life that fill out the shape of his intellectual and personal development. His parents' departure from conservative churches and his paternal grandmother's death frame the opening chapters' argument that racist policies have life-and-death consequences for Black families. Episodes of racialized violence in New York, a thwarted basketball dream in Virginia, and colorist attitudes at Florida A&M each illustrate how internalized racism operated within Kendi himself before he had the tools to name it. His controversial Famuan editorial sparks a new academic path, and his time at Temple deepens his understanding of Black spaces, gender, and sexuality through colleagues who challenge him. The pool closes with Kendi founding the Antiracist Research and Policy Center, translating years of personal and scholarly growth into institutional antiracist action.

The formative experiences and supporting moments that shaped Kendi's evolving worldview.

Kendi's mother tells a Grace Lutheran School teacher that her young son is 'very much aware of being Black.'

After Kendi's third-grade protest, his parents decide to transfer him to a predominantly Black private Christian school.

As a professor, Kendi invites a Ghanaian student to speak to his class; tensions end when a student says 'American whites' taught those stereotypes.

Smurf organizes a crew to beat up an Indian boy on the school bus, exposing Kendi to the reach of racialized peer violence.

Kendi enrolls in International Baccalaureate classes at Stonewall Jackson High School and feels isolated as one of the few Black students.

After dating a light-skinned woman at Florida A&M, Kendi decides to pursue only dark-skinned Black women, later recognizing this also reflects colorism.

Kendi pulls his Famuan editorial 'in absolute bitterness' after his supervisor's ultimatum, feeling angry and discouraged.

Kendi lives in a poor North Philadelphia neighborhood believing that proximity to Black poverty makes him more authentically Black.

Kendi later realizes his romanticization of living near Black poverty meant he was 'playing poor Blacks cheap as human beings.'

Professor Mazama challenges Kendi's belief in journalistic objectivity and instructs him to abandon it and simply tell the truth.

Kendi's friend Raena reveals that his best friend Weckea is gay, prompting Kendi to challenge his homophobia to preserve the friendship.

Kendi learns from colleagues Kaila and Yaba that gender is 'an authentic performance,' reshaping his understanding of identity.

At the Jena 6 Black Student Union meeting, fellow students challenge Kendi's risky caravan plan but he refuses to back down.

Kendi attends a Boyce Watkins lecture and publicly challenges the scholar's comparison of racism to a disease.

A White man hangs Confederate flags across Kendi's campus shortly after he launches the Antiracist Research and Policy Center.

This pool focuses on the specific moments of rupture and revelation that pushed Kendi to revise his understanding of race, racism, and himself. From his mother naming his racial awareness in childhood to the transfers, confrontations, and intellectual reckoning of his school years, each event marks a shift in how Kendi sees the world or himself within it. His graduate years at Temple are particularly rich with these moments — from challenging a Ghanaian student's ethnic prejudices, to his dissertation advisor upending his belief in objectivity, to his friend Raena's revelation about Weckea forcing him to examine his homophobia. The final sequence of turning points involves Kendi recognizing the limits of outrage-based activism at the Jena 6 meeting, rejecting the disease metaphor for racism in a public talk he would later reverse, and ultimately watching a White man hang Confederate flags at his campus — a scene that crystallizes racism's persistence even in spaces built to fight it.

The key decisions, discoveries, and confrontations that forced Kendi to rethink his assumptions.