A scene from Stamped from the Beginning (TIFF)

If Ibram X. Kendi’s 2016 bestseller Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America has been banned from your local library, Netflix has come to the rescue. Director Roger Ross Williams has adapted the 600-page nonfictional work into a thoroughly engaging and arresting encapsulation of how racism has impacted U.S. history. It began streaming on November 20.

Rest assured, this is not a PowerPoint–like presentation. A dozen or so female academics/activists—Dr. Angela Davis is perhaps the best known—chime in, elaborating on the book’s nine major arguments, as well as make their own personal observations, which very much bring the myriad of issues to the present day. Apart from incorporating Kendi (also an executive producer) as a talking head, the director has stated that it was intentional to highlight female voices. The documentary kicks off the dialogue between the interviewees and the off-screen questioner with the blunt question, “Can you please tell me, what’s wrong with Black people?” The following conversations cover the religious justification for slavery; puncture the legacies of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and problematic White abolitionists; and much more.

Watching the 94-minute documentary is almost like viewing two films at once. First, there is the sweeping historical discussion: the origin of the word “slave,” the instigation of the transatlantic slave trace in 1444 by Portugal’s Henry the Navigator. Each of the nine chapters is accompanied by animation to evoke the time period under scrutiny—the most innovative and evocative being the black-and-white woodcut-like art in motion depicting Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-1677), set to NWA’s “Fight the Power.”

At times, the commentators’ points of view are contrasted or boosted by the fast-paced visual collage of wide-ranging archival footage and reproductions that form its own commentary. For example, when the White savior myth is skewered, clips of the usual suspects are featured (The Blind Side, Green Book) along with a news clip of longtime human rights activist Angelina Jolie. The onscreen insinuations/provocations at times call for more elaboration, as in the section on the media’s stereotypical portrayal of Black women’s sexuality. Some of the entertainers (Janet Jackson, Josephine Baker) would likely rebuke the tacit suggestion that, as artists, they don’t have any agency. Grace Jones pops up here too from the James Bond film A View to a Kill.  Perhaps she’s an example in which timing informs the interpretation. Nearly 40 years ago, Jones’s casting was celebrated as the first Black female lead in a Bond film—she made for a formidable adversary.

This is a strong companion piece to the more personal and methodical Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, directed by Jeffery Robinson, deputy legal director of the ACLU. In a straightforward, talking-head approach, he also examines the role of White supremacy in U.S. history. Both revelatory films will be available on Netflix when Stamped from the Beginning premieres there on November 20.