" In this thought-provoking reexamination of the history of ""racial science"" Vernon J. Williams argues that all current theories of race and race relations can be understood as extensions of or reactions to the theories formulated during the first half of the twentieth century. Williams explores these theories in a carefully crafted analysis of Franz Boas and his influence upon his contemporaries, especially W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, George W. Ellis, and Robert E. Park. Historians have long recognized the monumental role Franz Boas played in eviscerating the racist worldview that prevailed in the American social sciences. Williams reconsiders the standard portrait of Boas and offers a new understanding of a man who never fully escaped the racist assumptions of 19th-century anthropology but nevertheless successfully argued that African Americans could assimiliate into American society and that the chief obstacle facing them was not heredity but the prejudice of white America.
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"He characterizes Boas as a complex and conflicted man who held ambiguous ideas about racial equality." -- American Historical Review
"Contributes significantly to a fuller understanding of Boas's impact on racial thinking, and it offers new insights into the changing racial views of social scientists in the formative period from 1896 to 1943." -- American Historical Review
"This is the first book to detail how Boas also worked closely with many of the same African-American intellectuals to shape major trends in American anthropology." -- American Journal of Sociology
"Williams enlightens the reader as to the gulf that still remains between the myths that are utilized to support claims of African American inferiority and the true complexity of this topic as revealed by scholars like Franz Boas." -- Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences
"Williams has done a superb job of discussing the impact of Franz Boas' impact on the racial thinking of his white anthropological contemporaries.... a most valuable contribution to the past and continuing debate of the importance of race in American society." -- Arkansas Historical Quarterly
"Offers a thoughtful historical reflection on how and why these issues continue to affect our personal and national perceptions and out often uncomfortable attempts to discuss race in American life." -- Historian
"A timely and thoughtful re-examination of a formative period in the history of American social science and race relations." -- Southern Historian
"A continuation of the author's pioneering work on the emergence of the modern cultural interpretation of race in America." -- The Journal of Southern History
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Since the 1950s, historians and historically minded social scientists have celebrated the monumental role that Franz Uri Boas played in eviscerating the racist world view that prevailed in the American social sciences during the years before 1930. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
African Americans, United States, Franz Boas, University of Chicago, New York City, Columbia University, Atlanta University, Howard University, World War, Civil War, Franz Uri Boas, Human Faculty, Jim Crow, Kelly Miller, University of Pennsylvania, Zora Neale Hurston, Abram Harris, American Journal of Sociology, American Missionary Association, Jerome Dowd, Marshall Hyatt, New Orleans, South Carolina, Tuskegee Institute, Alphonso Pinkney New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
- The Mind of Primitive Man by Franz Boas on 8 pages
- The Story of the Negro by Booker T. Washington on 6 pages
- Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro (American Economic Association) by Frederick Ludwig Hoffman on 5 pages
- Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (Phoenix Series) by George W. Stocking Jr on 4 pages
- American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips on 4 pages
See all 76 books this book cites
- Against the Multicultural Agenda: A Critical Thinking Alternative by Yehudi O. Webster on page 62, and Back Matter
- I'm Not a Racist, But . .: The Moral Quandary of Race by Lawrence Blum in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture) by Wilson Jeremiah Moses in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Against the Multicultural Agenda: A Critical Thinking Alternative by Yehudi O. Webster on page 62, and Back Matter
- Embodiment of a Nation: Human Form in American Places by Cecelia Tichi in Back Matter
See all 22 books citing this book
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