White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist) [Paperback]

Winthrop D. Jordan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0807845507 | ISBN-13: 978-0807845509 | Publication Date: September 25, 1968

New in paperback Jordan's classic and award-winning work on the history of American race relations.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of the most important historical works of the past 40 years, contributing to the cultural shift in white thinking that made possible the election of Barack Obama."
— Gordon S. Wood, Wall Street Journal

A massive and learned work that stands as the most informed and impressive pronouncement on the subject yet made.

C. Vann Woodward, New York Times Book Review

[A] rare thing: an original contribution to an important subject.

The judges for the 1969 National Book Award for History and Biography

This monumental study is a tremendously important block, fascinating and appalling, of American social and cultural history.

The Phi Beta Kappa Senate award committee for the 1968 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award

A monumental work of scholarship.

Publishers Weekly

White Over Black will stand as a landmark in the historiography of this generation. . . . A brilliant achievement.

Richard D. Brown, New England Quarterly

From the Inside Flap

A timeless classic and award-winning work on the history of race relations in early America.

Product Details

• Paperback: 651 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (September 25, 1968)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807845507
• ISBN-13: 978-0807845509
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #229,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best book in the field, December 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist) (Paperback)

I write to refute the reviewer who gave Jordan's great book one star. White Over Black is probably the best single work of scholarship in any field on race in American history--still current and trenchant after more than thirty years. Jordan's Jefferson chapters remain definitive, his examination of Europeans' "first impressions" of Africans is classic, and his basic perspective--that one cannot say that slavery caused racism or vice versa, but intertwined--completely persuasive. His insistence that racial attitudes intertwine with sexual stereotypes, prejudices, and self-doubts reshaped the field. The book is brilliantly written and rests on an unmatched mastery of literally thousands of sources. Anyone interested in the history of race in America should read it.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Birth of Racial Attitudes from "First Impressions", August 13, 2002

By 

Elika (Honolulu, HI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist) (Paperback)

Winthrop D. Jordan answers the question, "what were the attitudes of white men toward Negroes during the first two centuries of European and African settlement in what became the United States of America?" in his book, White Over Black: Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812 (vii). Jordan answers this question comprehensively; his book is sectioned off chronologically into six parts. The first part covers the evolution of the American attitudes regarding the Negroes with references to English perspectives, interpretations, and hypotheses, and topics of enslavement. The second part, "Provincial Decades," involves topics on freedom and control in a slave society, interracial sex, and of the spiritual and physical nature of a Negro. This is followed with an overview on the revolutionary era in which the Americans impose self-scrutiny on their behavior. Part four, "Society and Thought," gives in-depth descriptions on economic interest and national identity, limitations of antislavery, revolution, and result of separation. The last section involves Thomas Jefferson's actions and his impact on society, the "chain of being of the Negro," erasing Nature's "Stamp of Color," and actions toward a white man's country. The organization of these topics demonstrates analytically to the reader the development of racial "attitudes" as time passes.
Jordan's basic perspective of this issue was that slavery was not caused by racism or vice versa, these two factors both attributed to each other's development. This book is predominantly focused on how the Americans and their historical encounters formed and were fashioned by people different from themselves. The impression one seemed to receive upon reading this book was not biased, but of understanding and sympathy for both the whites and blacks; the author wished for equal treatment for the Negroes while having an accepting tone of the white's treatments of black people.
The content of this work is mostly theoretical; Jordan used many opinions of white men, such as their initial expression after exposure to Negroes, and he described the outlooks of various religious groups, such as the Puritans and Quakers. Jordan's theorizing is also well rounded from many aspects, involving political, economic, social, and cultural perspectives of both the black and white men. These theories and facts are organized chronologically, which support the thesis effectively as the reader can see how the different racial attitudes develop over time.
Jordan concludes that this debate over the Negro's racial standing stands within each white American's conscience. The cultural conscience of a white man insists the Negro be treated as his equal based on religious traditions and humanitarianism, whereas the strong feelings of domination and identity demanded the Negro be treated as inferior. He explains, "At a closer view, though, the duel appears more complex than a conflict between the best and worst in the white man's nature, for in a variety of ways the white man translated his `worst' into his `best'" (Jordan 582). This conclusion agrees with the thesis as he explains the behavior of white men understandingly, the slavery and racism coexisted as proof of the white domination.
Winthrop D. Jordan has summed up many aspects of the subject of racial issues in one book with both perspectives of the white Americans and Negroes. I recommend this book to readers who wish to be enlightened with a deep historical analysis of an American dilemma on race.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars couldent put it down, December 16, 1999

By 

John Longerbeam (Richmond) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist) (Paperback)

Winthrop D. Jordan wrote an extrudinary book on the culture of blacks in America."Long before they found that some men were black, Englishmen found in the idea of blackness a way of expressing some of their most ingrained values," historian Winthrop D. Jordan wrote in his 1968 book White Over Black. To the English, the color black meant something foul wicked, deadly, filthy and sinister. White denoted beauty, purity and virtue. English travelers to Africa commented at length on the Africans' lack of clothing, their "heathen" religious beliefs, their seemingly lusty nature. They described Negroes as "beastly," compared them to apes and speculated that their skin color was the manifestation of an ancient Biblical curse.