"Race" Is a Four-Letter Word The Genesis of the Concept

by Brace, C. Loring

• ISBN13: 9780195173529
• ISBN10: 019517352X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-02-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

A tour de force work by a leading scholar, "Race" Is a Four-Letter Word explores the history of the concept of race in America, the reasons why the concept has no biological validity, and the ways in which it grew to become accepted as an idea that virtually everyone regards as self-evident.An ardent and eloquent opponent of typology, essentialism, and stereotyping, C. Loring Brace has based this engaging study on the "Problems of Race" course that he has taught at the University of Michigan for the past thirty-five years. Opening with an explanation of why the concept of race is biologically indefensible, "Race" Is a Four-Letter Word shows how the major elements of human biological variation have unrelated distributions and cannot be understood if the existence of "races" is assumed as a starting point. Thebook then examines the course of events that created the concept of race, journeying through time from Herodotus through Marco Polo; to the Renaissance and the role of the New World; on up to the American Civil War, the curious results of the alliance switch in World War I, Arthur Jensen, The BellCurve, J. Philippe Rushton, and the Pioneer Fund in the twenty-first century. Ideal as a supplementary text in anthropology courses, "Race" Is a Four-Letter Word can also be used in history of science courses and sociology courses. It is captivating reading for professionals and anyone else who seeks enlightenment on the socially debatable issue of "race."

Author Biography

C. Loring Brace is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, as well as curator of Biological Anthropology at the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology. Brace has written extensively on human evolution, especially on issues of morphological variability between human populations. In addition to numerous journal articles, he has written books that span from Mans Evolution: An Introduction to Physical Anthropology (with Ashley Montagu, Macmillan, 1965) to his most recent Evolution in an Anthropological View (AltaMira Press, 2000).

Table of Contents

Preface	viii
Introduction	1	(3)
The Biology of Human Variation	4	(13)
Background of a Belief	4	(1)
Adaptive Traits: Clines	5	(12)
The Perception of Human Differences in the Past	17	(20)
What Shall We Call ``Them''?	17	(1)
The Peasant Perspective	18	(1)
Antiquity	19	(2)
Renaissance	21	(1)
Enlightenment: The ``Age of Reason''	22	(1)
Science and the Greatness of God	23	(1)
The Limits of Reason	23	(1)
Linnaeus and Classification	24	(6)
Buffon and Continuity	30	(2)
Camper and the Facial Angle	32	(3)
Assessing the Meaning of Human Differences	35	(2)
One Origin or Many?	37	(7)
The Roots of ``Polygenism''	37	(5)
Monogenism	42	(2)
Anthropology in the Enlightenment	44	(13)
Blumenbach and ``Degeneration''	44	(3)
The Scottish Enlightenment Comes to America	47	(3)
Samuel Stanhope Smith: ``Race'' from the Perspective of the American Enlightenment	50	(7)
The Triumph of Feeling Over Reason	57	(9)
Romanticism	57	(9)
Phrenology	66	(10)
The Founding of the American School of Anthropology	76	(17)
The Postcolonial United States of America	76	(1)
Samuel George Morton and the American Origin of Biological Anthropology	77	(16)
Passing the Torch	93	(13)
Louis Agassiz, Archetypical American	93	(13)
The Demise of Monogenism and the Rise of Polygenism	106	(19)
John Bachman: The Last Monogenist	106	(4)
Josiah Clark Nott: The Voice of American Racialism	110	(7)
Scotland: Dr. Robert Knox	117	(2)
France: Comte de Gobineau	119	(6)
Toward a War Over Slavery and Afterward	125	(19)
George R. Gliddon	125	(5)
``Race'' and Politics	130	(5)
War and Its Aftermath	135	(9)
The French Connection	144	(15)
Paul Broca and the Professionalization of Biological Anthropology	144	(15)
The Legacy of the American School in America	159	(19)
Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (1841--1906)	159	(5)
The First World War	164	(2)
The French Connection and the Concept of ``Race''	166	(3)
William Z. Ripley and the Magic Three	169	(3)
Madison Grant	172	(4)
Lothrop Stoddard	176	(2)
The Ethos of Eugenics	178	(19)
Eugenics	178	(5)
Eugenics Exported to America	183	(2)
Germany	185	(4)
``Race'' and Eugenics Applied to the Shaping of America	189	(8)
Henry Ford and the Ethos of the Holocaust	197	(7)
The Anti-Semitism of Henry Ford	197	(1)
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion	198	(6)
The Outlook of the ``Bigot Brigade''	204	(7)
``Race'' and ``Intelligence''	204	(1)
Statistical Theology and the Worship of g	205	(3)
Sir Cyril Burt: ``Scientific'' Fraud	208	(3)
The Galtonian Legacy in America	211	(11)
World War I	211	(2)
``Intelligence'' and Immigration	213	(4)
Lewis Terman and Genetic Predestination	217	(2)
Walter Lippmann Versus the Termanites	219	(3)
``Race'' in Biological Anthropology	222	(18)
Ales Hrdlicka and the Smithsonian: Organizing the Profession	222	(4)
Academia and the Patterns of Thought in Biological Anthropology: Sir Arthur Keith	226	(7)
Keith's Influence on America: Earnest Albert Hooton	233	(2)
Carleton Coon on ``Race''	235	(3)
Science and Society on ``Race'' After World War II	238	(2)
The Legacy of the Pioneer Fund	240	(28)
The Promotion of ``Scientific'' Racism	240	(3)
Jensenism	243	(9)
The Bell Curve	252	(3)
J. Philippe Rushton: Apostle of Apartheid	255	(8)
Richard Lynn	263	(5)
``Otherism''	268	(7)
Afterthoughts	268	(7)
Sources Cited	275	(42)
Index	317