The myth of race : the troubling persistence of an unscientific idea / Robert Wald Sussman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sussman, Robert W., 1941-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Race.

Racism.

Physical Description:

ix, 374 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2014.

Summary:

Biological races do not exist -- and never have. This view is shared by all scientists who study variation in human populations. Yet racial prejudice and intolerance based on the myth of race remain deeply ingrained in Western society. In his powerful examination of a persistent, false, and poisonous idea, Robert Sussman explores how race emerged as a social construct from early biblical justifications to the pseudoscientific studies of today. The Myth of Race traces the origins of modern racist ideology to the Spanish Inquisition, revealing how sixteenth-century theories of racial degeneration became a crucial justification for Western imperialism and slavery. In the nineteenth century, these theories fused with Darwinism to produce the highly influential and pernicious eugenics movement. Believing that traits from cranial shape to raw intelligence were immutable, eugenicists developed hierarchies that classified certain races, especially fair-skinned "Aryans," as superior to others. These ideologues proposed programs of intelligence testing, selective breeding, and human sterilization -- policies that fed straight into Nazi genocide. Sussman examines how opponents of eugenics, guided by the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas's new, scientifically supported concept of culture, exposed fallacies in racist thinking. Although eugenics is now widely discredited, some groups and individuals today claim a new scientific basis for old racist assumptions. Pondering the continuing influence of racist research and thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, Sussman explains why -- when it comes to race -- too many people still mistake bigotry for science.

Contents:

Early racism in western Europe

The birth of eugenics

The merging of polygenics and eugenics

Eugenics and the Nazis

The antidote : Boas and the anthropological concept of culture

Physical anthropology in the early twentieth century

The downfall of eugenics

The beginnings of modern scientific racism

The Pioneer Fund, 1970s-1990s

The Pioneer Fund in the twenty-first century

Modern racism and anti-immigration policies

Conclusion

Appendix A : The eugenics movement, 1890s-1940s

Appendix B : The Pioneer Fund

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 315-349) and index.

ISBN:

9780674417311

0674417313

OCLC:

876000016