From savage to Negro : anthropology and the construction of race, 1896-1954 / Lee D. Baker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baker, Lee D., 1966-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Racism in anthropology--United States--History.

Racism in anthropology.

Anthropology--United States--History.

Anthropology.

Racism in popular culture--United States--History.

Racism in popular culture.

African Americans--Public opinion.

African Americans.

Public opinion--United States.

Public opinion.

United States--Race relations.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 325 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Lee D. Baker explores what racial categories mean to the American public and how these meanings are reinforced by anthropology, popular culture, and the law. Focusing on the period between two landmark Supreme Court decisions-Plessy v. Ferguson (the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine established in 1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (the public school desegregation decision of 1954)-Baker shows how racial categories change over time. Baker paints a vivid picture of the relationships between specific African American and white scholars, who orchestrated a paradigm shift within the social sciences from ideas based on Social Darwinism to those based on cultural relativism. He demonstrates that the greatest impact on the way the law codifies racial differences has been made by organizations such as the NAACP, which skillfully appropriated the new social science to exploit the politics of the Cold War.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. History and Theory of a Racialized Worldview

Chapter 2. The Ascension of Anthropology as Social Darwinism

Chapter 3. Anthropology in American Popular Culture

Chapter 4. Progressive-Era Reform: Holding on to Hierarchy

Chapter 5. Rethinking Race at the Turn of the Century: W. E. B. Du Bois and Franz Boas

Chapter 6. The New Negro and Cultural Politics of Race

Chapter 7. Looking behind the Veil with the Spy Glass of Anthropology 143

Chapter 8. Unraveling the Boasian Discourse

Chapter 9. Anthropology and the Fourteenth Amendment

Chapter 10. The Color-Blind Bind

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780585047737

0585047731

9780520920194

0520920198

OCLC:

42417782