From Power to Prejudice : The Rise of Racial Individualism in Midcentury America / Leah N. Gordon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gordon, Leah N., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Race discrimination--United States--History--20th century.

Race discrimination.

Prejudices--United States--History--20th century.

Prejudices.

United States--Race relations--History--20th century.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Americans believe strongly in the socially transformative power of education, and the idea that we can challenge racial injustice by reducing white prejudice has long been a core component of this faith. How did we get here? In this first-rate intellectual history, Leah N. Gordon jumps into this and other big questions about race, power, and social justice. To answer these questions, From Power to Prejudice examines American academia-both black and white-in the 1940s and '50s. Gordon presents four competing visions of "the race problem" and documents how an individualistic paradigm, which presented white attitudes as the source of racial injustice, gained traction. A number of factors, Gordon shows, explain racial individualism's postwar influence: individuals were easier to measure than social forces; psychology was well funded; studying political economy was difficult amid McCarthyism; and individualism was useful in legal attacks on segregation. Highlighting vigorous midcentury debate over the meanings of racial justice and equality, From Power to Prejudice reveals how one particular vision of social justice won out among many contenders.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

ONE. Attitudes, Structures, and "Levers of Change": The Social Science of Prejudice and Race Relations

TWO. "Data and Not Trouble": The Rockefeller Foundation and the Social Science of Race Relations

THREE. The Individual and the "General Situation": Defining the Race Problem at the University of Chicago's Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations

FOUR. The Mature Individual or the Mature Society: Social Theory, Social Action, and the Race Problem at Fisk University's Race Relations Institutes

FIVE. "Education for Racial Understanding" and the Meanings of Integration in Howard University's Journal of Negro Education

SIX. "To Inoculate Americans against the Virus of Hate": Brotherhood, the War on Intolerance, and the National Conference of Christians and Jews

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226419411

022641941X

OCLC:

907532821