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Scientific Racism in Modern America, 1870s–1990s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Hamilton Cravens
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In post-Darwinian times, Americans have usually thought of the national population as divided into many distinct races and ethnic groups. The notions and definitions they have used for a race and an ethnic group have varied from one age to another. Although Americans have not needed the resources of science to believe that some races and ethnic groups are superior to others, in these times science has become a powerful symbol of cultural authority. For the racist, the assistance of science has often been useful. In this essay, it is important to distinguish between the scientific discourse on race and ethnicity whose participants do not necessarily assume that groups differ in value, and that of scientific racism, whose participants might or might not be scientists, but who have consistently assumed that science proves the existence of permanent group differences and legitimates the assertion that some groups are inherently superior to others. Here we shall discuss the latter.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 21 , October 1996 , pp. 471 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

NOTES

1. I thank the following persons for their comments and suggestions: Paula Forrest Helmuth, David M. Katzman, Alan I Marcus, George T. McJimsey, Christine Farnham Pope, Jack Salzman, Henry D. Shapiro, and Clarence E. Walker.

2. Vann Woodward, C., Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951)Google Scholar; and Litwack, Leon, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960)Google Scholar. Of course, the antebellum North was not identical to the postbellum South; there were whites who sought to protect blacks in the North from the Fugitive Slave Law, to extend civil rights to persons of color, et cetera. My point is rather that emancipation did not eliminate racism but reinstitutionalize it in both sections of the country in ways appropriate to time and place.

3. See, for example, Dixon, Thomas Jr., The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: Grossett and Dunlap, 1905)Google Scholar, perhaps the most widely circulated of all these books; and Cripps, Thomas, Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900–1942 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar. Obviously the literature on race relations is vast, and space prevents extensive citation.

4. Dinnerstein, Leonard, Uneasy at Home: Antisemitism and the American Jewish Experience (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 149–77, 103–32.Google Scholar

5. Sorin, Gerald, A Time for Building: The Third Migration 1880–1920 (The Jewish People in America, 5 vols., ed. Feingold, Henry L. [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992], vol. 3)Google Scholar, covers this period of American Jewish history well. I have found the entire series quite useful. Works on anti-Semitism in America include Dinnerstein, Leonard's Uneasy at Home, Anti-semitism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, and The Leo Frank Case (1966; rept. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Gerber, David, ed., Anti-Semitism in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Higham, John, “Social Discrimination Against Jews,” in Higham, , Send These to Me: Jews and Other Immigrants in Urban America (New York: Atheneum, 1975)Google Scholar, and of course his classic Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1865–1925 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1955).Google Scholar

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27. Cravens, , Triumph of Evolution, 89–155.Google Scholar

28. Dixon, Roland B., The Racial History of Man (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923), 475–523.Google Scholar

29. Hrdlicka, Ales, The Old Americans (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1925).Google Scholar

30. Cravens, , Before Head Start.Google Scholar

31. Cravens, , Triumph of Evolution, esp. 224–41.Google Scholar

32. Persons, Stow, Ethnic Studies at Chicago 1905–1945 (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 28–45, passim.Google Scholar

33. Cravens, , Before Head Start, 72–105Google Scholar; see also Cravens, , Triumph of EvolutionGoogle Scholar (241–65), on the field of individual differences.

34. On this point, see Persons, , Ethnic Studies, passim.Google Scholar

35. Herskovits, Melville J., The American Negro: A Study in Race Crossing (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928)Google Scholar. See also Mead, Margaret, And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America (New York: Morrow, 1942)Google Scholar; Benedict, Ruth, Race: Science and Politics (New York: Modern Age, 1940)Google Scholar; and Benedict, , Race and Racism (London: Routledge and Sons, 1942).Google Scholar

36. Cravens, , Triumph of Evolution, 157–90.Google Scholar

37. Dinnerstein, , Uneasy at HomeGoogle Scholar, and see the other citations in notes 4 and 5 as well. See also Forster, Arnold and Epstein, Benjamin, The New Anti-Semitism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974).Google Scholar

38. See Cravens, , Before Head Start, passim.Google Scholar

39. Jensen, Arthur, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” Harvard Educational Review 39 (1969): 1–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The literature on Jensen and his work is considerable; one might start with Jensen, Arthur R., Genetics and Education (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).Google Scholar

40. Herrnstein, Richard and Murray, Charles, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994).Google Scholar

41. Wiggins, David K., “‘Great Speed But Little Stamina’: The Historical Debate Over Black Athletic Superiority,” Journal of Sport History 16 (Summer 1989): 158–85.Google Scholar