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Concepts of Race in the Eighteenth Century
Manufacturer: Thoemmes Continuum
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ASIN: 1855068699 |
Book Description
'Anyone who has struggled to recover the extensive 18th-century discussion of human racial variation will welcome with enthusiasm Robert Bernasconi’s set. It is judicious in selection and ample in coverage. I especially welcome the decision to reprint a series of texts by Johann Blumenbach, documenting the crucial evolution of his position. Including not only early texts from Maupertuis and Buffon but also the texts of Kant’s debate with Georg Forster, the series offers a coherent backdrop for assessment of the interaction between Kant’s philosophy of science and the ongoing research in the life sciences at the close of the century. It will prove a valued resource to all historians of science, philosophy and culture of the 18th century.’
--John Zammito
Concepts of Race in the Eighteenth Century is an exciting new collection of rare primary source materials tracing the development of a scientific concept of race in the eighteenth century. With contributions from some of the most eminent scientists of the eighteenth century, this set is indispensable for a reassessment of the historical discussion of the concept of race. Over time, various misconceptions around the concept of race have developed including ideas about ‘race purity’, the effects of racial hybridization, ‘superior and inferior races’, race and mental differences, race and culture. This set examines the different viewpoints of influential eighteenth-century philosophical and scientific figures.
The opening two volumes offer contributions by Carolus Linnaeus (or Carl Linné, 1707--78), Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698--1759) and Count de Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc (1707--88). Their vagueness about the concept of race serves to highlight the critical importance of Immanuel Kant’s definition of race in his essay ‘Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen’. Both the 1775 and 1777 versions of this essay are included, as well as his two subsequent essays on race. An essay by Christoph Girtanner (1760--1800) is also included, a work which Kant himself recommended to scholars as an accurate reflection of his mature views on the subject. Contrary to the belief that Johann Blumenbach (1752--1840) was the founder of a scientific concept of race, a comparison of the three editions of Blumenbach’s De generis humani varietate nativa shows that he did not employ the concept of race until the third edition. Blumenbach was the first to divide the human race into five races: Caucasian, Ethiopian, American, Mongolian and Malay. With the reprinting of all four editions, a systematic study of the development of Blumenbach’s thought is now possible.
The English language discussion on the diversity of human types is represented here by Samuel Stanhope Smith’s(1750--1819) An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species and Charles White’s (1728--1813) An Account of the Regular Gradation of Man. With new introductory essays by Robert Bernasconi, these previously inaccessible crucial texts will provide an invaluable resource for scholars of science, philosophy and culture.
--rare and inaccessible texts tracing the development of scientific concepts of race in the late eighteenth century
--contains works by some of the most eminent scientists of the century, including Linnaeus, Maupertuis and Buffon
--presents some of the key texts needed in order to assess the roles of Kant and Blumenbach in the race debate
Book Description
The second volume in a monumental study of the origins of racism in the US. In this second volume of his acclaimed study Theodore Allen explores how the degradation of African bond-laborers into slaves produced, for the first time in Anglo America, racism based on color differences. Theodore Allen traces the historical roots of the white supremacism that led European-American workers to oppose Abolitionism. This was in contrast to an earlier common feeling of oppression shared between European and African-American laborers. Allen examines the means by which European workers in the tobacco colonies were reduced from tenants and wage workers to chattel bond-labourers. The imposition by plantation owners of such onerous conditions of servitude created a potentially explosive situation that ultimately detonated in the famous Bacon's Rebellion -- the greatest demonstration in history, argues Allen, of solidarity between European-Americans and African-Americans against slavery. Rocked by the laboring class's solidarity, the plantation bourgeoisie sought a solution in the creation of a buffer stratum of poor whites, who now gained a privilege in their skin color protecting them from the enslavement visited upon Africans and African Americans. Such was, as Allen puts it, the invention of the white race, `that peculiar institution' that continues to haunt social relations in the US down to the present. An authoritative, masterly work, The Invention of the Whife Race is essential reading for students of US history and politics.
Customer Reviews:
The Farce of White Identity.......2003-05-16
Theodore Allen's second volume of The Invention of the White Race, which focuses on Anglo America (his first volume focused on English/British religio-racial oppression in Ireland), is simply spectacular. He brings back the lost art of empirical research from below (in distinction to merely "writing history from below"). His work in the archives of the continental colonies is arduous; and the rewards are reaped by his readers as they are aquainted with heroic men and women of the American working classes, both African American and European American. They are heroes because they resisted oppression without reference to skin color. In fact, the power of Allen's second volume is his substantiation of the thesis that white identity was invented by the Anglo-American ruling class to keep social control of the masses of poor and propertyless workers. If this sounds simplistic, read the book, because the way the rich planters achieved this invention is far from simple. Allen's work should be mandatory reading in all fields of the humanities: English, Philosophy, History, Sociology, and Psychology. Even though the discipline of history in the US academy is afraid of Allen's work, one day his two volumes will be read by millions of people. I think this is true because of the explanatory power of his research and argumentation. I've always wanted to know: Why do workers in the US oppress other workers (white workers oppressing black workers)? Does this happen anywhere else in the world, because I can't think of a single situation. What makes the US so psychotic and weird? Is it white identity? Where did white identity come from? Why is there so little class consciousness among American workers? Answers to these questions can be found in Allen's two volumes, especially in volume two where the US is the focus.
Well worth reading.......2001-06-02
A meticulously researched, extremely important (although painful to read) book. I highly recommend it.
Naive.......2000-06-01
The problem with his argument is that he makes generalized motives the norm after researching a few examples. It's naive to go with the premise of White workers and Black slaves going against the power structure, united we stand, etc. by itself. Historically, there are financial motives that were far stronger than "brothers in bondage" motives. The companies in the north were being bested by their southern brethren. The north could not use slaves and suffered financially, therefore created a general sympathy for the slave movement. The humanitarian issue did not come until much later, generally. For those that were always humanitarians, the John Browns, etc. They were the minority of Whites in the north, not the majority. The correlation might as well not even exist.
Book Description
In this far-ranging and penetrating work, Denise Ferreira da Silva asks why, after more than five hundred years of violence perpetrated by Europeans against people of color, is there no ethical outrage?
Rejecting the prevailing view that social categories of difference such as race and culture operate solely as principles of exclusion, Silva presents a critique of modern thought that shows how racial knowledge and power produce global space. Looking at the United States and Brazil, she argues that modern subjects are formed in philosophical accounts that presume two ontological momentsâhistoricity and globalityâwhich are refigured in the concepts of the nation and the racial, respectively. By displacing historicity’s ontological prerogative, Silva proposes that the notion of racial difference governs the present global power configuration because it institutes moral regions not covered by the leading post-Enlightenment ethical idealsânamely, universality and self-determination.
By introducing a view of the racial as the signifier of globalit y,Toward a Global Idea of Race provides a new basis for the investigation of past and present modern social processes and contexts of subjection.
Denise Ferreira da Silva is associate professor of ethnic studies at University of California, San Diego.
Book Description
National Manhood explores the relationship between gender, race, and nation by tracing developing ideals of citizenship in the United States from the Revolutionary War through the 1850s. Through an extensive reading of literary and historical documents, Dana D. Nelson analyzes the social and political articulation of a civic identity centered around the white male and points to a cultural moment in which the theoretical consolidation of white manhood worked to ground, and perhaps even found, the nation.
Using political, scientific, medical, personal, and literary texts ranging from the Federalist papers to the ethnographic work associated with the Lewis and Clark expedition to the medical lectures of early gynecologists, Nelson explores the referential power of white manhood, how and under what conditions it came to stand for the nation, and how it came to be a fraternal articulation of a representative and civic identity in the United States. In examining early exemplary models of national manhood and by tracing its cultural generalization, National Manhood reveals not only how an impossible ideal has helped to form racist and sexist practices, but also how this ideal has simultaneously privileged and oppressed white men, who, in measuring themselves against it, are able to disavow their part in those oppressions.
Historically broad and theoretically informed, National Manhood reaches across disciplines to engage those studying early national culture, race and gender issues, and American history, literature, and culture.
Book Description
When Thomas Gossett's Race: The History of an Idea in America appeared in 1963, it explored the impact of race theory on American letters in a way that anticipated the investigation of race and culture being conducted today. Bold, rigorous, and broad in scope, Gossett's book quickly established itself as a critical resource to younger scholars seeking a candid, theoretically sophisticated treatment of race in American cultural history. Here, reprinted without change, is Gossett's classic study, making available to a new generation of scholars a lucid, accessibly written volume that ranges from colonial race theory and its European antecedents, through eighteenth- and nineteenth- century race pseudoscience, to the racialist dimension of American thought and literature emerging against backgrounds such as Anglo- Saxonism, westward expansion, Social Darwinism, xenophobia, World War I, and modern racial theory. Featuring a new afterword by the author, an introduction by series editors Shelley Fisher Fishkin and Arnold Rampersad, and a bibliographic essay by Maghan Keita, this indispensable book, whose first edition helped change the way scholars discussed race, will richly reward scholars of American Studies, American Literature, and African-American Studies.
Customer Reviews:
A seminal analysis of racism.......2005-01-25
This reprint of a classic study of racism is one of the most important on the subject in the last fifty years, and significant for being the source of much later scholarly work. The place of racial pseudo-science in American history, indeed, American scholarship was once alarmingly strong, and the picture since the changes wrought in the sixties onwards tend to make one forget the insidious extent of the racist confusions. The book is quite comprehensive, and covers the issue of racism from the early modern onward, from the time of Las Casas and the Puritans to the time of Nazism, with interesting material on slavery, the treatment of the Indian, Reconstruction and afterward, Social Darwism, race in literature, and much more. As a teacher of English rather than a specialist the tone is precise yet informal, yet highly readable, and as the authors of the Forward to the new edition note, the text was an inspiration to many scholars of the time of the first printing.
Well-documented account of racism's development.......1999-06-14
I read the 1st edition of this book many years ago (in the 60s). It well describes the intellectual justifications for racism. It has a wonderful bibliography which allows the reader to find the original material. I have not re-read the book in years, but profoundly recall the author's discussion of how the intellectuals of the time produced literature to justify the US's continue subjagation of non-whites in American and outside--Kipling's "White Man's Burden" being one example. Highly recommended.
Book Description
"In this groundbreaking collection of articles, Dr. Guy-Sheftall has taken us from the early 1830s to contemporary times. Only since the seventies have black women used the term 'feminism.' And, yet, it is that concept that she uses to bring into the same frame the ideas and analyses of Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, and Frances Harper of the early nineteenth century, and the work of women such as Audre Lourde, Barbara Smith, and bell hooks, who stand on the threshold of the twenty-first century.--from the epilogue by Johnnetta B. Cole, President, Spelman College
Customer Reviews:
tremendously important book.......2004-09-14
I first read this book in a Women's Studies class at the University of Washington. It was one of the several phenomenal books we were required to study during the course of the quarter. I felt so blessed and fortunate to have the opportunity to read these important words from the mouths and pens of a very underrepresented group in our nation: African-American women.
There are so many voices in this book, I don't want to begin to list them because I am sure I will leave someone of value out, but I will tell you that the articles written by Angela Davis, Sojourner Truth and Mrs. W.E.B Dubois are engaging and give you a new perspective on the "race movements" of the United States. Oftentimes, on the road to "equal rights" women of color were completely left out of the picture, and were in fact expected to stay quiet and stand by their men for comfort and support. This was at the expense of their own equality and hope for progress.
This is a book that should be read by many, and at a younger age than college. I feel our young people could really benefit from such valuable information and insight into the system of oppression that exists even within the African-American movements of the 1800s, 1900s and today.
A Major Influence In My Life.......2001-02-26
This book is an introduction to the wealth of perspective of Black Feminists. Using whole essays by Black women in the US, this anthology highlights some of the best in Black Political Theory. One of the things that becomes extremely apparent is that Black Feminists are experts in the issue of differences between people. In one of the essays, Audre Lorde says that the future of the planet depends on women redefining difference. In this vein Audre Lorde has been one of the most influential people on the issue of intersectionality and positionality, meaning that people are diverse in a multitude of ways and that they occupy many different spaces in the human universe. Get this book, it will change the way you see everything.
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Auschwitz and After: Race, Culture, and the Jewish Question in France
L. Kritzman
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0415904412 |
Book Description
The memory of the Holocaust and the "Jewish question" have been key issues in French political, cultural and intellectual life for the past fifty years. Since Auschwitz, every word evoking its past either dissimulates guilt or simply denies the reality of the extermination that took place. Immediately following World War II, discussion of French participation in the "Final Solution" became taboo. Support for a massive inquiry into the many crimes of collaboration became an impossibilty because too many Frenchmen felt guilty because of their complicity during the war. Collaborators went back "into the closet" and the sins of the past were magically eradicated.
Beginning with Marcel Ophüs's documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (1970) there has been an attempt to question the idea of a totally unified, courageous and resistant wartime France. Even more startling have been the increasingly shocking revelations that the politics of collaboration were a mere extension of a deep-seated Frenchanti-Semitic tradition. In the shadow of these developments French writers and philosophers today are reflecting on the meaning of Jewish identity in the contemporary world.
Auschwitz and After analyzes for the first time how the memory of Auschwitz and the collaboration continue to haunt the French. These critical evaluations are accompanied by provocative essays on the "Jewish Question" and the politics of race as they have been studied by writers, historians, philosophers and film makers in postwar France.
Auschwitz and After offers an extraordinary compendium of critics of French culture treating subjects as diverse as: the representation of the Holocaust and the politics of revisionism; anti-Semitism in contemporary France; the literature of Jews writing in French; the literature of the French writing on Jews; the post-Auschwitz philosophy of Blanchot, Derrida, Levinas and Lyotard; images of the occupation in the films of Ophüls, Chabrol, Truffaut and Malle; war memories and autobiographical writing; and the construction of Jewish identity in Sartre, Aron, Lévi-Strauss and Finkielkraut.
Contributors:
Geoffrey Hartman, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Elaine Marks, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Judith Friedlander, Alain Finkielkraut,
Lawrence D. Kritzman, Jeanine Parisier Plottel, Allen Stoekl, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Emmanuel Levinas, Ora Avni, Jeffrey Mehlman, Warren Motte, Ronnie Scharfman, Richard Stamelman, Naomi Greene, Nelly Furman, Herman Rapaport.
Book Description
How did African-American slaves view their white masters? As demons, deities or another race entirely? When nineteenth-century white Americans proclaimed their innate superiority, did blacks agree? If not, why not? How did blacks assess the status of the white race? Mia Bay traces African-American perceptions of whites between 1830 and 1925 to depict America's shifting attitudes about race in a period that saw slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, and urban migration. Much has been written about how the whites of this time viewed blacks, and about how blacks viewed themselves. By contrast, the ways in which blacks saw whites have remained a historical and intellectual mystery. Reversing the focus of such fundamental studies as George Fredrickson's The Black Image in the White Mind, Bay investigates this mystery. In doing so, she uncovers and elucidates the racial thought of a wide range of nineteenth-century African-Americans--educated and unlettered, male and female, free and enslaved.
Customer Reviews:
Black ideas about white racism.......2003-12-06
Historian Mia Bay tackles the reverse side of the coin first forged by George Fredrickson in this examination of African-American thought concerning whites, "The White Image in the Black Mind." The transposition of Fredrickson's title for this book is appropriate as Bay traces the development of black responses to white racist ideology from nineteenth century African-American intellectuals to the emergence of messianic black sects in the early twentieth century. Such a comprehensive task was not easy since Bay had to tackle both black intellectual responses to racialist ideologies and the generally uneducated slave perceptions regarding institutional racism. Wisely deciding to approach these two diverse African-American responses by splitting them into separate sections, Bay then draws the two areas together by constructing an overarching argument about black responses to dominant white racial ideas. According to the author, both black intellectuals and slaves formed their opinions and theories about whites within a racial discourse constructed by whites. The book argues that blacks in the nineteenth century reduced white supremacist ideas about Africans to issues of social power, charging that whites maintained black inferiority in order to justify exploitation and abuse. In the early years of the twentieth century, changing conditions in American society and a new anthropological theory rejecting the biological concepts of race led to a significant divide among blacks concerning their views on racism. The intellectuals endorsed the new cultural theory of race while nascent black messianic sects founded by Marcus Garvey and other charismatic leaders embraced racist ideas that emulated the old white racial ideologies of the nineteenth century.
Black ethnographers such as Frederick Douglass and John McCune Smith developed a revisionist argument against white racism that operated within the confines of white racialist dialogue. These intellectuals adhered to a strict environmentalist position concerning racial categories, allowing for a temporary black inferiority while proposing arguments about future ascendancy for the African race. Moreover, according to these thinkers, one only needed look at ancient Egypt as proof of the potential for black merit because the ethnographers charged that black Africans once ruled that advanced land. Regrettably, these intellectuals fell prey to a contradiction in their arguments: while claiming an origin indistinguishable from that of all other peoples on the earth, the redefinition of Egypt as a touchstone for black excellence tacitly endorsed an idea of racial supremacy over white cultures, especially when the ethnographers placed these claims next to examples of the barbarity of Anglo-Saxons.
Slaves constituted the majority of the black population in the nineteenth century, but without an education and suffering under the yoke of illiteracy these men and women knew little about the ethnological debates occurring between educated whites and blacks. But the enslaved still recognized and responded to the racism they endured on a daily basis. According to Bay, slaves realized that southern whites saw them as little more than domesticated animals, but African-Americans never internalized this insulting comparison. Blacks in bondage often defined whites in terms of their economic and social power, rarely through color distinctions. Ultimately, enslaved blacks accepted certain distinctions between themselves and whites, one example being the issue of divine justice and how whites would suffer at the hands of God for their poor treatment of black slaves, but again these differences had little to do with the color of the skin.
Perhaps Bay's most important achievement with this book concerns her claims about how black arguments against white racialism fell, almost without exception, within the constraints of a racialized society. Black ethnographers argued against white theories on race by revising, not completely redefining, those ideas. Their thoughts did not bring about a paradigm shift in racial relations because of the embedded structures of racism within American society. It fell to Franz Boas and his new anthropological theories to bring about a sea change in American racial thought, and this shift did not occur in earnest until the early to mid twentieth century. In retrospect, black thinkers of this era deserve some credit for doing the best they could under the circumstances. Although these black scholars fell victim to an inconsistency in their theories that ultimately led to distinct forms of reverse racism, their arguments against white ideologies kept a flame of hope alive during the darkest days of oppression. If there had been nothing but silence from African-Americans during the nineteenth century, efforts at improved race relations today could look substantially different.
Bay concludes with an examination of Afrocentrism and its perceived origins in nineteenth century black ethnology. Afrocentrism argues that blacks are largely responsible for the development of mathematics, physics, philosophy, and other mental achievements. Afrocentrists generally agree that the Greeks stole most of their ideas from the ancient black Egyptians, and that individuals like Cleopatra and Jesus were black. Recently, academics have repudiated many of the claims of Afrocentrism, specifically Mary Lefkowitz in her book "Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History." This scholar convincingly argues that many Afrocentric theories originated from a Freemason text which borrowed heavily from an eighteenth century tract written by a French classicist. This author, who had no access to Egyptian sources and wrote his history before linguists learned how to translate hieroglyphics, constructed an alternate history of Egypt using fragmentary and questionable Greek and Roman sources. Bay unfortunately never examines this new scholarship on the origins of Afrocentrism. Doing so could pose some interesting questions about where black ethnographers got their ideas about the grandeur of an ancient black Egypt.
Book Description
The intellectual history of race, one of the most pernicious and enduring ideas in American history, has remained segregated into studies of black or white traditions. Bruce Dain breaks this separatist pattern with an integrated account of the emergence of modern racial consciousness in the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War. A Hideous Monster of the Mind reveals that ideas on race crossed racial boundaries in a process that produced not only well-known theories of biological racism but also countertheories that were early expressions of cultural relativism, cultural pluralism, and latter-day Afrocentrism.
From 1800 to 1830 in particular, race took on a new reality as Americans, black and white, reacted to postrevolutionary disillusionment, the events of the Haitian Revolution, the rise of cotton culture, and the entrenchment of slavery. Dain examines not only major white figures like Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Stanhope Smith, but also the first self-consciously "black" African-American writers. These various thinkers transformed late-eighteenth-century European environmentalist "natural history" into race theories that combined culture and biology and set the terms for later controversies over slavery and abolition. In those debates, the ethnology of Samuel George Morton and Josiah Nott intertwined conceptually with important writing by black authors who have been largely forgotten, like Hosea Easton and James McCune Smith. Scientific racism and the idea of races as cultural constructions were thus interrelated aspects of the same effort to explain human differences.
In retrieving neglected African-American thinkers, reestablishing the European intellectual background to American racial theory, and demonstrating the deep confusion "race" caused for thinkers black and white, A Hideous Monster of the Mind offers an engaging and enlightening new perspective on modern American racial thought.
Book Description
Even The Rat Was White views history from all perspectives in the quest for historical accuracy. Histories and other background materials are presented in detail concerning early African-American psychologists and their scientific contributions, as well as their problems, views, and concerns of the field of social psychology. Archival documents that are not often found in mainstream resources are uncovered through the use of journals and magazines, such as the Journal of Black Psychology, the Journal of Negro Education, and Crisis. The historical role of African-Americans in psychology. History of Psychology, Psychology of Prejudice.
Customer Reviews:
Lessons from the past.......2007-06-02
Even the Rat Was White is a detailed account of racial issues throughout the history of psychology that are often glazed over or left out of many psychology textbooks. In the second edition of his book, Robert Guthrie discusses psychology's role in the racial discrimination of African Americans and other minorities. He also describes the struggles many of these individuals faced in order to achieve careers in psychology. Guthrie highlights the successful work of those African Americans who were able to push through all the barriers placed along their way within the field. Much of the information provided in this book cannot be found in general history of psychology textbooks. It is important for the future of psychology that those currently involved be aware of the transgressions of past psychologists who may have been caught up in the spirit of the times. We need to be able to step away from our work and examine our beliefs objectively, to ensure that we are not being persuaded by biases that may be detrimental to those we think we are trying to help. Guthrie provides a cutthroat picture of the narrow-minded, self-preserving view psychology has had in the past. We must move beyond these discriminating beliefs and accept a contemporary, multicultural perspective of psychology.
Jennifer Wolf's review of Guthrie's Classic.......2007-06-01
Robert Guthrie's Even the Rat Was White: A Historical View of Psychology, 2nd Edition is an insightful and important text for the field of psychology. He utilizes this text as a means to draw attention to the collection of historical materials related to racial stereotypes toward African Americans in the field of science and the struggle African Americans faced in education and employment in psychology. He also emphasizes the importance of how the spirit of the time, or Zeitgeist, can be the guiding influence for research and has a large impact on what people believe is important. Although the text highlights the grim aspects of psychology's history, it brings to focus the contributions of African Americans in psychology and illustrates the importance of learning from the mistakes made in the past and using those findings to the betterment of science. Although Guthrie's voice is cynical in nature, his text provides a taste of psychology's history that goes unheard otherwise.
Even the Rat Was White.......2007-05-30
In an informative and objective style, Guthrie recounts the history of African Americans and other minorities in the realm of psychology and eloquently describes the struggle that African American psychologists and students endured to bring truth and equality to the surface. He begins with a detailed historical account of African Americans throughout the centuries and their experiences with anthropology, psychology, and society. To follow, are topics such as intelligence testing, race and psychology, education, and African Americans in psychology.
The study of differences was propagated by the emergence of psychology in the late 1800s. Not to be left out of the zeitgeist, the focus on identifying racial differences only grew stronger with the new techniques of systematic experimentation and observation. This surge led to the development of elaborate racial classification systems, and studies on the perceived physiological and anatomical differences between races.
Despite the immense obstacles put in place and the atrocities inflicted on African Americans throughout the history of the US and specifically in academia, the field of psychology is slowly moving. As we study both similarities and differences between groups and individuals at present, we can hopefully move past mere skin color and work collaboratively to foster learning about all people. Authors such as Guthrie will help to fuel this paradigm shift and lead us into a new psychology, marked by the combinations of science and equality.
Racial bias in the field of psychology.......2007-05-29
In Even the Rat Was White, Guthrie exposes racial bias in the history of psychology. Although such prejudice can be traced back to ancient times, a resurgence in the late 19th century was reflected in the emerging field of psychology where it also found legitimacy via this new "science." Guthrie's book would have been better served had he provided a broader view of the cultural context. Also, the scope of Guthrie's account of the history of psychology only extended to areas that affected racial issues, excluding other areas of study, which gave the appearance that racial differences were the main or only area of investigation within the field. Overall, Guthrie's book provided a unique perspective on the history of psychology and was enlightening in regard to the blatant racial bias that affected the topics which we study, the tools that we have used, and the profession as a whole. Racial bias in form of eugenics movement and intelligence testing is most frightening, because these problems haunt us from our not so distant past and because they persist to some degree today, and will likely reemerge in the future. Although we have overcome some of the blatant bias in the field of psychology, I wonder if this is just a reflection of our "enlightened" times, and whether some of the bias is now more insidious. Perhaps we are unaware of the current zeitgeist and will look back upon this time in history with the same embarrassment for our ignorance of important issues.
What's past is prologue.......2007-05-29
Even the Rat was White offers the modern psychologist an alternative to current texts on the history of psychology by systematically chronicling the relationship between the field of psychology, the intellectual and cultural climate of the era, and racial and ethnic disparities. Guthrie painstakingly outlines how the historical character of the times facilitated and perpetuated psychological research and practices and how, in turn, psychology influenced past and existing perceptions of individual differences and racial and ethnic discrepancies. For instance, The first chapter of the book on the measurement of the physical attributes of different races and the instruments designed to calculate them entices the reader to continue to explore Guthrie's argument by discussing the absurd techniques employed by anthropologists to prove the inferiority of minority races under the guise of scientific research and the impact this research had on the field of psychology. Additionally, the conclusion of the second section of book highlights the fundamental difference between Guthrie's history of psychology and other standard texts in use by examining the major contributions of Black psychologists that continue to be overlooked by the field and texts depicting the history of psychology. From the study of physical characteristics that began an era in psychology fixated on individual differences instead of human commonalities to the successful rise of Black psychologists despite an overwhelmingly oppressive socio-cultural view of Black Americans, Even the Rat was White challenges the Eurocentric psychology in America and instills in the reader an intense desire to continue to confront our past and counteract racial and ethnic discrepancies in modern psychological research and practice. Even the Rat was White opens the eyes of the reader to the racially biased research and discriminatory practices and will, hopefully, aid current psychologists in learning from past mistakes so that will not be repeated in the future.
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