 First edition | |
| Author | Robert Wald Sussman |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Race |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Publication date | October 6, 2014 |
| Pages | 374 |
| ISBN | 9780674660038 |
The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea is a book by anthropologist Robert Wald Sussman detailing how race is not, and never had been, a valid biological category in humans. [1] It was published in 2014 by Harvard University Press.
Robert J. Cottrol reviewed The Myth of Race favorably, writing, "With The Myth of Race, Robert Sussman gives us a comprehensive history of the idea of race and particularly the rise and not total fall of scientific racism". [2] Ruth C. Engs was less favorable in her review of the book, writing that "...rarely does [Sussman] compare the interpretation of one historian with that of another in an objective manner or compare interpretations from one time period to those from another, as other historiographical researchers usually do. Researchers in the past, or present, who do not agree with his conclusions are considered “racists” or part of “the eugenics bigot brigade.”" She concludes that "Sussman’s lack of objectivity in this book is disconcerting. For those looking for a work that summarizes the negative side of the hereditarian and eugenics movements, however, this book would be an adequate reference. Also in its favor is its extensive bibliography of contemporary and older works." [3] In a mixed review, Kathleen Feyh wrote that "Sussman's book is an elegant genealogy of the myth of race from the Spanish Inquisition through the twentieth-century eugenics movement and its demystifiers among those who study human differentiation." She also criticized the book by writing that Sussman's "...analysis is limited in no small part by his method, which confines him to a history of racist ideas and ideologues rather than one of how racist ideas function in society, leaving the reader with a very well-written debate within the field of anthropology rather than achieving one of his stated goals, namely "to further...understanding of why racism is still so prevalent in our society"". [4] In a generally favorable review, Jeffrey C. Long wrote that "The Myth of Race rightly points to a critical role for Franz Boas, who formulated anthropology along non‐racial lines, even before biological anthropology adopted the evolutionary principles established by the New Synthesis in the 1930s. This is an important contribution of the book. It clearly establishes that racists and eugenicists in the last century chose their ideologies over superior alternatives." [5] In comparing The Myth of Race with Michael Yudell's book Race Unmasked, Nathaniel C. Comfort wrote that "The eugenics movement – particularly in the United States in the early twentieth century and in Nazi Germany – offers a cornucopia of evidence of scientific racism. But, in focusing on the US movement's most egregious leaders, such as Charles Davenport, Madison Grant and Henry Fairfield Osborn, both Yudell and Sussman over-simplify. Eugenics was about much more than just race." [6]
John Philippe Rushton was a Canadian psychologist and author. He taught at the University of Western Ontario until the early 1990s, and became known to the general public during the 1980s and 1990s for research on race and intelligence, race and crime, and other purported racial correlations.
Racism is discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. Racism can be present in social actions, practices, or political systems that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices. The ideology underlying racist practices often assumes that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups that are different in their social behavior and innate capacities and that can be ranked as inferior or superior. Racist ideology can become manifest in many aspects of social life. Associated social actions may include nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, supremacism, and related social phenomena.
Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations. By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. The concept of race is foundational to racism, the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern Indo-Iranians as an epithet of "noble". Anthropological, historical, and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of this concept.
Carleton Stevens Coon was an American anthropologist. A professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, lecturer and professor at Harvard University, he was president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Coon's theories on race were widely disputed in his lifetime and are considered pseudoscientific in modern anthropology.
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Before the mid-20th century, scientific racism received credence throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific. The division of humankind into biologically distinct groups, and the attribution of specific traits both physical and mental to them by constructing and applying corresponding explanatory models, that is, racial theories, is sometimes called racialism, race realism, or race science by its proponents. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with modern genetic research.
Madison Grant was an American lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known for his work as a conservationist, eugenicist, and advocate of scientific racism. Grant is less noted for his far-reaching achievements in conservation than for his advocacy of Nordicism, a form of racism which views the "Nordic race" as superior.
Richard Lynn is a controversial English psychologist and self-described "scientific racist" who advocates for a genetic relationship between race and intelligence. He was a professor emeritus of psychology at Ulster University, but had the title withdrawn by the university in 2018. He is the current editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly, which is commonly described as a white supremacist journal. Lynn was educated at King's College, Cambridge, in England. He has worked as lecturer in psychology at the University of Exeter and as professor of psychology at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, and at the University of Ulster at Coleraine.
Charles Benedict Davenport was a biologist and eugenicist influential in the American eugenics movement.
Mankind Quarterly is a peer-reviewed journal that has been described as a "cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment", a "white supremacist journal", and "a pseudo-scholarly outlet for promoting racial inequality". It covers physical and cultural anthropology, including human evolution, intelligence, ethnography, linguistics, mythology, archaeology, and biology. It is published by the Ulster Institute for Social Research, which is presided over by Richard Lynn.
William Zebina Ripley was an American economist, lecturer at Columbia University, professor of economics at MIT, professor of political economy at Harvard University, and racial anthropologist. Ripley was famous for his criticisms of American railroad economics and American business practices in the 1920s and 1930s, and later for his tripartite racial theory of Europe. His work of racial anthropology was later taken up by racial physical anthropologists, eugenicists, and white supremacists, and was considered a valid academic work at the time, although today it is considered to be a prime example of scientific racism.
The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History is a 1916 racist and pseudoscientific book by American lawyer, self-styled anthropologist, and proponent of eugenics, Madison Grant (1865–1937). Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority, claiming that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human "races". The theory and the book were praised by Adolf Hitler and other Nazis, so much so that it was the first foreign book published by the Nazis after they came to power.
Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective is a book by Canadian psychologist and author J. Philippe Rushton. Rushton was a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario for many years, and the head of the controversial Pioneer Fund. The first unabridged edition of the book came out in 1995, and the third, latest unabridged edition came out in 2000; abridged versions were also distributed.
"Mainstream Science on Intelligence" was a public statement issued by a group of researchers of topics associated with intelligence testing. It was published originally in The Wall Street Journal on December 13, 1994, as a response to criticism of the book The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, which appeared earlier the same year. The statement defended Herrnstein and Murray's controversial claims about race and intelligence.
Robert E. Kuttner was an American biologist and white supremacist.
Troy Smith Duster is an American sociologist with research interests in the sociology of science, public policy, race and ethnicity and deviance. He is a Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley, and professor of sociology and director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge at New York University.
Theodore Lothrop Stoddard was an American historian, journalist, political scientist, conspiracy theorist, white supremacist, and white nationalist. Stoddard wrote several books which advocated eugenics and scientific racism, including The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920). He advocated a racial hierarchy which he believed needed to be preserved through anti-miscegenation laws. Stoddard's books were once widely read both inside and outside the United States.
The Truth Seeker is an American periodical published since 1873. It was considered the most influential Freethought publication during the period following the Civil War into the first decades of the 20th century, known as the Golden Age of Freethought. Though there were other influential Freethought periodicals, Truth Seeker was the only one with a national circulation. The headquarters is in San Diego, California. The Truth Seeker is the world’s oldest freethought publication, and one of the oldest periodicals in America. Among general-readership titles, only Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, Scientific American, and The Nation are older.
Robert Wald Sussman was an American anthropologist and professor at Washington University in St. Louis. His research concerned the evolution of primate and human behavior, and he was interested in race as a social construct. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States is a book about color-blind racism in the United States by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a sociology professor at Duke University. It was originally published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2003, and has since been re-published four times, most recently in June 2017. The fourth edition was published soon after Barack Obama's election, and includes a new chapter on what Bonilla-Silva calls "the new racism". It was reviewed favorably in Science & Society, Urban Education, Educational Studies, and Multicultural Perspectives.