Mixed Race Studies

Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (Sixth Edition)

AltaMira Press
1997
704 pages
Cloth ISBN10: 0-8039-4647-3; ISBN13: 978-0-8039-4647-7
Paper ISBN10: 0-8039-4648-1; ISBN13: 978-0-8039-4648-4

Ashley Montagu (1905-1999)

Man’s Most Dangerous Myth was first published in 1942, when Nazism flourished, when African Americans sat at the back of the bus, and when race was considered the determinant of people’s character and intelligence. It presented a revolutionary theory for its time; breaking the link between genetics and culture, it argued that race is largely a social construction and not constitutive of significant biological differences between people. In the ensuing 55 years, as Ashley Montagu’s radical hypothesis became accepted knowledge, succeeding editions of his book traced the changes in our conceptions of race and race relations over the 20th century. Now, over 50 years later, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth is back in print, fully revised by the original author. Montagu is internationally renowned for his work on race, as well as for such influential books as The Natural Superiority of Women, Touching, and The Elephant Man.

This new edition contains Montagu’s most complete explication of his theory and a thorough updating of previous editions. The Sixth Edition takes on the issues of the Bell Curve, IQ testing, ethnic cleansing and other current race relations topics, as well as contemporary restatements of topics previously addressed. A bibliography of almost 3,000 published items on race, compiled over a lifetime of work, is of enormous research value. Also available is an abridged student edition containing the essence of Montagu’s argument, its policy implications, and his thoughts on contemporary race issues for use in classrooms. Ahead of its time in 1942, Montagu’s arguments still contribute essential and salient perspectives as we face the issue of race in the 1990s. Man’s Most Dangerous Myth is the seminal work of one of the 20th century’s leading intellectuals, essential reading for all scholars and students of race relations.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 Abridged Student Edition Table of Contents
• Chapter 2 Foreword to the First Edition
• Chapter 3 Foreword to the Sixth Edition
• Chapter 4 Preface to the Sixth Edition
• Chapter 5 Introduction
• Chapter 6 1. The Origin of the Concept of Race
• Chapter 7 2. The Fallaciousness of the Older Anthropological Conception of Race
• Chapter 8 3. The Genetical Theory of Race
• Chapter 9 4. The Biological Facts
• Chapter 10 5. Natural Selection and the Mental Capacities of Humankind
• Chapter 11 6. The Mythology of Race, or “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
• Chapter 12 7. Race and Society
• Chapter 13 8. Biological and Social Factors
• Chapter 14 9. Psychological Factors
• Chapter 15 10. Race and Culture
• Chapter 16 11. Racism and Social Action
• Chapter 17 12. Intelligence, IQ, and Race
• Chapter 18 Unabridged Table of Contents
• Chapter 19 Foreword to the First Edition
• Chapter 20 Foreword to the Sixth Edition
• Chapter 21 Preface to the Sixth Edition
• Chapter 22 Introduction
• Chapter 23 1. The Origin of the Concept of Race
• Chapter 24 2. The Fallaciousness of the Older Anthropological Conception of Race
• Chapter 25 3. The Genetical Theory of Race
• Chapter 26 4. The Biological Facts
• Chapter 27 5. Natural Selection and the Mental Capacities of Humankind
• Chapter 28 6. The Mythology of Race, or “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
• Chapter 29 7. Race and Society
• Chapter 30 8. Biological and Social Factors
• Chapter 31 9. Psychological Factors
• Chapter 32 10. The Creative Power of Ethnic Mixture
• Chapter 33 11. Eugenics, Genetics, and Race
• Chapter 34 12. Race and Culture
• Chapter 35 13. Race and War
• Chapter 36 14. Race and Blood
• Chapter 37 15. Innate Aggression and Race
• Chapter 38 16. Myths Relating to the Physical Traits of Blacks
• Chapter 39 17. Are the Jews a Race?
• Chapter 40 18. The First Americans
• Chapter 41 19. The Meaning of Equal Opportunity
• Chapter 42 20. Race and Democracy
• Chapter 43 21. Racism and Social Action
• Chapter 44 22. Sociocultural Behavioral Influences
• Chapter 45 23. Intelligence, IQ, and Race
• Chapter 46 Appendix A: Ethnic Group and Race
• Chapter 47 Appendix B: The Fallacy of the Primitive
• Chapter 48 Appendix C: The Term Miscegination
• Chapter 49 Appendix D: Intelligence of Northern Blacks and Southern Whites in the First World War
• Chapter 50 Bibliography

PHIL 539: Critical Philosophy of Race

Pennsylvania State University
Summer 2012

The study of philosophical issues raised by racism and by the concept of race and other related concepts.

This course provides an intensive examination of a major area of philosophical research: the philosophical examination of racism and of our thinking about race. It will investigate philosophical debates about such topics as mixed-race identity, going beyond the Black-White binary, the distinction between racism and xenophobia, the distinction between race and ethnicity, the debate about the reality of race, as well as questions about the nature and genealogy of racism. The course will have a historical component that will show how thinking in terms of the concept of race first developed and was transformed across time as well as addressing contemporary issues that includes an examination both of the dominant theories and definitions or racial identity and of ethical and political questions raised by the persistence of the notion of race. The course will also examine debates about the complicity of certain canonical figures in the history of philosophy, such as Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the conceptualization of race and the spread of philosophical racism. In addition to these two philosophers the following authors will be among those studied: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Frederick Douglass, Anténor Firmin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, Alain Locke, Paulette Nardal, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Anthony Kwame Appiah, Gloria Anzaldúa, Bernard Boxill, and Angela Davis. Race will be examined in its relation to other ways of thinking about human difference, including class, gender, nationality, religion, and sexuality. Attention will be given to diverse experiences in the US context, such as those of African Americans, Latina/os, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Irish Americans, and so on. In addition to examining the role race has played and continues to play in the United States of America, the ways in which race is approached in other parts of the world, for example in China, will also be the subject of investigation. The course content will vary, dependent upon the instructor.

The cradle to the grave: Reflections on race thinking

thesis eleven: critical theory and historical sociology
Volume 115, Number 1 (April 2013)
pages 43-57
DOI: 10.1177/0725513612470533

Gerhard Maré, Professor of Sociology
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

Despite a constitutional and oft-stated political commitment to an undefined notion of non-racialism, South Africans continue to operate in formal and informal ways with ‘race’ as the common-sense organizing principle of legal systems, ways of thinking, social identities, constructing arguments or closing debate, organizational and mobilizing strategies, policy development and execution, and interaction in daily life. This state of affairs is regrettable and dangerous, often questioned and rejected, but objections are waged and alternatives suggested against the tide of societal trends. What the organizing principle of race thinking does is to close the mind to alternative possibilities – of thought, social practice and ways of living. Here I explore an overview of racialism as it permeates and shapes the life cycles of citizens from birth to death. I make an argument for a way of thinking that is necessarily utopian, as one of few options of escaping a social world made in the image of apartheid.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Melanin Millennium: Skin Color as 21st Century International Discourse

Springer
2013
348 pages
32 illustrations
Hardcover ISBN 978-94-007-4607-7
eBook ISBN: 978-94-007-4608-4
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-4608-4

Edited by:

Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work
Michigan State University

• Addresses the issue of skin color in a worldwide context
• Discusses the introduction of new forms of visual media and their effect on skin color discrimination
• Touches up on the issue of skin bleaching and the Bleaching Syndrome

In the aftermath of the 60s “Black is Beautiful” movement and publication of The Color Complex almost thirty years later the issue of skin color has mushroomed onto the world stage of social science. Such visibility has inspired publication of the Melanin Millennium for insuring that the discourse on skin color meet the highest standards of accuracy and objective investigation.

This volume addresses the issue of skin color in a worldwide context. A virtual visit to countries that have witnessed a huge rise in the use of skin whitening products and facial feature surgeries aiming for a more Caucasian-like appearance will be taken into account. The book also addresses the question of whether using the laws has helped to redress injustices of skin color discrimination, or only further promoted recognition of its divisiveness among people of color and Whites.

The Melanin Millennium has to do with now and the future. In the 20th century science including eugenics was given to and dominated by discussions of race category. Heretofore there remain social scientists and other relative to the issue of skin color loyal to race discourse. However in their interpretation and analysis of social phenomena the world has moved on. Thus while race dominated the 20th century the 21st century will emerge as a global community dominated by skin color and making it the melanin millennium.

Contents

• Preface
• Chapter 1. The Bleaching Syndrome: Western Civilization vis-à-vis Inferiorized People of Color; Ronald E. Hall
• Chapter 2. The Historical and Cultural Influences of Skin Bleaching in Tanzania;  Kelly M. Lewis, Solette Harris, Christina Champ, Willbrord Kalala, Will Jones, Kecia L. Ellick, Justie Huff and Sinead Younge
• Chapter 3. Pathophysiology and Psychopathology of Skin Bleaching and Implicationa of Skin Colour in Africa; A. A. Olowu and O. Ogunlade
• Chapter 4. An Introduction to Japanese Society’s Attitudes Toward Race and Skin Color; Arudou Debito
• Chapter 5. The Inconvenient Truth of India, Caste, and Color Discrimination; Varsha Ayyar and Lalit Khandare
• Chapter 6. Indigeneity on Guahan: Skin Color as a Measure of Decolonization; LisaLinda Natividad
• Chapter 7. A Table of Two Cultures; Eneid Routté-Gómez
• Chapter 8. Where are you From?; Stéphanie Cassilde
• Chapter 9. Social Work Futures: Reflections from the UK on the Demise of Anti-racist Social Work and Emerging Issues in a “Post-Race'” Era; Mekada J. Graham
• Chapter 10. Shades of Conciousness: From Jamaica to the UK; William Henry
• Chapter 11. Fanon Revisited: Race Gender and Colniality vis-à-vis Skin Color; Linda Lane and Hauwa Mahdi
• Chapter 12. Pigment Disorders and Pigment Manipulations; Henk E. Menke
• Chapter 13. Skin Color and Blood Quantum: Getting the Red Out; Deb Bakken and Karen Branden
• Chapter 14. The Impact of Skin Color on Mental and Behavorial Health in African American and Latina Adolescent Girls: A Review of the Literature; Alfiee M. Breland-Noble
• Chapter 15. Characteristics of Color Discrimination Charges Filed with the EEOC; Joni Hersch
• Chapter 16. The Consequences of Colorism; Margaret Hunter
• Chapter 17. Navigating the Color Complex: How Multiracial Individuals Narrate the Elements of Appearance and Dynamics of Color in Twenty-first Century America; Sara McDonough and David L. Brunsma
• Chapter 18. The Fade-Out of Shirley, a Once-Ultimate Norm: Colour Balance, Image Technologies, and Cognitive Equity; Lorna Roth
• Chapter 19. What Color is Red? Exploring the implications of Phenotype for Native Americans; Hilary N. Weaver
• Chapter 20. From Fair & Lovely to Banho de Lua: Skin Whitening and its Implications in the Multi-ethnic and Multicolored Surinamese Society; Jack Menke
• Chapter 21. Affirmative Action and Racial Identityin Brazil: A Study of the First Quota Graduates at the State University of Rio de Janneiro: Vânia Penha-Lopes
• Index

Philosophy of Race (3050)

Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina
Fall 2013

Kim Hall, Professor of Philosophy

What is race?  What is the relationship between the category of race and racism?  What is the relationship between race and personal identity?  How do multiracial identities raise questions about the meaning of race and its relationship to identity?  What is the relationship between racialization and society?  What can philosophy help us to understand about race?  What are the relationships between race, gender, class, and sexuality?  How has the idea of race influenced the discipline and practice of philosophy?  This course will examine the metaphysical, epistemological, social, political, and ethical dimensions of race.  Class readings will include both historical and contemporary philosophical approaches to race and racism.

Race: A Philosophical Introduction, 2nd Edition

Polity Press
February 2013
240 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7456-4965-8
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-7456-4966-5

Paul C. Taylor, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Pennsylvania State University

In Race: A Philosophical Introduction, Second Edition, Paul C. Taylor provides an accessible guide to a well-travelled but still-mysterious area of the contemporary social landscape. As in the first edition, the book blends metaphysics and social philosophy, analytic philosophy and pragmatic philosophy of experience. In this thoroughly updated and revised volume, Taylor outlines the main features and implications of race-thinking, while engaging the ideas of such important figures as Linda Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, W. E. B. Du Bois, Michel Foucault, Sally Haslanger, and Howard Winant. The result is a comprehensive but accessible introduction to philosophical race theory and to a non-biological and situational notion of race.

The book unfolds in a sequence of five chapters, each devoted to one of the following questions: What is race-thinking? Don’t we know better than to talk about race now? Are there any races? What is it like to have a racial identity? And how important, ethically, is colorblindness? On the way to answering these questions, Race takes up topics like mixed-race identity, white supremacy, the relationship between the race concept and other social identity categories and the impact of race-thinking on our erotic and romantic lives. The second edition’s new concluding chapter explores the racially fraught issues of policing, immigration, and global justice, and interrogates the thought that Barack Obama has ushered in a post-racial age. This volume is suitable for the educated general reader as well as for students and scholars in ethnic studies, philosophy, sociology, and other related fields.

Features

• Fully updated and revised edition of this comprehensive but accessible introduction to philosophical race theory.
• Blends metaphysics and social philosophy, analytic philosophy and pragmatic philosophy of experience and engages the ideas of such important figures as Linda Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, W. E. B. Du Bois, Michel Foucault, Sally Haslanger, and Howard Winant.
• Taylor examines key topics such as mixed-race identity and white supremacy as well as timely examinations of racially fraught issues of policing, immigration, and global justice.
• This compelling volume will appeal to students and scholars in ethnic studies, philosophy, sociology, and other related fields.

Table of Contents

• Preface.
• Part I: Theory:.
  • 1. What Race-Thinking Is:.
    • The Language Of Race.
    • What We Mean By ‘Race’: What Do You Mean, ‘We’?.
    • Modern Racialism: Prehistory And Background.
    • Power, Racial Formation, And Method.
    • Conclusion.
  • 2. Three Challenges To Race-Thinking:.
    • Introduction.
    • The Anti-Racist Challenge, Take 1: Isn’t Race-Thinking Unethical?.
    • What Racism Is.
    • Classical Racialism: History And Background.
    • Early Modern Racialism.
    • High Modern, Or Classical, Racialism.
    • The Concept Of Classical Racialism.
    • The Challenge Of Human Variation: Isn’t Racial Biology False?.
    • What’s Wrong With Race.
    • The Challenge Of Social Differentiation: Isn’t The Race Concept Just In The Way?.
    • Ethnicity.
    • Nation.
    • Class.
    • Caste.
    • Intersecting Principles: Gender.
    • Conclusion.
  • 3. What Races Are:.
    • Introduction.
    • After Classical Racialism.
    • The U.S. Racial Terrain Today.
    • Varieties Of Racialism: Four Accounts And Ten Questions.
    • What Races Are – A Radical Constructionist’s Story.
    • Ten Questions.
    • Conclusion.
• Part II: Practice:.
  • 4. Existence, Experience, Elisions:.
    • Introduction.
    • Ethical Eliminativism, For And Against; Or, The Anti-Racist Challenge, Take 2.
    • The Slippery Slope And The Argument From Political Realism.
    • The Argument From Self-Realization.
    • Existence, Identity, And Despair.
    • The Basics.
    • Despair And Terror.
    • Double-Consciousness.
    • Micro-Diversity, Part I.
    • Microdiversity, Part II.
    • In-Between: Illusions Of Purity And Interstitial Peoples.
    • Experience, Invisibility, And Embodiment.
    • The Basics.
    • Invisibility And The Other Mind-Body Problem.
    • From The Ontic To The Ontological.
    • Conclusion.
  • 5. The Color Question:.
    • Introduction.
    • Color And ‘Courting’: The Ethics Of Miscegenation.
    • Colorblindness And Affirmative Action.
    • Conclusion.
• A Note On Further Reading.
• Endnotes

Prisoners of Abstraction? The Theory and Measure of Genetic Variation, and the Very Concept of “Race”

Biological Theory
July 2012
12 pages
DOI: 10.1007/s13752-012-0048-0

Jonathan Michael Kaplan, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Oregon State University

Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
University of California, Santa Cruz

It is illegitimate to read any ontology about “race” off of biological theory or data. Indeed, the technical meaning of “genetic variation” is fluid, and there is no single theoretical agreed-upon criterion for defining and distinguishing populations given a particular set of genetic variation data. By analyzing three formal senses of “genetic variation,” viz., diversity, differentiation, and heterozygosity, we argue that the use of biological theory for making claims about race inevitably amounts to a pernicious reification. Biological theory does not force the concept of “race” upon us; our social discourse, social ontology, and social expectations do. We become prisoners of our abstractions at our own hands, and at our own expense.

Read the entire article here.

Challenging the Racial Dichotomy in Nella Larsen’s Passing

St. John Fisher College, Rochester, New York
English Senior Seminar Papers
2012-12-11
22 pages

Samantha Davis
St. John Fisher College

Nella Larsen’s Passing introduces two African American women on a quest for an integrated identity. Irene and Clare are two pale-skinned, childhood friends who are light enough to pass for white. Passing is a work concerned with the representation and construction of race. Clare Kendry passes for white and she “whitens” her lifestyle by adjusting her clothes, behavior, gestures, and etiquette while resisting and denying any existence of her black culture. Irene on the other hand, lives as a black woman but remains a part of the black community only superficially. She occasionally masks her blackness and passes for white for her own convenience. Despite this racial divide, both women desire to achieve an integrated identity to live as both black and white. Irene attempts to achieve this integrated identity by accepting and practicing white standards while living as a black woman. Clare attempts to achieve an integrated identity by finding her way back to the black community. However, they ultimately fail at achieving this integrated identity as the novel reinforces the societal belief that a person can only have one race as either black or white, but not both…

Read the entire paper here.

Passing: A Strategy to Dissolve Identities and Revamp Differences

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
January 2008
142 pages
ISBN: 9780838641255

Anna Camaiti Hostert, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Studies Program and Philosophy
Florida Atlantic University

This book takes its title from the homonymous novel by Nella Larsen who, during the Harlem Renaissance, posed the question of what it means to be black in a racist country. The practice of passing was in fact used by African Americans to escape discrimination during the time of segregation. Nella Larsen condemns this practice, but also shows its potential, defining it as “not entirely strange perhaps… but certainly not entirely friendly.”

Starting from this consideration, Camaiti Hostert’s book turns the meaning of the social practice of passing upside down and makes it become a universal tool to redefine any social, ethnic, gender, and religious identity. Based on the Foucauldian consideration that total visibility is a “trap,” the author focuses her attention on the interstices, on the spaces off and on the narratives between the lines. The emphasis is on the transitional moment, in a Gramscian sense: the fluid state flowing between the starting and ending points becomes the place of a counter-hegemony, which helps not only to rewrite history but also to change the political status quo. More interesting than the departure or arrival point is the phase any individual has to go through in order to redefine his/her own self and his/her position in society. It is a deterritorialization of the self and of social practices. It is a way to oppose any form of binary thinking and particularly cultural barriers. Post-colonial literatures, cinema, and new communication technologies that shape the many forms of popular culture are the common ground on which passing relies. From there, from the different conditions of in betweeness, stems the possibility of change.

The Evolution of Mixed-Race Historiography and Theory: Inaugural Sawyer Seminar

University of Southern California, Univeristy Park Campus
Doheny Memorial Library (DML)
East Asian Seminar Room (110C)
Friday, 2013-01-18, 14:00-17:00 PST (Local Time)

Presented by the Center for Japanese Religions and Culture’s “Critical Mixed-Race Studies: A Transpacific Approach” Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminars Series at the University of Southern California.

How has the study of mixed race been historicized and theorized in Western academia? Has our understanding of mixed race changed in the 21st century, or is our public discourse still bound by past ideology, experience, and debate? Does theorizing mixed race bind or liberate us from the ideological pitfalls of racialist thinking?

Conference Convenors:

Duncan Williams, Associate Professor of Religion
University of Southern California

Brian C. Bernards, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Southern California

Velina Hasu Houston, Associate Dean for Faculty Recognition and Development, Director of Dramatic Writing and Professor
University of Southern California

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

Ariela Gross, John B. and Alice R. Sharp Professor of Law and History
University of Southern California

Paul Spickard, Professor of History
University of California, Santa Barbara

Falguni Sheth, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory
Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts

For more information, click here.