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Lee D. Baker explores what racial categories mean to the American public and how these meanings are reinforced by anthropology, popular culture, and the law. Focusing on the period between two landmark Supreme Court decisions—Plessy v. Ferguson (the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine established in 1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (the public school desegregation decision of 1954)—Baker shows how racial categories change over time.
Baker paints a vivid picture of the relationships between specific African American and white scholars, who orchestrated a paradigm shift within the social sciences from ideas based on Social Darwinism to those based on cultural relativism. He demonstrates that the greatest impact on the way the law codifies racial differences has been made by organizations such as the NAACP, which skillfully appropriated the new social science to exploit the politics of the Cold War.
Baker paints a vivid picture of the relationships between specific African American and white scholars, who orchestrated a paradigm shift within the social sciences from ideas based on Social Darwinism to those based on cultural relativism. He demonstrates that the greatest impact on the way the law codifies racial differences has been made by organizations such as the NAACP, which skillfully appropriated the new social science to exploit the politics of the Cold War.
Price: $28.95
Pages: 313
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
23 November 1998
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520211681
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
"Through its interrogation of anthropological and political discourses about race and racial formation, From Savage to Negro topples historical myths about the nation's legacy of state-sanctioned segregation and racial difference."
Lee D. Baker is Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, and African and African American Studies at Duke University.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1
History and Theory of a Racialized Worldview
Chapter 2
The Ascension of Anthropology as Social Darwinism
Chapter 3
Anthropology in American Popular Culture
Chapter 4
Progressive-Era Reform: Holding on to Hierarchy
Chapter 5
Rethinking Race at the Turn of the Century:
W.E.B. Du Bois and Franz Boas
Chapter 6
The New Negro and Cultural Politics of Race
Chapter 7
Looking behind the Veil with the Spy Glass
of Anthropology
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1
History and Theory of a Racialized Worldview
Chapter 2
The Ascension of Anthropology as Social Darwinism
Chapter 3
Anthropology in American Popular Culture
Chapter 4
Progressive-Era Reform: Holding on to Hierarchy
Chapter 5
Rethinking Race at the Turn of the Century:
W.E.B. Du Bois and Franz Boas
Chapter 6
The New Negro and Cultural Politics of Race
Chapter 7
Looking behind the Veil with the Spy Glass
of Anthropology