Racial Segregation and Eugenical Science Between the Wars: Race and Racism in Western Science and Society, Volume 2

by Michael L. Blakey

Overview

This volume examines the rise and decline of racial science and its relationship to the political and social imposition of Jim Crow in the American South, a racialized code of laws grounded upon an inherently racist and prejudicial pseudoscience. The author argues, here, that the study of human beings within the emerging 18th‑ and 19th‑century institutions of Western science was corrupted by the limited social intuitions of its enslaving, colonizing, and elitist members. Western science and White societies plowed forward in continued ideological adherence to a biodeterministic imagination: to justify slavery, then Jim Crow racial segregation, immigration restriction, and other deadly and exploitative "eugenical" solutions of Social Darwinist thought. The story is further complexified by the countervailing theories and voices of Black and Jewish intellectuals in the social and biocultural sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Montague Cobb. These had profound consequences not only for the social sciences but also for the cultural life of Black Americans in the aftermath (and afterlife) of slavery. At the same time, even here, the author discloses that the racialized dimensions of social science could not be fully exorcised, as social science continued to construct "soft‑line racism" in that it selectively primitivized darker people and omitted White racism and colonialism from their human story. African American social scientists and historians brought White racism and Black modernity to the fore. Eugenics had begun to paint marginal White people (Jewish and Italian immigrants to the United States) as natural inferiors to "Nordics" or "Aryans" with devastating consequences in World War II Europe. As the War ended, the world community began its turn against racism in science and society. In constructing this historical and sociological counternarrative, the author provides a critical new social history that illuminates a tangled and turgid past for contemporary readers, students, and researchers with vital insights for anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies, philosophy, and American studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040305102
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/18/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	520
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Michael L. Blakey, National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Anthropology, Africana Studies, and American Studies and Director of the Institute for Historical Biology, is a leading anthropologist at William & Mary, whose training and productive research career (80 publications in major journals) integrates human biology, history, and culture, including critical writings on the history and philosophy of science. He directed the unparalleled bioarchaeological and interdisciplinary project on the African Burial Ground, today a U.S. National Monument in Manhattan. He is the recipient of many awards, including two President’s Awards of the American Anthropological Association, the Legacy Award of the Association of Black Anthropologists, an Honorary Doctor of Science from CUNY, and the Plumeri Award.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements

1. Jim Crow
2. The Rise of Eugenics and American Anthropology
3. Racist Medicine and its Antithesis
4. Racial Eclipse at World’s End
5. Anthropology and Race in the Second Half of the 20th Century
6. Black Anthropologists against the Grain in the Second Reconstruction
7. Anthropology Slowly Turns to the Study of Racism
8. Museums Reflect Whiteness

Prospectus to Volume 3
Glossary
Further Reading

Editorial Reviews

"Anthropology is inherently interdisciplinary, and is inordinately implicated in the making of race and racism. This means that, as a field, it ends up today with tools able to understand racism and white supremacy and how all of that happened. Michael L. Blakey, in this new work, offers a skillful and panoramic view of how anthropology can add to our understanding of race and racism. This work will offer the opportunity to foster inter‑ and transdisciplinary conversations that aren’t always possible or prioritized. There are not enough books with this kind of ambition and innovation!"
Christopher Driscoll, Associate Professor of Religion, Lehigh University"The methodology of ethnography, alongside the telling of the making of racism through biology and anthropology, is exciting and valuable. Such an approach can help readers to understand the very human implications of choices made and rejected in science. As such, this work by Michael L. Blakey will be useful for university courses on race that explore its production and reproduction in science. It will be especially attractive as a textual resource on Western campuses wherein significant sectors of society and science remain attached to racial determinism. This will make a valuable contribution to the variety of texts on the social construction of race and is a welcome invitation to interdisciplinary conversation."
Jacqueline Battalora, Professor of Sociology, Saint Xavier University in Chicago, author of Birth of a White Nation (Routledge, 2021)"This work by Michael L. Blakey is both timely and will remain of enduring relevance for many years. The persistence of racism and surge of white backlash to efforts to address racial inequality, anti‑Black violence, including and prominently in education, makes this work especially important in the contemporary moment. At the same time, the time‑depth and scope of the book will mean that it maintains relevance for years to come. Taking the volumes together, I know of no single work that addresses and synthesizes the invention of race, the history of racism, and the contemporary dynamics of racism and politics of race, and science about race to the extent that this project does."
Mark Anderson, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz"Many books and articles have been published on the subject of race. Michael L. Blakey’s thoroughness, scholarship, and lived experience makes his three‑volume set stand out from the pack. It is an essential resource for anyone seriously interested in the topic."
Jeffrey C. Long, Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico"In this monumental synthesis of science, history, philosophy, cultural critique, and autobiography, Professor Blakey has produced a work that nobody else could have. He takes us through the past, present, and future of anthropology as a racial science in a racialized nation; and in particular he examines physical anthropology, as it transitions into a more ethically conscious and reflexive biological anthropology in the 21st century. The highest testimony that any anthropologist can receive is that they will leave anthropology in better intellectual shape than they found it, and Prof. Blakey certainly will. His life and work represent the ultimately successful attempt of a visionary scholar to improve the practice of the science he works in. His scholarship and his perspectives will be a major influence for the next generation of scholars."
Jon Marks, Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

From the Publisher