Since the eighteenth century when natural historians created the idea of distinct racial categories, scientific findings on race have been a double-edged sword. For some antiracists, science holds the promise of one day providing indisputable evidence to help eradicate racism. On the other hand, science has been enlisted to promote racist beliefs ranging from a justification of slavery in the eighteenth century to the infamous twentieth-century book, The Bell Curve, whose authors argued that racial differences in intelligence resulted in lower test scores for African Americans.

This well-organized, readable textbook takes the reader through a chronological account of how and why racial categories were created and how the study of "race" evolved in multiple academic disciplines, including genetics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. In a bibliographic essay at the conclusion of each of the book's seven sections, the authors recommend primary texts that will further the reader's understanding of each topic. Heavily illustrated and enlivened with sidebar biographies, this text is ideal for classroom use.

John P. Jackson, Jr., is an assistant professor in the department of communication at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of Social Scientists for Social Justice: Making the Case against Segregation and Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case against Brown v. Board of Education. Nadine Weidman is a lecturer in history of science at the Harvard University Extension School and the author of Constructing Scientific Psychology: Karl Lashley's Mind-Brain Debates.

Contents
Prologue
1 The Origins of Racial Science, Antiquity-1800
Was There Race in Antiquity?
The Curse of Ham and Medieval Racial Thought
The Age of Exploration
Natural Philosophy and the Colonial Experience: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
The Science of Anthropology
The Atlantic Slave System
Enlightenment Values and Racial Thought
Conclusion
Bibliographic Essay
Biographical Sketches
Francois Bernier
Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon
2 The Establishment of Racial Typology, 1800-1859
The Reign of Monogenism: Prichard and Lawrence
Steps toward Polygenesis
American Polygenism: Morton, Nott, and Gliddon
Polygenism in the Land of Prichard
Conclusion
Bibliographical Essay
Biographical Sketches
Louis Agassiz
Robert Knox
3 Race and Evolution, 1859-1900
Darwin's Argument in On the Origin of Species
Darwin and Wallace on Natural Selection and Human Origin
Darwin on Human Evolution
Physical Anthropology and the Persistence of Polygenism
Spencer and Evolution
Spencer on the Savage Mind
Social Darwinism and Its Variants
Social Darwinism in Germany
Sociocultural Evolutionism in Britain
Bibliographic Essay
Biographical Sketches
Sir John Lubbock
Ernst Haeckel
4 The Hardening of Scientific Racism, 1900-1945
The Problem of Heredity
Francis Galton
Hard Heredity
The Rise of Nordicism
Eugenics and Race in the United States
German Rassenhygiene
Bibliographic Essay
Biographical Sketches
Madison Grant
Harry H. Laughlin
5 The Retreat of Scientific Racism, 1890-1940
Boas and the Culture Concept
Boasian Anthropology and Black Folklore
Psychologists and the Critique of IQ Testing
From Race Psychology to Studies in Prejudice
Genetics and the Critique of Eugenics
Bibliographic Essay
Biographical Sketches
Zora Neale Hurston
Mamie Phipps Clark
6 The Liberal Orthodoxy, 1940-1960
The Geneticists' Manifesto
Wartime Anti-Racism: Benedict, Montagu, and Dunn and Dobzhansky
Experts in Prejudice
An American Dilemma
The Post-Myrdal Liberal Orthodoxy
The Damage Argument
The Breakdown of the Liberal Orthodoxy
The UNESCO Statements on Race
Bibliographic Essay
Biographical Sketches
Gordon W. Allport
Ashley Montagu
7 A Multicultural Science of Race, 1965-to the Present
Movement Scholarship
The Rejection of the Pathology of Black Culture
Institutional Racism and Colonialism
Genetics, New Physical Anthropology, and the Abandonment of Race
Forward to the Past: The Psychometrician Case for Race Differences.
Psychometrics, Intelligence, and Heritability
Geneticists versus the Psychometricians
The Psychometricians versus Scholars of Institutional Racism
Psychometric Case for Policy
Bibliographic Essay
Biographical Sketches
Sherewood Washburn
Frantz Fanon
Chronology
Glossary
Bibliography
About the Authors