"This is the first paperback edition of the only English-language translation of the Haitian scholar Antnor Firmin's The Equality of the Human Races, a foundational text in critical anthropology first published in 1885 when anthropology was just emerging as a specialized field of study. Marginalized for its ""radical"" position that the human races were equal, Firmin's lucid and persuasive treatise was decades ahead of its time. Arguing that the equality of the races could be demonstrated through a positivist scientific approach, Firmin challenged racist writings and the dominant views of the day. Translated by Asselin Charles and framed by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban's substantial introduction, this rediscovered text is an important contribution to contemporary scholarship in anthropology, pan-African studies, and colonial and postcolonial studies."

Biological races do not exist—and never have. This view is shared by all scientists who study variation in human populations. Yet racial prejudice and intolerance based on the myth of race remain deeply ingrained in Western society. In his powerful examination of a persistent, false, and poisonous idea, Robert Sussman explores how race emerged as a social construct from early biblical justifications to the pseudoscientific studies of today. The Myth of Race traces the origins of modern racist ideology to the Spanish Inquisition, revealing how sixteenth-century theories of racial degeneration became a crucial justification for Western imperialism and slavery. In the nineteenth century, these theories fused with Darwinism to produce the highly influential and pernicious eugenics movement. Believing that traits from cranial shape to raw intelligence were immutable, eugenicists developed hierarchies that classified certain races, especially fair-skinned “Aryans,” as superior to others. These ideologues proposed programs of intelligence testing, selective breeding, and human sterilization—policies that fed straight into Nazi genocide. Sussman examines how opponents of eugenics, guided by the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas’s new, scientifically supported concept of culture, exposed fallacies in racist thinking. Although eugenics is now widely discredited, some groups and individuals today claim a new scientific basis for old racist assumptions. Pondering the continuing influence of racist research and thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, Sussman explains why—when it comes to race—too many people still mistake bigotry for science.

This book provides an interdisciplinary look at racism and science, investigating the biological and social realities of individual and group differences. The contributors examine race and racial distinctions, environmental versus genetic contributions to IQ and to cognitive skill level, the impact of biocultural interactions on behavior, and the problems of achieving an objective appraisal of inter- and intragroup differences in humans. They also consider a possible model for cultural and biological evolution, recommending a careful selection of models and methods of approach for sciences concerned with the study of man. The book includes recent findings in the area of race and IQ, documents instances of racism and classism, and analyzes factors underlying these phenomena.

Race and Racism examines the foundations of race in American society from an anthropological perspective. The book offers and accessible overview of a variety of perspectives and theories on the biology of race, the social context of race, ethnicity and ethnocentrism, and more. The second edition features significant updates throughout, including more discussion of critical race theory, new biophysical research on human origins, new material on media and racism, new global examples, and additional material on how racism impacts a variety of ethnic groups.