Table of Contents

IntroductionSome Theoretical ConsiderationsThe Etymology of the Term Race in the English LanguageAntecedents of the Racial WorldviewThe Growth of the English Ideology about Human Differences in AmericaThe Arrival of Africans and Descent into SlaveryComparing Slave Systems: The Significance of Racial ServitudeThe Rise of Science: Sixteenth- to Eighteenth-Century Classifications of Human DiversityLate Eighteenth-Century Thought and Crystallization of the Ideology of RaceAntislavery and the Entrenchment of a Racial WorldviewA Different Order of Being: Nineteenth-Century Science and the Ideology of RaceScience and the Growth and Expansion of Race Ideology Twentieth-Century Developments in Race IdeologyDismantling the Scientific Construction of Race: New Perspectives on Human Variation in Science Dismantling the Folk Idea of Race: Transformations of an Ideology

About the Author

Audrey Smedley is professor emerita of anthropology and African American studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.