Hakluyt
01-24-2006, 07:35 AM
http://comm.colorado.edu/jjackson/research/nyu%20proposal.htm
The Scientific Defense of Segregation,
1954-1967
Book Proposal Accepted by New York University Press
John P. Jackson, Jr.
I. Book Proposal.
A. Introduction.
I am a historian interested in the how the cultural authority of science has been used in American history to support various positions on race relations. In my most recently completed project I investigated social psychologist Kenneth B. Clark and his colleagues’ involvement in the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education which declared segregation unconstitutional. I now propose a historical examination of a group of scientists who used their scientific expertise in an attempt to overturn Brown v. Board of Education. In a series of court cases in the early 1960s these scientists testified that African American children were biologically and psychologically inferior to white children and therefore segregation should continue. I am in a unique position to study these segregationist scientists, since they faced many of the same issues that Clark and his colleagues faced in the Brown case.
B. Description of the Study.
1. The Context.
Walter Jackson has called the scientific community in the two decades following World War II a “liberal orthodoxy” regarding race relations (Jackson, 1990). The prevailing scientific belief during these two decades was that there were no significant differences in intelligence or character among the various races. Indeed, many anthropologists, biologists, psychologists, and sociologists argued that the entire concept of “race” should be scrapped as scientifically worthless.
A small minority of scientists, whom I call the “segregationist scientists”, disagreed with the egalitarian view of the majority. Members of this group were bound together by a concern that the scientific truth of racial differences was being smothered by the unscientific propaganda of racial equality.
Segregationist scientists argued that the psychological and biological differences between the white and black races had profound implications for social policy, especially regarding school integration. School integration would corrupt white children by forcing them into a degraded environment. Moreover, integration would psychologically hurt African American children by forcing them into day-to-day contact with white children, with whom they could not possibly compete. Segregation, however, protected both white and black children from the malevolent influences of interracial contact. These scientists testified on behalf of segregation in a number of Federal court cases in the early 1960s. In these cases many of the segregationist scientists proclaimed, as anatomist Wesley C. George of the University of North Carolina had soon after the Brown decision “we cannot consider the Negro to be genetically acceptable,” therefore, “it is of fundamental importance that we shall maintain racial separateness in the social sphere” (George, 1954, 13).
2. A Scientific Community.
Segregationist scientists had their own professional organization, the International Society for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE), founded in Washington DC 1959. The expressed function of the IAAEE was to objectively investigate racial differences and publicize their findings.
Although it claimed to be primarily a scientific organization, the IAAEE was composed of a group of social conservative thinkers and writers, most of who had scientific training. Within the United States there were three basic groups within the IAAEE.
The first group in the IAAEE was composed of an older generation of southern scientists who had grown up under segregation. These men were born in the late nineteenth century or the first two decades of the twentieth century. A good example of this group was psychologist Henry E. Garrett, one of three scientists who testified in favor of segregation during the Brown litigation. Garrett was on the faculty of Columbia University for decades before retiring in 1956 and assuming a position in his home state at the University of Virginia. Also in this group was anatomist Wesley C. George, who had been on the faculty of the University of North Carolina Medical School since 1919. For this group, having grown up in the South during the height of Jim Crow, the dismantling of segregation represented the dismantling of their culture. They were fully prepared to use their scientific expertise to defend the old order.
The second group represented in the IAAEE were much younger individuals who were neo-Fascist sympathizers closely associated with neo-Nazi Willis Carto and his organization, the Liberty Lobby. For example, economist Donald Swan, an openly declared Fascist, served as the executive secretary of the IAAEE during the time under study. Biologist Robert E. Kuttner, in addition to publishing extensively in biochemistry journals (Kuttner, Sims, and Gordon, 1961; Kuttner and Wagreich, 1953) also provided scientific proof of white superiority before Congress as a representative of the Liberty Lobby, had published extensively in extremist journals such as The Truth Seeker, Northern World, and Western Destiny (Kuttner, 1956; 1958). In these publications, Kuttner held forth against the Jewish domination of the western world and championed the Nordic as the true representative of the white race.
The final group within the IAAEE was a group I have chosen to call the “idiosyncratic conservatives”. Ernst van den Haag, psychoanalyst and social philosopher, was one of the earliest critics of the use of social science in Brown. Van den Haag served on the executive committee of the IAAEE for a number of years and testified on behalf of segregation in three different court cases. A. James Gregor, another social philosopher, published widely within the social science literature criticizing Brown, publishing psychological studies with psychologists R. Travis Osborne and Stanley Porteus, and writing highly theoretical articles on racial thought. These writers rejected the notion that African Americans were biologically inferior to white Americans and instead based their arguments for segregation on notions of group identity. These arguments will be explored in more detail below.
[continued^]
The Scientific Defense of Segregation,
1954-1967
Book Proposal Accepted by New York University Press
John P. Jackson, Jr.
I. Book Proposal.
A. Introduction.
I am a historian interested in the how the cultural authority of science has been used in American history to support various positions on race relations. In my most recently completed project I investigated social psychologist Kenneth B. Clark and his colleagues’ involvement in the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education which declared segregation unconstitutional. I now propose a historical examination of a group of scientists who used their scientific expertise in an attempt to overturn Brown v. Board of Education. In a series of court cases in the early 1960s these scientists testified that African American children were biologically and psychologically inferior to white children and therefore segregation should continue. I am in a unique position to study these segregationist scientists, since they faced many of the same issues that Clark and his colleagues faced in the Brown case.
B. Description of the Study.
1. The Context.
Walter Jackson has called the scientific community in the two decades following World War II a “liberal orthodoxy” regarding race relations (Jackson, 1990). The prevailing scientific belief during these two decades was that there were no significant differences in intelligence or character among the various races. Indeed, many anthropologists, biologists, psychologists, and sociologists argued that the entire concept of “race” should be scrapped as scientifically worthless.
A small minority of scientists, whom I call the “segregationist scientists”, disagreed with the egalitarian view of the majority. Members of this group were bound together by a concern that the scientific truth of racial differences was being smothered by the unscientific propaganda of racial equality.
Segregationist scientists argued that the psychological and biological differences between the white and black races had profound implications for social policy, especially regarding school integration. School integration would corrupt white children by forcing them into a degraded environment. Moreover, integration would psychologically hurt African American children by forcing them into day-to-day contact with white children, with whom they could not possibly compete. Segregation, however, protected both white and black children from the malevolent influences of interracial contact. These scientists testified on behalf of segregation in a number of Federal court cases in the early 1960s. In these cases many of the segregationist scientists proclaimed, as anatomist Wesley C. George of the University of North Carolina had soon after the Brown decision “we cannot consider the Negro to be genetically acceptable,” therefore, “it is of fundamental importance that we shall maintain racial separateness in the social sphere” (George, 1954, 13).
2. A Scientific Community.
Segregationist scientists had their own professional organization, the International Society for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE), founded in Washington DC 1959. The expressed function of the IAAEE was to objectively investigate racial differences and publicize their findings.
Although it claimed to be primarily a scientific organization, the IAAEE was composed of a group of social conservative thinkers and writers, most of who had scientific training. Within the United States there were three basic groups within the IAAEE.
The first group in the IAAEE was composed of an older generation of southern scientists who had grown up under segregation. These men were born in the late nineteenth century or the first two decades of the twentieth century. A good example of this group was psychologist Henry E. Garrett, one of three scientists who testified in favor of segregation during the Brown litigation. Garrett was on the faculty of Columbia University for decades before retiring in 1956 and assuming a position in his home state at the University of Virginia. Also in this group was anatomist Wesley C. George, who had been on the faculty of the University of North Carolina Medical School since 1919. For this group, having grown up in the South during the height of Jim Crow, the dismantling of segregation represented the dismantling of their culture. They were fully prepared to use their scientific expertise to defend the old order.
The second group represented in the IAAEE were much younger individuals who were neo-Fascist sympathizers closely associated with neo-Nazi Willis Carto and his organization, the Liberty Lobby. For example, economist Donald Swan, an openly declared Fascist, served as the executive secretary of the IAAEE during the time under study. Biologist Robert E. Kuttner, in addition to publishing extensively in biochemistry journals (Kuttner, Sims, and Gordon, 1961; Kuttner and Wagreich, 1953) also provided scientific proof of white superiority before Congress as a representative of the Liberty Lobby, had published extensively in extremist journals such as The Truth Seeker, Northern World, and Western Destiny (Kuttner, 1956; 1958). In these publications, Kuttner held forth against the Jewish domination of the western world and championed the Nordic as the true representative of the white race.
The final group within the IAAEE was a group I have chosen to call the “idiosyncratic conservatives”. Ernst van den Haag, psychoanalyst and social philosopher, was one of the earliest critics of the use of social science in Brown. Van den Haag served on the executive committee of the IAAEE for a number of years and testified on behalf of segregation in three different court cases. A. James Gregor, another social philosopher, published widely within the social science literature criticizing Brown, publishing psychological studies with psychologists R. Travis Osborne and Stanley Porteus, and writing highly theoretical articles on racial thought. These writers rejected the notion that African Americans were biologically inferior to white Americans and instead based their arguments for segregation on notions of group identity. These arguments will be explored in more detail below.
[continued^]