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The Arrogance of Race
Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality
Sales Date: 1989-02-01
320 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in
An investigation of the issue of race over a generation of labor
Winner of the Gustavus Myers Center Award (1990)
The Arrogance of Race is a significant contribution to the historiography of slavery and racism in America. George Fredrickson, one of the most respected and cogent historians of this complex and troubling subject, maintains that racism is a cultural phenomenon not a mere by-product of class conflict and colonialism. He opts for a "dualistic" rather than a more popular monolithic explanation of the tragedy of racism.
Preface
Introduction: Race, Class, and Consciousness
Part One: the Debate on Slavery and Race in the Civil War Era
Part Two: Historians of the Nineteenth-Century South
Part Three: Slavery and White Supremacy: Comparative Explorations
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
GEORGE M. FREDRICKSON has been Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History at Stanford University since 1984. He is author of The Inner Civil War, The Black Image in the White Mind (Wesleyan Paperback), and White Supremacy, for which he won the Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Merle Curti awards; this book was also a Pulitzer Prize runner-up. The Black Image in the White Mind received the Anisfield-Wolf Award. A graduate of Harvard University (A.B. 1956, Ph.D. 1964), Fredrickson served in he U.S. Navy from 1957 to 1960 and taught at Northwestern University from 1966 to 1984; he was William Smith Mason Professor after 1979. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oslo in 1956-57 and a Fulbright professor of American History at Moscow University in 1983. FREDRICKSON has twice been appointed senior fellow of National Endowment for the Humanities; he was a Guggenhim fellow in 1968-69 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His home is in Stanford, California.
"The Arrogance of Race summarizes a generation of labor by one of America's master scholars. It is superbly wrought – a work of forensic brilliance and sheer intelligence."
~Joel Williamson, University of North Carolina
"George M. Fredrickson has again demonstrated why he is one of the preeminent historians of racism and slavery. The Arrogance Race is packed with information ad insights on the evolution systems of inequality and will be read and admired by scholars and students across academic disciplines."
~William Julius Wilson, University of Chicago
"One need not agree with everything George Fredrickson writes or, indeed, share his point of view, to welcome this collection. George Fredrickson asks the big questions and explores them with insight and in rich context. Everyone concerned with the racial crisis in America could profit by a close reading of this book."
~Eugene D. Genovese, University of Rochester
"In these searching essays, Fredrickson establishes the centrality of race and ethnicity in the American experience, and he makes an impressive argument for the need to recognize the autonomy of racism in the culture of this nation. The Arrogance of Race demonstrates that race should be understood as an independent force, fully capable of developing a life of its own and often exercising a decisive influence upon the course of our history. Fredrickson has charted the ext stage in the investigation and interpretation of race and racism, the nation's most urgent continuing problem."
~Herbert Hill, University of Wisconsin – Madison
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