Reluctant race men : Black challenges to the practice of race in nineteenth-century America / Joan L. Bryant.
Author/creator |
Bryant, Joan L. |
Other author/creator | Oxford University Press. |
Format | Electronic and Book |
Publication Info | New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2024] |
Description | x, 430 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
Supplemental Content | Full text available from Oxford Scholarship Online |
Supplemental Content | Full text available from Oxford Scholarship Online History |
Subject(s) |
Click here for more information about this title
Portion of title | Black challenges to the practice of race in nineteenth-century America |
Contents | "Not a difference of species" : nationality and the question of representation -- "That odious distinction" : moral reform and the language of obligations -- "One common family" : equality and the logic of authority -- "Humanology" : difference and the science of humanity -- "One color now" : freedom and the ethics of association -- "Race-ship" : citizenship and the imperatives of progress -- "The whole question of race" : Jim Crow and the problem of consciousness -- "Along the color line". |
Abstract | "Activists in the earliest Black antebellum reform endeavors contested and deprecated the concept of race. Attacks on the logic and ethics of dividing, grouping, and ranking humans into races became commonplace facets of activism in anti-colonization and emigration campaigns, suffrage and civil rights initiatives, moral reform projects, abolitionist struggles, independent church development, and interrogations of scientific thought on human origins. Denunciations persisted even as later generations of reformers felt compelled by theories of progress and American custom to promote race as a basis of a Black collective consciousness. Reluctant Race Men traces a history of the disparate challenges Black American reformers lodged against race across the long nineteenth century. It factors their opposition into the nation's history of race and reconstructs a reform tradition largely ignored in accounts of Black activism. Black-controlled newspapers, societies, churches, and conventions provided the principal loci and resources for questioning race. In these contexts, people of African descent generated a lexicon for refuting race, debated its logic, and, ultimately, reinterpreted it. Assaults on the validity of race call into question the notion that it is a self-evident site of identity among Black people. Their ideas spotlight legal, social, political, religious, and scientific practices that configured human difference, sameness, hierarchy, and consciousness. They show how diverse actions constituted varied American phenomena dubbed "race""-- Provided by publisher. |
Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 393-423) and index. |
Access restriction | Available only to authorized users. |
Technical details | Mode of access: World Wide Web |
Genre/form | Electronic books. |
LCCN | 2023045525 |
ISBN | 9780195312966 (hbk.) |
ISBN | 9780195312973 (pbk.) |
ISBN | (epub) |
Available Items
Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions | |
Electronic Resources | View Online Content | ✔ Available |