DC Public Library System

The skull measurer's mistake, and other portraits of men and women who spoke out against racism, Sven Lindqvist ; translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 167-182)

no index present

non fiction

The skull measurer's mistake

1250305088

Sven Lindqvist ; translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate

and other portraits of men and women who spoke out against racism

In 1981, Stephen Jay Gould exposed the bad science behind nineteenth-century American studies that proved that Anglo-Saxons were superior because they had larger brains. In The Skull Measurer s Mistake, Sven Lindqvist tells the story of Friedrich Tiedemann, the nineteenth-century German doctor who dared to speak out against such racist science when it was first practiced. Often the history of racism is reduced to the study of racists. Less well known are the stories of those who argued and fought against prejudice and persecution. In this unique book, Sven Lindqvist, Swedish author of internationally acclaimed books on Africa, China, and Latin America, profiles more than twenty nineteenth-century men and women who, while not themselves victims of racism, went against the temper of the time to expose the many faces of prejudice. Along with Tiedemann s story, The Skull Measurer s Mistake recounts the antiracist efforts of Benjamin Franklin, Helen Hunt, Joseph Conrad, Alexis de Tocqueville, and others whose names have been forgotten. Well-documented and rich in anecdote, Lindqvist s book shows how racist arguments emerged and reemerged over time. At the book s core is Lindqvist s belief that knowledge of past debates about racism can help us defeat it now. -- Amazon.com

The discovery of prejudices : Benjamin Franklin -- Whether a slave, by coming into England, becomes free? : Granville Sharp -- Why not? : Georg Lichtenberg -- The struggle against the slave trade begins : James Ramsay -- For Jews and Blacks : Henri Grégoire -- Doctor in Africa : Thomas Winterbottom -- The skull measurer's mistake : Friedrich Tiedemann -- Poet astray : William Howitt -- The three races of America : Alexis de Tocqueville -- The myth of the Anglo-Saxon master race : Charles Anderson -- Let the Chinese come! : Raphael Pumpelly -- Exterminating people is wrong : Langfield Ward --Anti-Semitism, the monster of national emotion : Theodor Mommsen -- A century of dishonor : Helen Hunt -- The silent South : George Cable -- White natives of Europe : William Babington -- How perilous is the yellow peril? : Jacques Novicow -- The dying negro : Joseph Conrad -- Equality or massacre : Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu -- The Miss Marple of anthropology : Mary Kingsley -- For a democratic South Africa : Olive Schreiner -- Denied heritage : Theophilus Scholes