1800s
19th century
20th century
A01=Lee D. Baker
academic
african american
america
american history
anthropology
Author_Lee D. Baker
black lives matter
Category=JBCC
Category=JBF
Category=JBSL
Category=JBSL1
Category=JHM
Category=JHMC
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
cold war
court case
cultural relativism
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
law
legal issues
modern world
naacp
plessy v ferguson
popular culture
race
race in america
racial
racial categories
racism
scholarly
separate but equal
social darwinism
social science
supreme court
supreme court case
Product details
- ISBN 9780520211681
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 23 Nov 1998
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Lee D. Baker explores what racial categories mean to the American public and how these meanings are reinforced by anthropology, popular culture, and the law. Focusing on the period between two landmark Supreme Court decisions--Plessy v. Ferguson (the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine established in 1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (the public school desegregation decision of 1954)--Baker shows how racial categories change over time. Baker paints a vivid picture of the relationships between specific African American and white scholars, who orchestrated a paradigm shift within the social sciences from ideas based on Social Darwinism to those based on cultural relativism. He demonstrates that the greatest impact on the way the law codifies racial differences has been made by organizations such as the NAACP, which skillfully appropriated the new social science to exploit the politics of the Cold War.
Lee D. Baker is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at Columbia University and Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.
