Lost Black Scholar
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A01=David A. Varel
academia
african american
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allison davis
anthropology
Author_David A. Varel
automatic-update
biography
black
brown v board of education
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BG
Category=DNB
Category=HBJK
Category=HBLW
Category=JBSL
Category=JFSL3
Category=JHM
Category=JNB
Category=NHK
civil rights movement
COP=United States
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discrimination
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
head start
history
inequality
intelligence
iq test
jim crow
Language_English
marginalization
nonfiction
PA=Available
poverty
preschool
Price_€20 to €50
professor
progress
PS=Active
public policy
race
racism
scholar
segregation
social thought
softlaunch
standardized tests
tenure
university chicago
Product details
- ISBN 9780226754437
- Weight: 399g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 02 Nov 2020
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Allison Davis (1902–83), a preeminent black scholar and social science pioneer, is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking investigations into inequality, Jim Crow America, and the cultural biases of intelligence testing. Davis, one of America’s first black anthropologists and the first tenured African American professor at a predominantly white university, produced work that had tangible and lasting effects on public policy, including contributions to Brown v. Board of Education, the federal Head Start program, and school testing practices. Yet Davis remains largely absent from the historical record. For someone who generated such an extensive body of work this marginalization is particularly surprising. But it is also revelatory.
In The Lost Black Scholar, David A. Varel tells Davis’s compelling story, showing how a combination of institutional racism, disciplinary eclecticism, and iconoclastic thinking effectively sidelined him as an intellectual. A close look at Davis’s career sheds light not only on the racial politics of the academy but also the costs of being an innovator outside of the mainstream. Equally important, Varel argues that Davis exemplifies how black scholars led the way in advancing American social thought. Even though he was rarely acknowledged for it, Davis refuted scientific racism and laid bare the environmental roots of human difference more deftly than most of his white peers, by pushing social science in bold new directions. Varel shows how Davis effectively helped to lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement.
In The Lost Black Scholar, David A. Varel tells Davis’s compelling story, showing how a combination of institutional racism, disciplinary eclecticism, and iconoclastic thinking effectively sidelined him as an intellectual. A close look at Davis’s career sheds light not only on the racial politics of the academy but also the costs of being an innovator outside of the mainstream. Equally important, Varel argues that Davis exemplifies how black scholars led the way in advancing American social thought. Even though he was rarely acknowledged for it, Davis refuted scientific racism and laid bare the environmental roots of human difference more deftly than most of his white peers, by pushing social science in bold new directions. Varel shows how Davis effectively helped to lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement.
David A. Varel is David A. Varel is an affiliate faculty member at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. He holds a PhD in American history from the University of Colorado, and previously served as a postdoctoral fellow in African American Studies at Case Western Reserve University.
