The Arrogance of Race

by George M. Fredrickson

Book Overview

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. "The Arrogance of Race summarizes...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0819562173
• ISBN13: 9780819562173
• Release Date: February 1988
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

This is a Volume to be Reckoned with

George Fredrickson is one of the few remaining genuine heavy weights still writing on the issue of race in America. There are 17 essays in this book, grouped into three sections. The essays in Section One summarizes the intellectual history of race up through Reconstruction. Section Two does the same thing for the slave era; and Section Three attempts a cross-cultural analysis of slavery. The introductory essays do an excellent job of setting the stage for the reader in each of the later sections. The present volume argues for retaining the psycho-cultural interpretation as opposed to the more "Socialist-leaning" attempts to conflate racism and "classism," a trend that is currently in vogue in much of the social and even sociological writings. I personally identify strongly with the point of view set forth here by the authors, since classism itself has a demonstrably clear racist component embedded within it. The question this book poses and attempts to answer in the affirmative, is: Does race consciousness constitute an independent variable in American culture? An alternative hypothesis is that since racism began with slavery--a European idea rooted in the economics of labor exploitation--it must thus be based solely on impersonal but rational calculations and on the economic circumstances that ushered in the slave era. Racism must therefore be a European idea transplanted to American shores where it remains today still alien to American instincts, values, mores, ethics and traditions. It is a facile argument indeed, but one made at times by both black and white scholars. However, a stronger, if not more compelling case can be made that even though racism was inspired by the European derived economic exploitation of slavery, it eventually took on an indigenous and a peculiarly devastating American life of its own. That American life of racism is still rooted not just in economics, but also in the psychological, ideological, cultural and social history and identity of white Americans. That this is an undeniable fact of American life is a conclusion difficult for any serious scholar to avoid. As George M. Frederick has put it: "... racism, although the child of slavery, not only outlived its parent but grew stronger and more independent after slavery's demise. The Neo-Marxists have tried, with varying degrees of failure, to fit American racism into the neo-Marxist made "procrustean bed" of the model of a Marxist economic class-struggle. As they have so well known, the fly in that ointment has always been that working class whites do not adhere to the mentality or ideology of the Marxist Proletarian model, preferring instead to identify with the corporate class that exploits them as much as they exploit the non-white working class, against whom they see themselves as competing against. This point of course underscores one of the more glaring gaps in the Marxist analysis: that it fails to take into account the overwhelming significanc