White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812"The Englishmen in Jamestown who greet- ed the first "twenty Negars" who arrived in 1619 had already acquired an attitude toward the Negro-from tradition, from religion, from earlier European contacts with Africans. And as the Englishman became the colonial, and then the revolutionary patriot, and finally the citizen of a new nation, seeking to find his identity in a new land, he created chattel slavery and was in turn confronted by it. This is a study of that process, from the sixteenth century through the early years of the Republic. Although the Negro occupies a central position in this book, it is not about Negroes except as they were the objects of white men's attitudes. Among these attitudes are half-thought notions about the Negro (some of which were current in antiquity), scientific investigations into the Negro's anatomy, speculations concerning his mental capacity and moral proclivity, and beliefs about the nature of "savages." Primarily the book concerns the white man in America and how his historical experience gave shape to and was shaped by his contact with people who appeared to him to be different. In Mr. Jordan's masterly treatment, the book builds to a tragic climax in the creation of the cruel dichotomy of the concepts of "liberty and justice for all" and "the white man's country." He feels that the American dilemma is best exemplified in Thomas Jefferson, the most enlightened spirit of his time, who combined a heart- felt hostility to slavery with a deep conviction that Negroes were inferior to white men. White Over Black is written on the assumption that an understanding of the history of our culture can be a guide to the potentialities-both good and bad-of the society within which all Americans today are born to live. It is a book that must be read by those concerned about the current social predicament of the United StatesWinthrop D. Jordan is a native of Massachusetts and received his undergraduate training at Harvard. He holds an M.A. from Clark and a Ph.D. from Brown. From 1961 to 1963 Mr. Jordan was a fel- low at the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Virginia. He has taught at Phillips Exeter Academy, Brown, and Michigan, and is currently associate professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the editor of a recent reprinting of Samuel Stanhope Smith's An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in Human Species."--Publisher. |
Contents
3 Defective Religion | 3 |
4 Savage Behavior | 4 |
5 The Apes of Africa | 5 |
Copyright | |
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Other editions - View all
White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 Winthrop D. Jordan Limited preview - 2013 |
White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 Winthrop D. Jordan No preview available - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
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