Anti-Racism in U.S. History: The First Two Hundred Years (Contributions in American History)
?Historians, Aptheker argues, have frequently noted but rarely developed the point that throughout the two centuries of North American racial slavery, substantial numbers of whites rejected racist rationales for the "peculiar institution" and displayed a remarkable degree of interracial egalitarianism. Marshaling a large quantity of documentary evidence, Aptheker seeks to draw attention to the pervasiveness of what he calls "anti-racism" in Euro-American culture. The definition of racism in use here is a narrow one--what historians usually describe as "ideological" racism: systematic, pseudoscientific theories of inherent racial inferiority. Consequently, it is easy to concede Aptheker's point yet to wonder that so many white Americans lived comfortably with "societal" racism: de facto black inferiority based on established status relationships. It seems to have been the latter, after all, that had the greatest impact on the actual life opportunities for African Americans in American society. All levels.?-Choice--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.