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Who’s Black and Why?: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race
"A fascinating, if disturbing, window onto the origins of racism."
--Publishers Weekly
"The eighteenth-century essays published for the first time in Who's Black and Why? contain a world of ideas--theories, inventions, and fantasies--about what blackness is, and what it means. To read them is to witness European intellectuals, in the age of the Atlantic slave trade, struggling, one after another, to justify atrocity."
--Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States
The first translation and publication of sixteen submissions to the notorious eighteenth-century Bordeaux essay contest on the cause of black skin--an indispensable chronicle of the rise of scientifically based, anti-Black racism.
In 1739 Bordeaux's Royal Academy of Sciences announced a contest for the best essay on the sources of "blackness." What is the physical cause of blackness and African hair, and what is the cause of Black degeneration, the contest announcement asked. Sixteen essays, written in French and Latin, were ultimately dispatched from all over Europe. The authors ranged from naturalists to physicians, theologians to amateur savants. Documented on each page are European ideas about who is Black and why.
Looming behind these essays is the fact that some four million Africans had been kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic by the time the contest was announced. The essays themselves represent a broad range of opinions. Some affirm that Africans had fallen from God's grace; others that blackness had resulted from a brutal climate; still others emphasized the anatomical specificity of Africans. All the submissions nonetheless circulate around a common theme: the search for a scientific understanding of the new concept of race. More important, they provide an indispensable record of the Enlightenment-era thinking that normalized the sale and enslavement of Black human beings.
These never previously published documents survived the centuries tucked away in Bordeaux's municipal library. Translated into English and accompanied by a detailed introduction and headnotes written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Andrew Curran, each essay included in this volume lays bare the origins of anti-Black racism and colorism in the West.
--Publishers Weekly
"The eighteenth-century essays published for the first time in Who's Black and Why? contain a world of ideas--theories, inventions, and fantasies--about what blackness is, and what it means. To read them is to witness European intellectuals, in the age of the Atlantic slave trade, struggling, one after another, to justify atrocity."
--Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States
The first translation and publication of sixteen submissions to the notorious eighteenth-century Bordeaux essay contest on the cause of black skin--an indispensable chronicle of the rise of scientifically based, anti-Black racism.
In 1739 Bordeaux's Royal Academy of Sciences announced a contest for the best essay on the sources of "blackness." What is the physical cause of blackness and African hair, and what is the cause of Black degeneration, the contest announcement asked. Sixteen essays, written in French and Latin, were ultimately dispatched from all over Europe. The authors ranged from naturalists to physicians, theologians to amateur savants. Documented on each page are European ideas about who is Black and why.
Looming behind these essays is the fact that some four million Africans had been kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic by the time the contest was announced. The essays themselves represent a broad range of opinions. Some affirm that Africans had fallen from God's grace; others that blackness had resulted from a brutal climate; still others emphasized the anatomical specificity of Africans. All the submissions nonetheless circulate around a common theme: the search for a scientific understanding of the new concept of race. More important, they provide an indispensable record of the Enlightenment-era thinking that normalized the sale and enslavement of Black human beings.
These never previously published documents survived the centuries tucked away in Bordeaux's municipal library. Translated into English and accompanied by a detailed introduction and headnotes written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Andrew Curran, each essay included in this volume lays bare the origins of anti-Black racism and colorism in the West.
312 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 22, 2022
37 people are currently reading
547 people want to read
About the author
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
291 books863 followersHenry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is well-known as a literary critic, an editor of literature, and a proponent of black literature and black cultural studies.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 29, 2023
This book is a collection of 16 contest essays from 1741, never published until now, that attempt to answer the question "What is the physical cause of the Negro's color, the quality of hair, and the degeneration of both?" I was SMH alot reading this book just trying to wrap my head around some of these theories of the cause of Blackness. Some believed Blackness was caused by the sun and heat, maternal imagination, Divine Providence, and so much more. There are some theories in this book that some people still believe about Black people. As I was reading I kept telling myself that these authors had never heard of melanin.
Three additional essays from a 1772 contest are included at the end, that are trying to determine the best ways to preserve Blacks from the various illnesses they could contract on slave ships to the Americas.
A highly recommended book on the thinking of "learned" men on the topic of race and Blackness.
Three additional essays from a 1772 contest are included at the end, that are trying to determine the best ways to preserve Blacks from the various illnesses they could contract on slave ships to the Americas.
A highly recommended book on the thinking of "learned" men on the topic of race and Blackness.
February 9, 2023
This isn't an easy book to rate or review. The 5 stars are not for the content of these essays-- Quite frankly, they are tough to read. The stars are for the work done bringing these odious works to light, for they are the foundation of race classification that has, in turn, become the tropes of racism.
While reading this book, I kept vacillating between facepalming & thinking (like that Seinfeld episode) should we be talking about this? But that's our problem. Too few people want to talk about race. It's easier to bury your head in the sand or ban the topic in schools. If we keep that up, we'll go back to believing the 18th Century asininity presented in this tome. Thanks, but no thanks. Knowledge is POWER.
While reading this book, I kept vacillating between facepalming & thinking (like that Seinfeld episode) should we be talking about this? But that's our problem. Too few people want to talk about race. It's easier to bury your head in the sand or ban the topic in schools. If we keep that up, we'll go back to believing the 18th Century asininity presented in this tome. Thanks, but no thanks. Knowledge is POWER.
March 2, 2023
While the essays are certainly … interesting, the coolest part of the book is Gates and Curran’s analysis. Their analysis of how the modern concept of race was born - in part, due to work like these essays submitted to the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1741, might reframe how you see the Enlightenment period.
These essays reveal a lot about the state of science, the culture of high society, the city’s (and Academy’s) dependence on slavery, and the ignorance of people. However, I think it’s also important to note that members of this society weren’t necessarily the best and brightest of the time - more of a ‘have the right connections’ gig.
Still, I think this read is perfect for someone who wants to learn why race is so vicious and pervasive nowadays. Some of the effects are still going strong …
These essays reveal a lot about the state of science, the culture of high society, the city’s (and Academy’s) dependence on slavery, and the ignorance of people. However, I think it’s also important to note that members of this society weren’t necessarily the best and brightest of the time - more of a ‘have the right connections’ gig.
Still, I think this read is perfect for someone who wants to learn why race is so vicious and pervasive nowadays. Some of the effects are still going strong …
September 11, 2023
This could be a college course. So much information. I continually laughed out loud, not with humor but with disbelief. The brightest minds believed such things? I know know why there are African American studies etc. There has to be a better way to share philosophy, history, medicine, and all the other disciplines. We do not gain stature with inhumanity. We all loose. Cusps to professors Gates and Curran.
abandoned
May 1, 2022I didn’t read all of this book, wasn’t up for absorbing the nineteen separate 18th-century essays on theories about Black skin and hair. But the book’s two intros were informative, lending solid context for the origins of racial taxonomy. Really interesting.
August 18, 2023
Who's Black And Why?: A Hidden Chapter From The Eighteenth-Century Invention Of Race, by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Andrew S. Curran
What thanks do we owe to Gates and Curran for editing this immensely obscure collection of 18th century essays written to answer two questions about blacks? The essays included in this section--many of which are redacted--are the real stars of the show. While the answers to the first question, devoted to answering a question about the supposed degeneration of black skin and hair and its origins, are generally disappointing, the answers to the second question, which sought practical advice on how to better preserve the lives of African slaves being transported to the New World, were quite intriguing to this reader at least, even if none of them met the satisfaction of the organizers of that 1772 contest from the Royal Academy of Sciences of Bordeaux, France. While the essays themselves represent the views of people who considered themselves to be Enlightened intellectuals of their time--and the style and approach of some of the essays was one that reminded me of many of my own essays relating to scientific, philosophical, and practical matters--the editorializing of this book is a real weakness. The essays are worth reading, not least because they give us a picture of what thoughtful but obscure people thought about serious questions of their day, but Gates in particular is deeply clueless about how his unsympathetic portrayal of the essays and their writers undercuts his own Enlightenment-based perspective.
The contents of this book consist of two parts. After a preface and a note on the translations from French and Latin (the languages the essays were originally written in), the first part of the book discusses the 1741 contest that the Royal Academy of Sciences or Bordeaux held for essays that would best explain the supposed "degeneration" of the skin and hair of blacks. The academy received sixteen responses to this question, and the editors of the book spend about 40 pages introducing the context and then another 140 pages or so providing the sixteen essays in translation, organizing the essays by their arguments, so that we have armchair theorizing about blackness as the result of the power of God (1), the soul of the father (2), maternal imagination (3), moral defect (4), living in tropical climates (5), divine providence (6), heat and humidity (7), reversible accident (8), hot air and darkened blood (9), darkened humor (10), blood flow (11), optical theory (12), original sickness (13), degeneration (14), classification (15), and dissection (16). The second, and shorter, part of the book begins with an introduction of the 1772 contest on preserving the life of blacks being transported through the Middle Passage from Africa to lives in slavery in the New World, and the three essays included are from a slave ship surgeon sympathetic to blacks (17), a Parisian humanitarian (18), and a local apothecary who sought to better preserve the lives of both blacks and whites involved in the slave trade (19), a view which the authors (especially, presumably Gates) ridicule as an exercise in "white lives matter," as if that was a bad thing.
The worst thing about this book is the editorializing that the editors do in seeking to frame the authors as being some sort of racists whose biases remove them from the sympathies of contemporary mankind, which is undercut by the casual anti-white racism of the editorializing itself which demonstrates the hypocrisy and double standard of the editors. Given the lack of scientific knowledge, especially that of genetics, during the late 18th century, it is remarkable to this reader at least that those answers to the first essay which commented on heredity and divine providence in being involved with skin color answered the question as well as could be expected given the knowledge at the time. The three essays in part two of this book are all excellent and demonstrate a real concern for the well-being of those unfortunate people caught up in the slave trade, and the fact that the editors seek to ridicule a local 18th century citizen of Bordeaux for his efforts in arguing for conditions that would improve the health of both whites and blacks demonstrates that he was more humane and enlightened than the anti-white racists who edited this book, a rebuke they should be keen to take to heart and repent thereby. The value of this book is in presenting the views of the original authors, who struggle within the knowledge of their time to answer questions of general scientific, philosophical, and practical interest. In seeking to give a revisionist account of the 18th century French Enlightenment, the editors of this book demonstrate themselves to be less enlightened than those they hold up to ridicule and scorn.
What thanks do we owe to Gates and Curran for editing this immensely obscure collection of 18th century essays written to answer two questions about blacks? The essays included in this section--many of which are redacted--are the real stars of the show. While the answers to the first question, devoted to answering a question about the supposed degeneration of black skin and hair and its origins, are generally disappointing, the answers to the second question, which sought practical advice on how to better preserve the lives of African slaves being transported to the New World, were quite intriguing to this reader at least, even if none of them met the satisfaction of the organizers of that 1772 contest from the Royal Academy of Sciences of Bordeaux, France. While the essays themselves represent the views of people who considered themselves to be Enlightened intellectuals of their time--and the style and approach of some of the essays was one that reminded me of many of my own essays relating to scientific, philosophical, and practical matters--the editorializing of this book is a real weakness. The essays are worth reading, not least because they give us a picture of what thoughtful but obscure people thought about serious questions of their day, but Gates in particular is deeply clueless about how his unsympathetic portrayal of the essays and their writers undercuts his own Enlightenment-based perspective.
The contents of this book consist of two parts. After a preface and a note on the translations from French and Latin (the languages the essays were originally written in), the first part of the book discusses the 1741 contest that the Royal Academy of Sciences or Bordeaux held for essays that would best explain the supposed "degeneration" of the skin and hair of blacks. The academy received sixteen responses to this question, and the editors of the book spend about 40 pages introducing the context and then another 140 pages or so providing the sixteen essays in translation, organizing the essays by their arguments, so that we have armchair theorizing about blackness as the result of the power of God (1), the soul of the father (2), maternal imagination (3), moral defect (4), living in tropical climates (5), divine providence (6), heat and humidity (7), reversible accident (8), hot air and darkened blood (9), darkened humor (10), blood flow (11), optical theory (12), original sickness (13), degeneration (14), classification (15), and dissection (16). The second, and shorter, part of the book begins with an introduction of the 1772 contest on preserving the life of blacks being transported through the Middle Passage from Africa to lives in slavery in the New World, and the three essays included are from a slave ship surgeon sympathetic to blacks (17), a Parisian humanitarian (18), and a local apothecary who sought to better preserve the lives of both blacks and whites involved in the slave trade (19), a view which the authors (especially, presumably Gates) ridicule as an exercise in "white lives matter," as if that was a bad thing.
The worst thing about this book is the editorializing that the editors do in seeking to frame the authors as being some sort of racists whose biases remove them from the sympathies of contemporary mankind, which is undercut by the casual anti-white racism of the editorializing itself which demonstrates the hypocrisy and double standard of the editors. Given the lack of scientific knowledge, especially that of genetics, during the late 18th century, it is remarkable to this reader at least that those answers to the first essay which commented on heredity and divine providence in being involved with skin color answered the question as well as could be expected given the knowledge at the time. The three essays in part two of this book are all excellent and demonstrate a real concern for the well-being of those unfortunate people caught up in the slave trade, and the fact that the editors seek to ridicule a local 18th century citizen of Bordeaux for his efforts in arguing for conditions that would improve the health of both whites and blacks demonstrates that he was more humane and enlightened than the anti-white racists who edited this book, a rebuke they should be keen to take to heart and repent thereby. The value of this book is in presenting the views of the original authors, who struggle within the knowledge of their time to answer questions of general scientific, philosophical, and practical interest. In seeking to give a revisionist account of the 18th century French Enlightenment, the editors of this book demonstrate themselves to be less enlightened than those they hold up to ridicule and scorn.
November 8, 2023
We all know that race is a social construct, but it is rare to read first-person accounts of the construction project itself. Yet that is what this is, this compendium of essays from 18th century Bordeaux, unearthed and presented by Henry Louis Gates and Andrew S. Curran. They are shocking, absurd, tragic, ingenious, and occasionally humorous if you can get past the inhumanity of what is being said. As ridiculous as these ideas are, you can also see how they have persisted in one way or another for almost three centuries. Then, as now, the ideas are used to support a hierarchy and an economic system that favors those in power. The French had a proud history of disdaining slavery, until the vast wealth from their colonies, possible only through the enforced labor of captured Africans, made it necessary to reconsider and justify the practice. The essays present medical and religious explanations for why and how black people exist, although in that enlightened age the authors submitting essays were encouraged to stick to scientific explanations. Most do, in a way that is simultaneously chilling and laughable.
If you would like to read an actual scientific explanation of how and why black skin and white skin developed, read the fascinating Scientific American article "Skin Deep" from 2002. You may be able to download the PDF from this site: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...
If you would like to read an actual scientific explanation of how and why black skin and white skin developed, read the fascinating Scientific American article "Skin Deep" from 2002. You may be able to download the PDF from this site: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...
June 14, 2022
Love the snarky comments from the editors in the short descriptions of each essay and in the footnotes.
December 8, 2023
This was a great book that expanded my mind and made me learn new things
May 5, 2024
I don't know how to rate this because it was tedious but informative and probably written as entertaining as you can with the subject matter. I am glad I read it though!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews