Defining Difference: Race and Racism in the History of Psychology

Defining Difference is the first book to bring together recent scholarship on the history of psychology and race. Throughout the history of the field, psychological discourse has been shaped by social concerns, and its discourse on race is no exception. Psychologists have both promoted and fought against racism, and a nuanced historical account requires analysis of both dimensions. The contributors seek to understand the relationship between the changes in the field and broader social change by mapping the changing discourse for "defining difference" through race.

Topics covered include essentialism and the history of the concept of race, ideas of race in the work of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century psychologists, psychological discourse on topics such as "mixed-race" people, political uses of racial research, changes in textbook presentations of race and intelligence, and international perspectives on psychology and race. Contributors also examine the prominence and persistence of American research on racial differences in intelligence as well as the work of Kenneth Clark and Horace Mann Bond in combating racism in science and society. This important volume increases readers' understanding of the link between racial studies and social attitudes in our time and, at the same time, provides a comprehensive examination of that link throughout history.

Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Histories of Psychology and Race
—Andrew S. Winston

I. Foundations of Psychology and Race Before 1900

1. Type and Essence: Prologue to the History of Psychology and Race
   —Fredric Weizmann
2. The Concept of Race in the Life and Thought of Francis Galton
   —Raymond E. Fancher

II. Psychology, Science, and "Race Mixing"

3. The Historical Problematization of "Mixed Race" in Psychological and Human–Scientific Discourses
   —Thomas Teo
4. "Inharmoniously Adapted to Each Other": Science and Racial Crosses
   —William H. Tucker

III. Cultural Contexts and 20th-Century Psychology

5. "It's an American Thing": The "Race" and Intelligence Controversy From a British Perspective
   —Graham Richards
6. Race and Psychology in South Africa
   —Johann Louw and Don Foster
7. Constructing Difference: Heredity, Intelligence and Race in Textbooks, 1930–1970
   —Andrew S. Winston, Bethany Butzer, and Mark D. Ferris

IV. Confronting Racism

8. Antiracist Work in the Desegregation Era: The Scientific Activism of Kenneth Bancroft Clark
   —Layli Phillips
9. "Racially Stuffed Shirts and Other Enemies of Mankind": Horace Mann Bond's Parody of Segregationist Psychology in the 1950s
   —John P. Jackson, Jr.

Author Index

Subject Index

About the Editor

Andrew S. Winston is a professor of psychology at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He is the executive officer of Cheiron: The International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences, a fellow of Division 26 (History of Psychology) of the American Psychological Association (APA), and a consulting editor of the APA journal, History of Psychology. His recent publications have focused on the history of antisemitism and racism in psychology, the history of "experiment" and "cause" as central concepts, and the influence of Robert S. Woodworth. He has also published on psychological aesthetics, art, and child behavior. Currently, he is studying the use of psychological research on race by extreme political groups.

This well-edited work adds to understanding major issues that psychology, both as science and as profession, confronted in the 20th century. Recommended.
—CHOICE Magazine