Scientific
Racism in Modern South Africa
Saul Dubow
ALL the world knows of Adolf Hitler and the
atrocities committed under his leadership during the Nazi era. But were
he and his small band of accomplices alone? Psychiatrists supplied the
flawed theories and ideas of eugenics and biochemistry which provided the
justification for wholesale slaughter of the "inferior". Timely reading
because modern psychiatry is treading down the same path once again - forgetting
about healing and concentrating instead on biology, genetics, and brain
chemistry.
Book Summary
Includes chapters on:
-
Physical anthropology and the quest for the
'missing link'
-
Bantu origins, racial narratives
-
Biological determinism and the development
of eugenics
-
The equivocal message of eugenics
-
Mental testing and the understanding of the
'native mind'
-
Christian-national ideology, apartheid, and
the concept of race
Review
This book is the first full-length study
of the history of intellectual and scientific racism in modern South Africa.
Ranging broadly across disciplines in the social sciences, sciences and
humanities, it charts the rise of scientific racism and biological determinism
from the late nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth. Set
against the rise of apartheid, the book illuminates the complex relationship
between theories of essential racial difference and the development of
white supremacist thinking. Saul Dubow draws extensively on comparable
studies of intellectual racism in Europe and the United States to demonstrate
the selective absorption of widely prevalent conceptions of racial difference
in the particular historical context of South Africa. The issues he addresses
are of relevance to both Africanist and international students of racism
and race relations.
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