Contempt and Pity : Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880-1996

Daryl Michael Scott

ISBN 10: 080784635X / ISBN 13: 9780807846353

Editore: The University Of North Carolina Press, 1997

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nach der Bestellung gedruckt Neuware - Printed after ordering - For over a century, the idea that African Americans are psychologically damaged has played an important role in discussions of race. In this provocative work, Daryl Michael Scott argues that damage imagery has been the product of liberals and conservatives, of racists and antiracists. While racial conservatives, often playing on white contempt for blacks, have sought to use findings of black pathology to justify exclusionary policies, racial liberals have used damage imagery primarily to promote policies of inclusion and rehabilitation. In advancing his argument, Scott challenges some long-held beliefs about the history of damage imagery. He rediscovers the liberal impulses behind Stanley Elkins s Sambo hypothesis and Daniel Patrick Moynihan s Negro Family and exposes the damage imagery in the work of Ralph Ellison, the leading anti-pathologist. He also corrects the view that the Chicago School depicted blacks as pathological products of matriarchy. New Negro experts such as Charles Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier, he says, disdained sympathy-seeking and refrained from exploring individual pathology. Scott s reassessment of social science sheds new light on Brown v. Board of Education, revealing how experts reversed four decades of theory in order to represent segregation as inherently damaging to blacks. In this controversial work, Scott warns the Left of the dangers in their recent rediscovery of damage imagery in an age of conservative reform.

Codice articolo 9780807846353

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Contempt and Pity : Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880-1996
• Editore: The University Of North Carolina Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 1997
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 080784635X
• ISBN 13: 9780807846353
• Rilegatura: Taschenbuch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 234 L x 156 A x 17 P (millimetri) 234 millimetri di larghezza per 156 millimetri di altezza per 17 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 501 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

For over a century, the idea that African Americans are psychologically damaged has played an important role in discussions of race. In this provocative work, Daryl Michael Scott argues that damage imagery has been the product of liberals and conservatives, of racists and antiracists. While racial conservatives, often playing on white contempt for blacks, have sought to use findings of black pathology to justify exclusionary policies, racial liberals have used damage imagery primarily to promote policies of inclusion and rehabilitation. In advancing his argument, Scott challenges some long-held beliefs about the history of damage imagery. He rediscovers the liberal impulses behind Stanley Elkins's Sambo hypothesis and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Negro Family and exposes the damage imagery in the work of Ralph Ellison, the leading anti-pathologist. He also corrects the view that the Chicago School depicted blacks as pathological products of matriarchy. New Negro experts such as Charles Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier, he says, disdained sympathy-seeking and refrained from exploring individual pathology. Scott's reassessment of social science sheds new light on Brown v. Board of Education, revealing how experts reversed four decades of theory in order to represent segregation as inherently damaging to blacks. In this controversial work, Scott warns the Left of the dangers in their recent rediscovery of damage imagery in an age of conservative reform.

Informazioni sull'autore

Daryl Michael Scott is assistant professor of history at Columbia University.