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E-book
Author Bryant, Joan L., author

Title Reluctant race men : Black challenges to the practice of race in nineteenth-century America / Joan L. Bryant
Published New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2024]

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Description 1 online resource
Contents "Not a difference of species" : nationality and the question of representation -- "That odious distinction" : moral reform and the language of obligations -- "One common family" : equality and the logic of authority -- "Humanology" : difference and the science of humanity -- "One color now" : freedom and the ethics of association -- "Race-ship" : citizenship and the imperatives of progress -- "The whole question of race" : Jim Crow and the problem of consciousness -- Conclusion. "Along the color line"
Summary "Activists in the earliest Black antebellum reform endeavors contested and deprecated the concept of race. Attacks on the logic and ethics of dividing, grouping, and ranking humans into races became commonplace facets of activism in anti-colonization and emigration campaigns, suffrage and civil rights initiatives, moral reform projects, abolitionist struggles, independent church development, and interrogations of scientific thought on human origins. Denunciations persisted even as later generations of reformers felt compelled by theories of progress and American custom to promote race as a basis of a Black collective consciousness. Reluctant Race Men traces a history of the disparate challenges Black American reformers lodged against race across the long nineteenth century. It factors their opposition into the nation's history of race and reconstructs a reform tradition largely ignored in accounts of Black activism. Black-controlled newspapers, societies, churches, and conventions provided the principal loci and resources for questioning race. In these contexts, people of African descent generated a lexicon for refuting race, debated its logic, and, ultimately, reinterpreted it. Assaults on the validity of race call into question the notion that it is a self-evident site of identity among Black people. Their ideas spotlight legal, social, political, religious, and scientific practices that configured human difference, sameness, hierarchy, and consciousness. They show how diverse actions constituted varied American phenomena dubbed "race""-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on February 28, 2024)
Subject African Americans -- Civil rights -- History -- 19th century
African Americans -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Racism -- United States -- History -- 19th century
SUBJECT United States -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2023045526
ISBN 9780190091316
0190091312
9780190091309
0190091304