Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race

The notion of race and racial hierarchy “came about in large part because of the institutions and methods invented by the Enlightenment,” argues historian Curran (Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely) in this brilliant study. While “proto-biological notions related to race” can be found in Western thought going back to antiquity, it wasn’t until the Enlightenment that the xenophobic bigotries of Europe were codified into “seemingly scientific... taxonomies.” By 1800, these ideas had infiltrated everything from school curricula to women’s magazines. In fact, Curran asserts, “the more progressive a country’s educational policies,” the more people were exposed to doctrines of racial hierarchy. He sheds light on how this proliferation occurred through short biographies of 13 individuals who “contributed in specific ways to the birth of race as a concept.” They include figures well-known for their racist theorizing, like Thomas Jefferson and Carl Linnaeus, who “divided humankind into six major categories” in his groundbreaking classification system. Others’ contributions are less well-known or obvious; they include Louis XIV, who commissioned a set of slave laws for his Caribbean colonies in 1685 that reified racial hierarchy, and Immanuel Kant, who propagated crude beliefs about white racial superiority. Curran concludes by spotlighting Black intellectuals of the era, including Ignatius Sancho and Phillis Wheatley, in a fascinating counter-history that presents them as the “true heirs to the era’s aspirations.” It amounts to a thorough and eminently readable dissection of a pernicious lie. (Feb.)