J. Quinn Brisben Racism

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The article “A History of Racism” by J. Quinn Brisben is a detailed summary of the book Race: The History of an Idea in America by Thomas E. Gossett. Mr. Brisben was a high school teacher from Chicago that ran for President of the United States in 1992 for the Socialist Party. I kept this in mind while reading the article because I knew it would be biased toward the Socialist ideals of equality for all. Since he is a politician as well as an educator, I knew that this article would be well worded and interesting to read. Mr. Brisben does a suitable job of summarizing a lengthy book in a two-page article. He begins by stating Thomas E. Grossett’s view of racism, which is “All attempts to construct any theory of history of civilization upon racial theory, all attempts to describe accurately the difference of character, temperament and intelligence among the races have been a failure” (Brisben 36). To me, this take on racism is meant to inform the reader that history itself is very unbalanced and reminds people that all previous scientific evidence involved with race is flawed. The first argument that was made is that highly revered men such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson believed in ideas spread by extreme racist such as Vardaman or Tillman but they are not looked down upon historically the same way as the…show more content…
Brisben talks about how de facto neighborhood segregation has become a social norm and is accepted as fair and just. Keeping in mind that this article was published in 1963, a year before the Civil Rights Act, it is interesting to see that Mr. Thomas E. Gossett stated that segregation was such an important topic (Brisben 36). The Darwin Hypothesis was argued to be the reason the Europeans looked down upon other races as the captured their lands throughout history. This became a very large debate in America between believers in Darwin verses Christians. Surprisingly, even the Bible belt South began arguing about this topic (Brisben

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