The Skull Measurers Mistake: And Other Portraits of Men and Women Who Spoke Out Against Racism

About this book

In 1981 Stephen Jay Gould exposed the bad science behind nineteenth-century American studies that "proved" that Anglo-Saxons were superior because they had larger brains. In The Skull Measurers Mistake Sven Lindqvist tells the story of Friedrich Tiedemann the nineteenth-century German doctor who dared to speak out against such racist science when it was first practiced. Often the history of racism is reduced to the study of racists. Less well known are the stories of those who argued and fought against prejudice and persecution. In this unique book Sven Lindqvist Swedish author of internationally acclaimed books on Africa China and Latin America profiles more than twenty nineteenth-century men and women who while not themselves victims of racism went against the temper of the time to expose the many faces of prejudice. Along with Tiedemanns story The Skull Measurers Mistake recounts the antiracist efforts of Benjamin Franklin Helen Hunt Joseph Conrad Alexis de Tocqueville and others whose names have been forgotten. Well-documented and rich in anecdote Lindqvists book shows how racist arguments emergedand reemergedover time. At the books core is Lindqvists belief that knowledge of past debates about racism can help us defeat it now.