Race, Social Science and the Crisis of Manhood, 1890-1970

Black Social Science and the Crisis of Manhood, 1890-1970 describes the young black male crisis, why we are largely unfamiliar with the story of the black superman, and why this matters to contemporary debates. It does so by returning to the work of those original black social scientists to explore the ways in which they understood the challenges of black manhood, offered substantive critiques of the nation's race, class, and gender systems, and worked to construct a progression. The careful study of their work reveals the centrality of gender to discussions of race and class, and also new possibilities for understanding and discussing black men. This book offers a look at pioneering black social scientists as well as a history of the changing perceptions, ideals, and shifting depictions of black and white manhood over nearly a century.

Malinda Alaine Lindquist is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where she teaches U.S., African American, gender, and intellectual history. She is currently working on two new projects - a history of Du Bois and the American social-science tradition, and a history of black youth during the era of Jim Crow.

Introduction: Inventing the Young Black Male: Race, Science, and Power 1. "We are men, the rest are something else": Rewriting Social Darwinism as a "Revelation of the White Man" 2. "To make a name in science ... and thus to raise my race": Scientific Manhood in the Age of Du Bois, 1893-1963 3. "We regarded with pride all the male members of the family": E. Franklin Frazier from Founding Fathers and Masculine Proletariats to the Bourgeois "Lady among the Races" 4. Horace Cayton's Wars: The Race Man, Psychoanalysis and the Politics of Black Emasculation 5. "Boys cannot learn to be men in a manless family": From Class to Gender in the Black Boy Crisis, 1940-1965 Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index