U.S. Intellectual History Blog

Brattain on Race, Racism, and UNESCO

Michelle Brattain has an excellent article in the newest issue (December 2007) of the American Historical Review. She shows how the post-WWII conversation about race at the UN struggled to fully appropriate an emergent scientific consensus that rejected biological definitions of race. Her work historicizes the idea of race itself, showing a particularly pregnant moment in which the biological and the constructivist notions of race were debated and fought over. -DS