This volume examines biological and cultural data that debunk a primordial basis for racism. It tracks the ancient history of all social inequity to agricultural and feudal societies. The book then focuses on social and ideological developments in European societies associated with religious justifications for the enslavement of 'others.' The European Enlightenment built upon those prejudices with ideas about nature and acceptable natural causes of unequal social status for people newly classified into biological races. Nineteenth century anthropology is critiqued by African diasporic scholars who are the first Americans to argue that nurture rather than nature is responsible for human variation. The American Civil War brought slavery nearly to an end, but racist science continued to grow as 'eugenics' applied to justify otherwise unjustifiable structures of human inequality (such as Jim Crow segregation) as though they are morally sound.

In constructing this historical and sociological counternarrative, the author provides a critical new social history that illuminates a tangled and turgid past for contemporary readers, students, and researchers with vital insights for anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies, philosophy, and American studies.