SLOW STEPS, COMPROMISES, AND BLIND SPOTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ASHLEY MONTAGU’S ANTIRACISM

Ashley Montagu is well-known as one of the most prominent antiracists of the last half of the twentieth century, but today most of the scholarly focus on him concentrates on his involvement in the UNESCO Statement on Race of 1950 with its examination of the difference between the popular understanding of race and the scientific concept of it. It emerges that Montagu was already then aware of the limits of this approach as a way of addressing racism. That his reservations subsequently grew can be demonstrated by comparing the six different editions of his popular study, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, first published in 1942. In the book’s final edition in 1997, he came close to acknowledging that he should have spent more time trying to understand the racism that exists independently of scientific racism, but even then he was ill-equipped to address systemic racism.