A Most Dangerous Error

Abstract

Abstract The word racism became widespread in the English language only at the end of the 1930s, and it was primarily used to highlight not anti-Black racism, but a particular form of biological anti-Semitism that was attributed to certain Nazi anthropologists. The condemnation of racism in this narrow sense was promoted by Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Ashley Montagu. That it relied on an inadequate account of the history of racism can be demonstrated through a study of Benedict’s work. Ashley Montagu, together with UNESCO, was largely responsible for its widespread adoption. But its insufficiency had much earlier been recognized by Oliver Cromwell Cox and would be exposed later by Frantz Fanon with his introduction of the idea of “cultural racism.”