Two faces of Earnest A. Hooton.
The American Anthropological Association's multimedia project, "Race: Are We So Different?" alleges that Earnest A. Hooton (1887-1954) of Harvard University was a racist eugenicist who "perhaps more than any other scientist of his time... did more to establish racial stereotypes..." and infers racism from his having sat on a National Research Council Committee on the Negro in the 1920s. I take issue with this perspective to argue against Hooton as a racist by exploring Hooton's relationship with African American students, particularly Caroline Bond Day, and with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People when it awarded a medal to Charles R. Drew, M.D. In the heyday of eugenics, Hooton was an atypical eugenicist in espousing a resolutely nonracial view of the woes of humankind perpetuated by what he considered the biologically unfit. As eugenics and Nazism became conflated in the late 1930s, Hooton hewed to a path that was more antiracist than many of his anthropological colleagues and publicly disputed Nazi racial ideology.
Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. e-giles1@illinois.edu
Eugene
E
Giles
D000885:Anthropology, Physical / Q000266:history*; D005053:Eugenics / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D063505:Racism / Q000266:history*; D014481:United States