Why read The Complexion of Race?

Book cover of The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture

Book description

In the 1723 Journal of a Voyage up the Gambia, an English narrator describes the native translators vital to the expedition's success as being "Black as Coal." Such a description of dark skin color was not unusual for eighteenth-century Britons-but neither was the statement that followed: "here, thro' Custom, (being…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Complexion of Race as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Andrew Curran

Author

Roxanne Wheeler’s The Complexion of Race occupies an important place in both our libraries. Rare are the books that deal with the complexities of human complexions with such subtlety. Wheeler does not start off by assuming the existence of a monological or commonly shared understanding of race; she charts the numerous causal flows that produced the early-modern discussion of the human, including the “empire of climate,” natural history (physiology and anatomy), and the fact that the British (Protestant) way of life became the benchmark for measuring all things foreign.

From Henry's list on race and the enlightenment.