Racism in the Modern World

While not denying the importance of "white" Westerners to the global historical experience of racism in recent centuries, Berg (American history, U. of Heidelberg, Germany) and Wendt (American studies, U. of Frankfurt, Germany) note ironically that to focus on the development of racism in exclusively Western terms might itself be Eurocentric. They instead present a collection that seeks to go beyond the dominant paradigms by focusing on processes of diffusion, transfer, adaptation, and transformation of racial ideas in various parts of the world. Fifteen essays address how to define racism (with divergent perspectives presented), the American influence on the "founding father" of German racial anti-Semitism, the multi-sidedness of race making in the Philippino-American colonial experience, the construction and maintenance of "whiteness" in 19th century British India, the appropriation of Western racial ideas by Chinese nationalist reformers of the late 19th century, "racism" vs "culturalism" as descriptors of Japanese attitudes towards Korea and Taiwan as colonial subjects, and the intellectual influences that shaped the racial ideas of the architect of South African apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Manfred Berg is Curt Engelhorn Professor of American History at the University of Heidelberg. Before he came to Heidelberg, he taught at the Free University of Berlin. From 1992 to 1997, he was a research fellow (1992-1997) at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. From 2003 to 2005, he served as the executive director of the Center for USA-Studies at the Leucorea in Wittenberg. Berg is a specialist in the history of the African American civil rights movement and race relations and has published numerous books and articles on American and international history.

Simon Wendt is assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Frankfurt. His research areas are African American history, gender and memory, nationalism, and the history of heroism and hero-worship. He is the author of The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights(Gainesville, 2007). He is currently working on a history of the Daughters of the American Revolution.