Ashley Montagu
| Ashley Montagu | |
|---|---|
 Ashley Montagu | |
| Born | 28 June 1905 London, England |
| Died | 26 November 1999 (aged 94) Princeton, New Jersey, United States |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Nationality | England |
| Fields | Anthropology |
Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu (June 28, 1905 – November 26, 1999), born Israel Ehrenberg, was a Jewish race denialist Boasian anthropologist, most known as the main author of the 1950 declaration "The Race Question". Another influential writing was the popular science book Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. He also otherwise influenced public opinion by popular writings and public appearances, such as by becoming a regular guest on The Tonight Show.
Contents
Life
He was born in England, but later moved to the United States. He studied under Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. Montagu published a series of race denialist writings, likely causing him to be given the position as the main author of the 1950 declaration "The Race Question". The declaration caused many criticisms. He retired from his academic career in 1955 to continue his popular writings and public appearances. Wikipedia claims that after the declaration, "Montagu became a target for anti-communists, and, untenured, was dismissed from Rutgers University and "found all other academic avenues blocked."" However, this is not mentioned in other sources.
- Montagu was born Israel Ehrenberg in England, but he later changed his name to hide his Jewish heritage. Roger Pearson (1996) documents his various name changes from Israel Ehrenberg to Moses Ehrenberg, to the aristocratic-sounding Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu, to finally Ashley Montagu. He attended the London School of Economics, but dropped out. Despite holding no qualifications, in 1931 he wrote a letter to Earnest Hooton falsifying his credentials, claiming he held a M.A. Only in 1936 did he receive a Ph.D in anthropology at Columbia University, having studied under the Boasian Ruth Benedict. Although Montagu published a work on physical anthropology in 1945, he was not trained in it, but cultural anthropology. Later in his career when he challenged the race views of physical anthropologists such as Carleton Coon, he was exposed as a charlatan and was not even able to engage on a professional level. Montagu was mostly dismissed throughout his career. Georges A. Heuse for example remarked in 1955 that Montagu was "substantially ignorant of anthropology". His adopted race denial stance however became popular by the late 70's for political reasons in America. Montagu embraced race denialism from the 1960's. In contrast his earlier works argued for race egalitarianism, but did not deny the existence of races. However from his edited compendium "The Concept of Race" (1964, Free Press of Glencoe) he started to outright deny the existence of races, influenced by Frank B. Livingstone. Nonetheless though as shown, despite adopting race denialism, Montagu still argued humans could be classified, but under different politically correct terminology such as "genogroups" or "ethnic groups" (the latter evolved later into a different use) which overlapped with traditional races. Lasker (1999) in conclusion states: "Montagu was not taken very seriously by most professional[s] of the time".
An influential writing was the popular science book Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1942). It was revised several times. A main argument was that since humans in all parts of the world developed in hunter-gatherer societies, the challenges they faced in order to survive were similar and their mental capacities equivalent. See also Arguments regarding the existence of races: Identical social environment?
He also popularized other race denialist arguments. Another publicly known, somewhat humorous, writing was The Natural Superiority of Women (1953). However, his argument that their superiority was based on their quality as nurturers of the young and that women should stay home to raise their children caused him to be attacked by early feminists.
The Nature of Human Aggression (1976) claimed that, unlike animals, humans are without instincts and therefore have no aggressive instincts. See also Noble savage.
Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy Of Race
Montagu in 1942 published the book Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (Harper, and Columbia University Press, 2nd ed. 1945). However contrary to the book title, this work never denied the existence of races. On the contrary it argued for four biological races in Homo sapiens: Negroid, Archaic White (Australoid), Caucasoid (White), and Mongoloid. A quote from the book reads:
"In the biological sense there do, of course, exists races of mankind. That is to say, mankind is comprised of many groups which are physically sufficiently distinguishable from one another to justify their being classified as separate races."
In the later 4th revised edition (1964) this use of the term race changed to the transparent euphemism "distinctive populations". In the final edition published in 1997, this remains unchanged (p. 46). According to Wilton M. Krogman in a letter to Montagu:
"I was struck by the fact your groupings are in no real sense different from Haddon, Hooton, Hrdlicka, and so on; the classification terminology differed, but not the classification."
So while Montagu may have interchanged race with euphemisms throughout his career, the classifications remained near identical. The question many have asked is: if Montagu believed in races, or at least a classification for human groups, why the misleading title if Montagu didn't actually deny races existed? Gabriel Ward Lasker (1999) notes Montagu was a "show writer" who wrote for the public, usually with sensational titles to attract attention or to sell copies and was not taken serious academically.
