[African Americana]. Miller, Kelly

Is Race Prejudice Innate or Acquired? [caption title]

[N.p. n.d., ca. 1927]. 9pp. Gathered signatures, stapled. Minor rusting to staples, light soiling to margins of outer leaves. Very good. Item #2783

A rare pamphlet printing an interesting essay on the nature of race prejudice by one of the foremost African American minds of the early-20th century. Kelly Miller, a noted African American scholar, mathematician, and teacher, was a professor at Howard University and a well-regarded essayist on racial topics. Four of his books were collections of these types of essays, including Race Justice (1908), Out of the House of Bondage (1914), An Appeal to Conscience (1918), and The Everlasting Stain (1924). The present essay does not appear in any of these works, and by necessity must have been printed sometime during or after the latter two works, as it refers in the last paragraph to the number of French women who married "negroes" during the "World War." It is most likely an offprint of an article by Miller entitled, "Race prejudice, innate or acquired?" published in the July-August 1927 issue of Journal of Applied Sociology.

Miller's essay argues that race prejudice is not innate, but rather an acquired "one-sided passion...stimulated by adult instruction...clearly modifiable by time, place, and circumstance...exhibited in varying degrees of intensity by the different sections of the white race." Further, Miller discusses "natural antipathy" among the races, especially with regard to "interbreeding." OCLC lists just three copies, at Yale, Emory, and the British Library.
Work, p.596 (ref).

Price: $550.00