{"id":48784,"date":"2016-08-23T17:47:06","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T17:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48784"},"modified":"2016-08-23T19:29:11","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T19:29:11","slug":"bind-us-apart-how-enlightened-americans-invented-racial-segregation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48784","title":{"rendered":"Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Basic Books<\/a>
\n2016-04-26
\n416 pages
\nHardcover ISBN 13: 978-0-465-01841-3<\/p>\n

Nicholas Guyatt<\/strong><\/a>, University Lecturer in American History
\nCambridge University<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The surprising and counterintuitive origins of America’s racial crisis<\/em><\/p>\n

Why did the Founding Fathers<\/a> fail to include blacks and Indians in their cherished proposition that “all men are created equal”? The usual answer is racism, but the reality is more complex and unsettling. In Bind Us Apart<\/em>, historian Nicholas Guyatt argues that, from the Revolution<\/a> through the Civil War<\/a>, most white liberals believed in the unity of all human beings. But their philosophy faltered when it came to the practical work of forging a color-blind society. Unable to convince others\u2014and themselves\u2014that racial mixing was viable, white reformers began instead to claim that people of color could only thrive in separate republics: in Native states in the American West<\/a> or in the West African colony of Liberia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Herein lie the origins of “separate but equal<\/a>.” Decades before Reconstruction<\/a>, America’s liberal elite was unable to imagine how people of color could become citizens of the United States. Throughout the nineteenth century, Native Americans were pushed farther and farther westward, while four million slaves freed after the Civil War found themselves among a white population that had spent decades imagining that they would live somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Essential reading for anyone disturbed by America’s ongoing failure to achieve true racial integration, Bind Us Apart<\/em> shows conclusively that “separate but equal” represented far more than a southern backlash against emancipation<\/a>\u2014it was a founding principle of our nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation Basic Books 2016-04-26 416 pages Hardcover ISBN 13: 978-0-465-01841-3 Nicholas Guyatt, University Lecturer in American History Cambridge University The surprising and counterintuitive origins of America’s racial crisis Why did the Founding Fathers fail to include blacks and Indians in their cherished proposition that “all men are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,459,8,17,3015,20],"tags":[1696,24831],"class_list":["post-48784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-native-americans","category-usa","tag-basic-books","tag-nicholas-guyatt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48785,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48784\/revisions\/48785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}