Audrey Smedley is professor emerita of anthropology and African American studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the author of several books as well as the American Anthropology Association's position paper on race.Brian D. Smedley holds a Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA. He is vice president and director of the Health Policy Institute of the Joint centre for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

"In this fourth edition, Drs. Audrey Smedley and Brian Smedley describe, in a scholarly but widely accessible and engaging manner, the evolution of the concept of race and the way shifting views of the meaning of race have shaped North America. The book is an essential resource for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of race and race relations in North America." -John F. Dovidio, Yale University "Race in North America is an essential text for anyone who engages 'race' from the early modern period to the present. ...Eminently suitable for a range of learners, from undergraduates to researchers, the book is critical to courses and writings on the ways in which race has been, and continues to be, socially constructed in the Anglo world." -Laura A. Lewis, James Madison University "This much anticipated new edition continues the global exploration of the roots of race and racism and reveals how structural racism maintains disparities in the modern age. Followers of the epistemology of race and racism will get a historically broader and detailed explanation of why we think about groups of people the way we do today." -Janis Hutchinson, University of Houston

• PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION Introduction 1. Some Theoretical Considerations Race as a Modern Idea Ideas, Ideologies, and Worldviews The Social Reality of Race in America On the Relationship Between Biology and Race The Primordialists' Argument Race as a Worldview: A Theoretical Perspective Race and Ethnicity: Biology and Culture Notes 2. The Etymology of the Term Race in the English Language Notes 3. Antecedents of the Racial Worldview The Age of European Exploration The Rise of Capitalism and the Transformation of English Society Social Organization and Values of Early Capitalism English Ethnocentrism and the Idea of the Savage English Nationalism and Social Values in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Hereditary Social Identity: The Lesson of Catholic Spain Notes 4. The Growth of the English Ideology About Human Differences in America Earliest Contacts The Ensuing Conflicts The Backing of God and Other Justifications for Conquest The New Savages Notes 5. The Arrival of Africans and Descent into Slavery The First Africans The Descent into Permanent Slavery Was There Race Before Slavery? Why the Preference for Africans? The Problem of Labor A Focus on Physical Differences and the Invention of Social Meanings Notes 6. Comparing Slave Systems: The Significance of Racial Servitude The Background Literature and the Issues of Slavery The Nature of Slavery A Brief History of Old World Slavery Colonial Slavery Under the Spanish and Portuguese Uniqueness of the English Experience of Slavery The Significance of Slavery in the Creation of Race Ideology Notes 7. Eighteenth-Century Thought and the Crystallization of the Ideology of Race Social Values of the American Colonists Nature's Hierarchy Dominant Themes in North American Racial Beliefs Anglo-Saxonism: The Making of a Biological Myth Thomas Jefferson and the American Dilemma Notes 8. Antislavery and the Entrenchment of a Racial Worldview A Brief History of Antislavery Thought The Proslavery Response The Sociocult