Melville J. Herskovits on the African and Jewish diasporas: Race, culture and modern anthropology

Anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits’ (1895–1963) work helped to shape how African‐Americans in the United States were viewed and viewed themselves. By 1930, he challenged the prevailing view that “Negro” life‐ways were only an incomplete and pathological version of mainstream American culture. In contrast, he contributed a scholarly foundation to the claim that elements of African culture had survived in the Americas. His work supported the New Negro movement and the emergence of pan‐African identity. Curiously, however, Herskovits argued that the Jews, another diasporic group, had no distinctive culture nor were they a people. This paper reviews the development of Herskovits’ views in relation to: (1) concepts of race and culture in modern anthropology; (2) public controversies concerning assimilation versus particularism of blacks and Jews in the 1920s and 1930s; and (3) Herskovits’ Jewish identity.

Key words:

• History of Anthropology
• African‐American Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Ethnicity
• Franz Boas