cover image How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses

How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses

Mark M. Smith. University of North Carolina Press, $29.95 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-8078-3002-4

Smith, ""an Englishman who studies Southern history,"" challenges notions of race as defined by sight alone, digging into Southern history to argue all five senses played roles in how race was defined and how our understanding of it has evolved. He begins with a crude (yet apt) anecdote that exemplifies his agenda of showing how ""the association between the senses and emotion, between race-thinking and gut feeling, was, in many ways, a central theme of Southern history."" From there, he quickly takes the readers back to the shores of 16th-century Africa, where European merchants were stunned by the presence of men ""as blacke as coles."" As European and African cultures became increasingly intertwined, whites from all points across the social spectrum ""racialized what was in effect a class distinction,"" so that ""lower-class whites elevated themselves"" and looked down at (judging by the mid-century cartoon reproductions Smith includes) foul-smelling, ape-like miscreants. Enmeshed in these concepts are striking details such as how Europeans found Native Americans to smell sweet and compared the olfactory capabilities of Africans to dogs. Smith's research is rich and his prose accessible, making this an ideal primer on the socio-anthropological underpinnings of race.