The Pioneer Fund, established in 1937 by Wickliffe Preston Draper, is one of the most controversial nonprofit organizations in the United States. Long suspected of misusing social science to fuel the politics of oppression, the fund has specialized in supporting research that seeks to prove the genetic and intellectual inferiority of blacks while denying its ties to any political agenda.This powerful and provocative volume proves that the Pioneer Fund has indeed been the primary source for scientific racism. Revealing a lengthy history of concerted and clandestine activities and interests, The Funding of Scientific Racism examines for the first time archival correspondence that incriminates the fund's major players, including Draper, acting president Harry F. Weyher, and others.
Divulging evidence of the Pioneer Fund's political motivations, William H. Tucker links Draper to a Klansman's crusade to repatriate blacks in the 1930s. Subsequent directors and grantees are implicated in their support of campaigns organized in the 1960s to reverse the Brown decision, prevent passage of the Civil Rights Act, and implement a system of racially segregated private schools.
Tucker shows that these and other projects have been officially sponsored by the Pioneer Fund or surreptitiously supervised by its directors. This evidence demonstrates that any results of genuine, scientific value produced with the fund's support have been a salutary, if incidental, consequence of its actual purpose: to provide ammunition for what has essentially been a lobbying campaign to prevent the full participation of blacks in society and the polity.
"New evidence about the use and abuse of science in support of bigotry
Established in 1937 by wealthy businessman Wickliffe Draper, the nonprofit Pioneer Fund has long been accused of misusing social science to fuel the politics of oppression by supporting research that seeks to establish the genetic and intellectual inferiority of blacks.
Although the Pioneer Fund denies its ties to any political agenda, this powerful and provocative volume reveals the truth behind their long history of clandestine activities. The Funding of Scientific Racism examines for the first time archival correspondence that incriminates the fund’s major players, revealing links to a Klansman’s crusade to repatriate blacks, as well as efforts to reverse the Brown decision, prevent passage of the Civil Rights Act, and implement a system of racially segregated private schools.
"In telling this story, Tucker both shows that classic scientific racist theories continued to influence American life long after their heyday in the decade after World War I and reveals that purveyors of those theories found allies among mainstream political leaders as well as so-called extremists. . . . Readers with slight interest in Draper, Weyher, and the Pioneer Fund can nonetheless learn much about what Tucker calls a distinct 'political subsulture' of pseudo-scientific racism."--Journal of Southern History
"Until his death in 1972, Draper provided millions of dollars, both through the fund and independently of it, for 'scientific' studies of race and for campaigns against racial mixing. William H. Tucker's book is the first comprehensive history of those efforts. . . . The author of the award-winning The Science and Politics of Racial Research (1994), Tucker has sought to get around the fact that the records of the Pioneer Fund are closed by piecing together much of its story from the archives of various people involved in its projects. The effort, supplemented by research in a number of primary and secondary sources, including newsletters, tracts, and books produced by Draper's protégés, has paid off handsomely, yielding a plausible account of a socially dark and intellectually perverse fragment of American conservatism."--Journal of American History
"[Eugenics issues] take on a dramatic character when viewed in the light of William Tucker's interesting and important book. This is an extremely detailed and thoroughly researched book. . . . It makes for fascinating reading."--Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare
"The Funding of Scientific Racism is compelling and readable. Tucker demolishes the threadbare defenses the Pioneer Fund and its supporters have concocted over the last two decades."--Barry Mehler, founder and executive director of the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism
William H. Tucker is a professor of psychology at Rutgers University-Camden and the author of The Cattell Controversy: Race, Science, and Ideology and the award-winning The Science and Politics of Racial Research."
