The Roots of American Racism

This collection of essays focuses principally on India/White and Black/White relations in colonial America. While the principal concern of the book is on the interaction of culture and races, its more specific focus is on perception and policies, based upon the mental impression whites fashioned to help understand Native Americans and African Americans, and the colonial policies that evolved from these precepts.

One section of the book deals specifically with changing European perceptions of Indians and blacks. some of these were base upon false impressions later reversed. Many of them continued to be antagonistic to the two races. A section on "Culture and Race in Early Virginia" deals both with English subjection of the Indians and with later debate over the introduction of slavery into the colony. The final section, titled "Puritans and Indians," deals with Puritan wars against the Pequot Indians, tests of Puritan justice towards Indians, and general development of white-Indian relations in New England from 1605 to 1763.

These are a series of provocative essays - some of them revised from published essays, some written specifically for the book - that put race relations in colonial America into a new perspective.