Excerpt from Anthropology and Modern Life "The American Anthropological Association repudiates statements now appearing in the United States that Negroes are biologically and in innate mental ability inferior to whites, and reaffirms the fact that there is no scientifically established evidence to justify the exclusion of any race from the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. The basic principles of equality of opportunity and equality before the law are compatible with all that is known about human biology. All races possess the abilities needed to participate fully in the democratic way of life and in modern technological civilization." Passed at the Annual Meeting of the Council of Fellows of the American Anthropological Association, November 17, 1961. On November 17, 1961, the Council of Fellows of the American Anthropological Association meeting at Philadelphia, the cradle of American democracy, passed this resolution, thus once more providing scientific support for those fighters for equality and brotherhood for whom democracy is a moral issue. At this moment of history when the specter of racism is once more walking abroad, it is especially fortunate and appropriate to have reissued in a popular edition the definitive statement on race and culture by the man who more than anyone else was responsible for providing the conceptual framework and scientific underpinnings for the anthropological position on this important contemporary problem. Franz Boas wrote Anthropology and Modern Life as a declaration of faith after more than thirty years of research in the field of race and culture. An earlier publication on the same theme was translated into German (Kultur und Rasse, Leipzig, 1914) and was eventually honored by a prominent place in the Nazi auto-da-se. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.