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Ashley Montagu Biography

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I. Introduction
Ashley Montagu was a 20th century anthropologist whose work was based on the belief that there was no superior race within the Homosapien populace. Writing books such as Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, he was someone who was very forward thinking in his ideals and beliefs. Within his works he showed the readers that all humans are part of the Homosapien lineage instead of being two separate species, along with stating there is no race that is more superior than the other (Montagu 1972). Both ideas were still being fought against in his time culturally. He also was well known for stepping outside of studying race and focused on mother and children relationships along with child genital mutilation, both of which …show more content…

How he was raised and what was going on is a huge determinant of what he believed in and what he wanted to see change within the world. This is both a positive and negative trait in regards to how someone conducts their research and in what they publish. Within this paper I will be showing that Ashley Montagu was a forward-thinking individual and helped bring positive change within the thought process of certain societies during a very pivotal time in history and that even though his works didn’t completely change everyone’s mentality on race, he certainly helped effect …show more content…

Coon set forth the foundation for Montagues writings. He was opposed to Coon and the concept of “race” being used negatively by people who would use it against others. During the 1940’s Montagu sought to fight against the trend of “race” being a determinant of superiority and wrote a series of works that questioned the academic validity of using race within the domain of biological determinants of intelligence and superiority. He fought to end the trend, ultimately presenting his UNESCO Statement on Race and Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. This led to him and William Vogt giving the very first Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lectures, in which the topic of the lecture corresponds with General Semantics (Ramirez 1999). Due to certain disputes over his works in regards to the concept of race, Montagu was dismissed from Rutgers University. From there he found that other potential avenues of academic pursuits were blocked off. This led to his retirement of education and led on to focusing on his research and public appearances (Marks

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