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Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race
This provocative study examines Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas about race, focusing especially on his attitude toward blacks, American Indians, immigration, and imperialism. Thomas G. Dyer gives careful attention to formal and nonformal aspects of Roosevelt’s thought, as revealed in his voluminous published works and personal papers.
Dyer’s book asks a number of important questions. In what proportions do popular thought and formal racial theory appear in Roosevelt’s attitudes? What was the intellectual context of his speculations on race? How was his racial thought related to broader areas of intellectual activity such as natural science and social philosophy? How did Roosevelt regard various white and nonwhite ethnic groups? How did Roosevelt’s racial thought conform to the prevailing philosophies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
Historians have traditionally disagreed about the character of Theodore Roosevelt’s racial ideology. Dyer’s illuminating study clarifies many of the relevant issues by viewing Roosevelt’s racial theory as an integrated whole.
Dyer’s book asks a number of important questions. In what proportions do popular thought and formal racial theory appear in Roosevelt’s attitudes? What was the intellectual context of his speculations on race? How was his racial thought related to broader areas of intellectual activity such as natural science and social philosophy? How did Roosevelt regard various white and nonwhite ethnic groups? How did Roosevelt’s racial thought conform to the prevailing philosophies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
Historians have traditionally disagreed about the character of Theodore Roosevelt’s racial ideology. Dyer’s illuminating study clarifies many of the relevant issues by viewing Roosevelt’s racial theory as an integrated whole.
- GenresPresidents
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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October 14, 2012
Hoganson, Kristin L. Fighting for American Manhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
Dyer, Thomas G. Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
The United States realized a big shift in domestic and foreign policy the turn of the 20th century. Thirty years after the Civil War, domestic issues such as labor, women’s suffrage, the post Reconstruction role of African Americans in the country, and the US currency debate occupied headlines. With impressive economic growth, US citizens experienced the urge to reassert themselves on the global scene. The fight for Cuban independence in 1895 provided the United States the opportunity to become a global force militarily. The failure of the United States and the Spanish to obtain a peaceful solution to Cuba altered the trajectory of US history and refashioned the American as an empire with territorial possessions near and far and a new canon of war heroes like Theodore Roosevelt. Many historians and text books glamorize the Spanish-American War, the resulting empire, and Theodore Roosevelt’s ascendency to president, but few stop to ponder the nature of these phenomena. In Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender-Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Phillippine American Wars and Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, scholars Kristin L. Hoganson and Thomas G. Dyer revisit the cause and effect of the Spanish American War and the resulting Phillippine-American War and one of its major heroes Roosevelt respectively. They aim not to retell the events of the war or rehash Roosevelt’s biography, but desire to shed new light on the subjects through the specialized lenses of gender and race. While the two books have fundamental differences, they are linked together through their specialized take on a common historical subject. They also feature common themes such as the existence of unique political convictions which contribute to their respective subjects, the use of aggression as an instrument of foreign policy, and the American crisis of degeneracy.
With many ways to revisit the happenings of the era, Hoganson and Dyer choose to look through the lenses of gender and race. An Associate Professor of History at University of Illinois Champaign Urban, Hoganson’s Fighting for American Manhood encapsulates her interests of gender (particularly masculinity studies) and imperialism. In her book, Hoganson lays out the domestic environment during the Cuban fight for independence. Particularly interested in American culture at the turn of the century, she uses gender as “building blocks” to understand why Americans took up the Cuban cause in their independence from Spain. Hoganson argues that romanticized images of Cuba; the jingoist cries for American interest there; the public image of figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley, and Senator George Frisbie Hoar; and the demands to establish an empire over former Spanish possessions can be seen through a gendered perspective, most particularly through the American reassertion of gendered roles.
Similarly, in Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, Dyer identifies Roosevelt as a man of his times, a man who allows preconceptions of race to influence his actions in the office and on the battlefield. A retired Professor Emeritus of History from the University of Georgia, Dyer’s prolific career indicates an interest in the history of higher education and in southern history. While Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race may seem a departure from these interests, Dyer spends a chapter outlining the “racial education” of Roosevelt from his early life through college and his pursuits of lifelong learning in the subject. Dyer does not hesitate to identify Roosevelt’s southern roots via his maternal ancestry. This southern orientation provides a foundation in Roosevelt’s thinking. These are themes which interest Dyer and make him an appropriate author of the topic. By recasting Roosevelt as a “racial thinker,” Dyer addresses a familiar figure through unconventional means, just as Hoganson treats the topic of the Spanish American War and its imperial result.
Further expanding on the theme of unique political convictions, Hoganson suggests that American preoccupation with a national masculine character drove the decision to intervene in the Cuban dilemma and take on colonies overseas. The 1897 Olney-Paucefort Treaty ensuring a 5 year period of arbitration on international disputes alarmed many Americans who perceived America as turning away from the masculine qualities associated with war and aggression. A campaign against arbitration, a supposed feminine idea, lumped together with a perceived feminine invasion in the political realm via the suffrage movement and women running for public office, caused many Americans to demand a return to masculine values associated with the Civil War.
Similarly, Dyer explains that Roosevelt’s fascination with race greatly factored into his policies. While Roosevelt’s racial education encompassed ideas of Anglo-Saxon superiority, he began to become interested in the development of social sciences. Neo-Lamarckism, the “inheritance of acquired characteristics” which explained “the evolution of human races and societies” and stressed the “power of environment over heredity,” factored into many of Roosevelt’s decisions in office. While Roosevelt believed in the superiority of whites, he did think that through an evolutionary process, blacks could slowly gravitate towards a state of equality. He felt that some blacks proved farther along than others and in an attempt to exemplify blacks closest to parity with whites, he gave a few higher public visibility. Examples of this in Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race include Minnie M. Cox’s appointment as postmaster at the Indianola, Mississipi post office, William Crum’s appointment as head of the customs house in Charleston, South Carolina, and Booker T. Washington’s White House invitation. While many would applaud these attempts to include African Americans, Dyer adds that they may have been shallow attempts at endearing himself to blacks, that presidential appointment of blacks went down from 1901-1909, and that gestures towards blacks were relative to the promotion of whites.
The most obvious unifying element in the books is Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s importance stems from his virility in masculinity, especially as it concerns aggression. Hoganson notes that during the war in Cuba, Roosevelt, backed by America’s masculinized foreign policy embarked on a high profile military campaign intending to seek higher office upon returning to public service. In Dyer’s book, aggressive policy always fascinated Roosevelt. Dyer states that Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812, Thomas Hart Benton, and The Winning of the West recast American history as a romantic and aggressive campaign in which an “American race” fulfilled its destiny to claim land from inferior people. Both Hoganson and Dyer books highlight aggression as a productive means of serving American interests in the era.
Fears of American degeneration are a final theme common to both books. The trepidation of degenerating into a feminine nation: one where men only knew how to work white collar jobs and where women controlled politics sparked interest in the manly endeavors of going to war with Spain and colonizing the Phillippines. According to Senator Jonathan Ross, “Stagnation is decay and ultimate death.” Due to the success of the Spanish-American War, Americans thought that a prolonged state of masculinized dominance, the occupation of the Philippines would further advance the United States and avoid the state of deterioration it experienced after the Civil War. Degeneration obsessed Roosevelt, as Dyer indicates. In his chapter on “race suicide,” Dyer argues that after seeing the American census of 1890, Roosevelt became worried that white America would be overcome by the higher reproductive capacities of inferior people, thus leading to the degeneration of America. Roosevelt advocated traditional men’s and women’s roles in the domestic sphere, suggesting that Americans perform their national duty by rearing as many Americans as possible. “When quantity falls, quality falls.” Roosevelt expected immigrants to Americanize and undesirable characteristics related to inferior races could either be bred out through miscegenation or be rendered extinct, such as what happened with native peoples.
While Fighting for American Manhood and Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race cover different topics, they feature common elements such as era, specialized historical treatment, political convictions through these specialized views, aggression, and the fear of American degeneracy. With these concerns in mind, the authors provide a cogent reassessment on the topics of the Spanish American War, colonialism, and Theodore Roosevelt. Hoganson’s book provides a cultural and gendered approach, featuring periodicals and political cartoons from the time period, while Dyer’s book is more of an intellectual history, utilizing Roosevelt’s books and personal papers as primary evidence of his thought. Either way, both books compliment the historiography of the timeframe well and cast new light on political and popular thinking of the turn of the century.
Dyer, Thomas G. Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
The United States realized a big shift in domestic and foreign policy the turn of the 20th century. Thirty years after the Civil War, domestic issues such as labor, women’s suffrage, the post Reconstruction role of African Americans in the country, and the US currency debate occupied headlines. With impressive economic growth, US citizens experienced the urge to reassert themselves on the global scene. The fight for Cuban independence in 1895 provided the United States the opportunity to become a global force militarily. The failure of the United States and the Spanish to obtain a peaceful solution to Cuba altered the trajectory of US history and refashioned the American as an empire with territorial possessions near and far and a new canon of war heroes like Theodore Roosevelt. Many historians and text books glamorize the Spanish-American War, the resulting empire, and Theodore Roosevelt’s ascendency to president, but few stop to ponder the nature of these phenomena. In Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender-Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Phillippine American Wars and Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, scholars Kristin L. Hoganson and Thomas G. Dyer revisit the cause and effect of the Spanish American War and the resulting Phillippine-American War and one of its major heroes Roosevelt respectively. They aim not to retell the events of the war or rehash Roosevelt’s biography, but desire to shed new light on the subjects through the specialized lenses of gender and race. While the two books have fundamental differences, they are linked together through their specialized take on a common historical subject. They also feature common themes such as the existence of unique political convictions which contribute to their respective subjects, the use of aggression as an instrument of foreign policy, and the American crisis of degeneracy.
With many ways to revisit the happenings of the era, Hoganson and Dyer choose to look through the lenses of gender and race. An Associate Professor of History at University of Illinois Champaign Urban, Hoganson’s Fighting for American Manhood encapsulates her interests of gender (particularly masculinity studies) and imperialism. In her book, Hoganson lays out the domestic environment during the Cuban fight for independence. Particularly interested in American culture at the turn of the century, she uses gender as “building blocks” to understand why Americans took up the Cuban cause in their independence from Spain. Hoganson argues that romanticized images of Cuba; the jingoist cries for American interest there; the public image of figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley, and Senator George Frisbie Hoar; and the demands to establish an empire over former Spanish possessions can be seen through a gendered perspective, most particularly through the American reassertion of gendered roles.
Similarly, in Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, Dyer identifies Roosevelt as a man of his times, a man who allows preconceptions of race to influence his actions in the office and on the battlefield. A retired Professor Emeritus of History from the University of Georgia, Dyer’s prolific career indicates an interest in the history of higher education and in southern history. While Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race may seem a departure from these interests, Dyer spends a chapter outlining the “racial education” of Roosevelt from his early life through college and his pursuits of lifelong learning in the subject. Dyer does not hesitate to identify Roosevelt’s southern roots via his maternal ancestry. This southern orientation provides a foundation in Roosevelt’s thinking. These are themes which interest Dyer and make him an appropriate author of the topic. By recasting Roosevelt as a “racial thinker,” Dyer addresses a familiar figure through unconventional means, just as Hoganson treats the topic of the Spanish American War and its imperial result.
Further expanding on the theme of unique political convictions, Hoganson suggests that American preoccupation with a national masculine character drove the decision to intervene in the Cuban dilemma and take on colonies overseas. The 1897 Olney-Paucefort Treaty ensuring a 5 year period of arbitration on international disputes alarmed many Americans who perceived America as turning away from the masculine qualities associated with war and aggression. A campaign against arbitration, a supposed feminine idea, lumped together with a perceived feminine invasion in the political realm via the suffrage movement and women running for public office, caused many Americans to demand a return to masculine values associated with the Civil War.
Similarly, Dyer explains that Roosevelt’s fascination with race greatly factored into his policies. While Roosevelt’s racial education encompassed ideas of Anglo-Saxon superiority, he began to become interested in the development of social sciences. Neo-Lamarckism, the “inheritance of acquired characteristics” which explained “the evolution of human races and societies” and stressed the “power of environment over heredity,” factored into many of Roosevelt’s decisions in office. While Roosevelt believed in the superiority of whites, he did think that through an evolutionary process, blacks could slowly gravitate towards a state of equality. He felt that some blacks proved farther along than others and in an attempt to exemplify blacks closest to parity with whites, he gave a few higher public visibility. Examples of this in Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race include Minnie M. Cox’s appointment as postmaster at the Indianola, Mississipi post office, William Crum’s appointment as head of the customs house in Charleston, South Carolina, and Booker T. Washington’s White House invitation. While many would applaud these attempts to include African Americans, Dyer adds that they may have been shallow attempts at endearing himself to blacks, that presidential appointment of blacks went down from 1901-1909, and that gestures towards blacks were relative to the promotion of whites.
The most obvious unifying element in the books is Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s importance stems from his virility in masculinity, especially as it concerns aggression. Hoganson notes that during the war in Cuba, Roosevelt, backed by America’s masculinized foreign policy embarked on a high profile military campaign intending to seek higher office upon returning to public service. In Dyer’s book, aggressive policy always fascinated Roosevelt. Dyer states that Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812, Thomas Hart Benton, and The Winning of the West recast American history as a romantic and aggressive campaign in which an “American race” fulfilled its destiny to claim land from inferior people. Both Hoganson and Dyer books highlight aggression as a productive means of serving American interests in the era.
Fears of American degeneration are a final theme common to both books. The trepidation of degenerating into a feminine nation: one where men only knew how to work white collar jobs and where women controlled politics sparked interest in the manly endeavors of going to war with Spain and colonizing the Phillippines. According to Senator Jonathan Ross, “Stagnation is decay and ultimate death.” Due to the success of the Spanish-American War, Americans thought that a prolonged state of masculinized dominance, the occupation of the Philippines would further advance the United States and avoid the state of deterioration it experienced after the Civil War. Degeneration obsessed Roosevelt, as Dyer indicates. In his chapter on “race suicide,” Dyer argues that after seeing the American census of 1890, Roosevelt became worried that white America would be overcome by the higher reproductive capacities of inferior people, thus leading to the degeneration of America. Roosevelt advocated traditional men’s and women’s roles in the domestic sphere, suggesting that Americans perform their national duty by rearing as many Americans as possible. “When quantity falls, quality falls.” Roosevelt expected immigrants to Americanize and undesirable characteristics related to inferior races could either be bred out through miscegenation or be rendered extinct, such as what happened with native peoples.
While Fighting for American Manhood and Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race cover different topics, they feature common elements such as era, specialized historical treatment, political convictions through these specialized views, aggression, and the fear of American degeneracy. With these concerns in mind, the authors provide a cogent reassessment on the topics of the Spanish American War, colonialism, and Theodore Roosevelt. Hoganson’s book provides a cultural and gendered approach, featuring periodicals and political cartoons from the time period, while Dyer’s book is more of an intellectual history, utilizing Roosevelt’s books and personal papers as primary evidence of his thought. Either way, both books compliment the historiography of the timeframe well and cast new light on political and popular thinking of the turn of the century.
March 29, 2022
If you are curious about T.R.s complicated and contradictory views on race, this is the book. Published in 1980, it is still the definitive study on the topic. It's a slim volume but dense, and all encompassing.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews