White Philanthropy

Carnegie Corporation's An American Dilemma and the Making of a White World Order

Maribel Morey

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781469664743, 9781469664736
• eBook ISBN: 9781469664750
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory

Since its publication in 1944, many Americans have described Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma as a defining text on U.S. race relations. Here, Maribel Morey confirms with historical evidence what many critics of the book have suspected: An American Dilemma was not commissioned, funded, or written with the goal of challenging white supremacy. Instead, Morey reveals it was commissioned by Carnegie Corporation president Frederick Keppel, and researched and written by Myrdal, with the intent of solidifying white rule over Black people in the United States.

Morey details the complex global origins of An American Dilemma, illustrating its links to Carnegie Corporation’s funding of social science research meant to help white policymakers in the Anglo-American world address perceived problems in their governance of Black people. Morey also unpacks the text itself, arguing that Myrdal ultimately complemented his funder’s intentions for the project by keeping white Americans as his principal audience and guiding them towards a national policy program on Black Americans that would keep intact white domination. Because for Myrdal and Carnegie Corporation alike, international order rested on white Anglo-Americans’ continued ability to dominate effectively.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Sufficiently White: Carnegie Corporation’s International Reach
• Chapter 2. Paying for Our Well-Meant Attempts to Govern Subject Races: A Cautious Turn to Africa
• Chapter 3. From Education to the Social Sciences: Finding New Tools to Tame the “Growth of a Racial Consciousness among Black Peoples”
• Chapter 4. Building White Solidarity in South Africa
• Chapter 5. Uniting White People across Empires in Africa
• Chapter 6. Importing Malcolm Hailey’s African Survey to the United States
• Chapter 7. The Novelty of a “Hailey Type” Study in the United States
• Chapter 8. The “Hailey Type” Study Gains Support in the United States
• Chapter 9. In Sync with Carnegie Corporation: Gunnar Myrdal Offers Blueprints for a New Dynamic Equilibrium in White Anglo-American Domination
• Chapter 10. A Bound English-Speaking White World: Solidifying International Order along the Color Line
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index