1. The New Negro (11, 1925)Google Scholar was the expansion of an issue of Survey Graphic, “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro,” that appeared on March 1, 1925. In late March (1924), Kellog, Paul, editor of Survey GraphicGoogle Scholar, contacted Locke with the idea of devoting an entire issue of his magazine to black writers and intellectuals. Throughout the year, Locke and Kellog revised and reevaluated their original ideas, made contacts with various black writers, and criticized and modified the work they had begun to receive. In January, 1925, in a letter to George Peabody (a close friend of Franz Boas's colleague Elsie Clews Parsons), Kellog explained the vision that he and Locke shared and hoped soon to achieve:

“Our number is not built around DuBois or his long time militant espousals. Neither is it built around Booker T. Washington's or Mr. Moton and their industrial—educational and rural programs. We may be altogether wrong, but we think we sense a new approach — growing out of northward migrations and the city environment — the silver lining of the injurious circumstances you speak of: the Negro expressing himself not against something but for something and so breaking with the DuBois tradition. … It seems to me that the cultural renaissance is in opposition essentially to the rural and vocational and community programs of the Hampton tradition. Near at home, perhaps, it is harder to see it; but I believe it is there and that it does offer a text by which the needs and aspirations of our Negro fellow citizens can be interpreted in a way which will win a fresh hearing. Such at least is our endeavor” (Kellog, Paul to Peabody, George, 01 28, 1925, University of Minnesota).Google Scholar

2. Even Marcus Garvey, who was profoundly critical of Locke, initially hailed the Harlem issue of Survey Graphic for not being “built around the needs of Negroes and their grievances but their contributions — around talents still half buried in napkins of prejudices and underprivilege.” Garvey's comments are in a letter from Paul Kellog to the trustees of the Kann Traveling Fellowship wherein Kellog mentions a telegram he had received from Garvey praising the Harlem issue (April 19, 1925, University of Minnesota). And years later, in Harlem Renaissance, Nathan Huggins commented that “Locke's editing of and contribution to this volume [The New Negro] and his energetic championing of the intellectual movement of Negroes in the 1920's made him the father of the New Negro and the so-called Harlem Renaissance” (Huggins, , Harlem Renaissance [New York: Oxford University Press, 1971], pp. 56–57).Google Scholar

3. Arna Bontemps vividly recalls the general sense of astonishment and euphoria that black writers experienced: “When acceptances from Harper's; Harcourts Brace; Viking; Boni and Liveright; Knopf; and other front-line publishers began coming through in quick succession, the excitement among those of us who were writing was almost unbearable. The walls of Jericho were tumbling. When new books by Negro authors were announced — any books by any Negroes — we held our breath till we could get our hands on copies. We gobbled them up, memorizing the poetry and lingering over the prose with such rapt attention that thirty years have not erased it from our minds. We were not too critical. The wonder was that we and our friends could be published at all. Of course, we had all been writing since childhood, and all of us had vaguely hoped to have something published eventually, but I think I am safe in saying we were all surprised — more than surprised. We had never dreamed that it would happen so soon” (Bronz, Stephen, Roots of Negro Racial Consciousness [New York: Libra, 1964], p. 95).Google Scholar

4. Locke, Alain, “Values and Imperatives,” in American Philosophy, Today and Tomorrow, ed. Hook, Sidney and Kallen, Horace (New York: Lee Furman, 1935), p. 312.Google Scholar

5. Locke's self-defined role as a “mid-wife” to the men and women of the Harlem Renaissance is probably best understood in the more general language of his “life-motto” — “I should like to claim as life-motto the good Greek principle, ‘Nothing in excess,’ but I have probably worn instead as the badge of circumstance, — ‘All things with a reservation’” (Locke, , “Values and Imperatives,” p. 312).Google Scholar

6. Locke, Alain, “Dark Weather Vane,” Survey Graphic (08 1936): 457.Google Scholar

7. Locke, Alain, The New Negro (1925; rept. New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 15Google Scholar. Throughout the 1920s, in such articles as the following, Locke voiced similar encouragement: “Should the Negro Be Encouraged to Cultural Equality?” Forum 77 (10 1927): 500–19Google Scholar; “A Decade of Negro Self Expression,” 26 (compiled by Alain Locke Trustees of the John F. Slater Fund-Occasional Papers, 1928); “Ethics of Culture,” Howard University Record 17 (01 1923): 178–85Google Scholar; and “Negro Contributions to America,” World Tomorrow (06 1929): 255–57.Google Scholar

8. Locke, , “Dark Weather Vane,” pp. 457–58.Google Scholar

9. Baker, Houston A., Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 73.Google Scholar

10. Huggins, Nathan, “The Alain L. Locke Symposium,” Harvard Advocate (12 1, 1973): 10.Google Scholar

11. Linnemann, Russell, ed., Alain Locke: Reflections on a Modern Renaissance Man (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1982), p. xiv.Google Scholar

12. In addition to the work of Cruse, Huggins, and Fullinwider, S. P., The Mind and Mood of Black America (Homewood, 111.: Dorsey, 1969)Google Scholar, articles on Locke began to appear in various academic journals.

13. Harris's rationale for this anthology is instructive: “No biography of Locke nor comprehensive collection of his works now exists. Moreover, relatively few articles have been published focusing attention on specific concepts and the use of terms in Locke's work. This anthology functions as an introduction to an emerging appreciation of Locke's philosophy, recognition of a subterranean deconstructive project, acknowledgment of an enigmatic moment that gave rise to a creative praxis, and a praise song for a philosophy that lived in the Harlem Renaissance and lives beyond” (“Rendering the Subtext: Subterranean Deconstructive Project,” in The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, ed. Harris, Leonard [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989], p. 287).Google Scholar

14. In addition to Johnny Washington, Ernest Mason and Leonard Harris deserve special mention for the attention each has given to Locke's philosophical ideas. See Mason, 's “Alain Locke on Race and Race Relations,” Phylon 4 (1979): 342–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; his “Black Art and the Configurations of Experience: The Philosophy of the Black Aesthetic,” College Language Association Journal 27 (1983): 1–17Google Scholar; and his “Deconstruction in the Philosophy of Alain Locke,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 23 (Winter 1988): 85–105Google Scholar; and Harris, 's “The Legitimation Crisis in American Philosophy: Crisis Resolution from the Standpoint of the Afro-American Tradition of Philosophy,” Social Science Information 26 (1987): 57–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and his “Identity: Alain Locke's Atavism,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 24 (Winter 1988): 65–83.Google Scholar

15. Although William B. Harvey considers Locke to be a “philosophical anthropologist” and situates Locke within the “German School” of anthropological thought, he gives no attention to Boas and Herskovits. See Harvey, 's “The Philosophical Anthropology of Alain Locke,”Google Scholar in Linnemann, , Alain Locke, pp. 17–28Google Scholar. And Leonard Harris links “the anthropological status of black people as humans” with Locke's The New Negro. But, as with Harvey, Harris does not bring Boas and/or Herskovits into the discussion (Harris, , “Identity”).Google Scholar

16. Somewhat arbitrarily, I have selected twenty years. Locke's dissertation was the expansion of a paper he had written at Oxford.

17. Locke, , “Values and Imperatives,” p. 313.Google Scholar

18. DuBois, W. E. B., Crisis 35 (06 1928): 202Google Scholar. Dennis, Ruthledge M., in “Relativism and Pluralism in the Social Thought of Alain Locke,”Google Scholar provides some perspective on Locke's empiricism (in Linnemann, , Alain Locke, pp. 29–49).Google Scholar

19. Mason, Ernest D., “Alain Locke's Philosophy of Value,”Google Scholar in Linnemann, , Alain Locke, p. 4.Google Scholar

20. Locke, Alain, “The Problem of Classification in the Theory of Value,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1918, p. 4.Google Scholar

21. Locke, , “Values and Imperatives,” p. 328.Google Scholar

22. Pound, Ezra, The New Age, 05 1, 1913, p. 9.Google Scholar

23. As Harris writes, “Locke's deconstructive project not only entailed a rejection of metaphysics but an effort (a) to go beyond the illusion that a given group held inherently preferable beliefs or values that in some way cohered with the nature of things, (b) to denude the romanticism of cultural pluralists who believed in the likelihood of a world without regulative value guides or imperatives, and (c) to expose the way pluralism was misguidedly used as a rouge for the perpetuation of the segregated status quo.” (“Rendering the Subtext, p. 281).

24. Harris, , “Rendering the Subtext,” pp. 279–80.Google Scholar

25. Locke, , “Values and Imperatives,” p. 330.Google Scholar

26. Winston, Michael R., Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York: Norton, 1982), p. 394.Google Scholar

27. This text grew from the article “The Mind of Primitive Man” (1901) that captured the attention of W. E. B. DuBois.

28. Other topics included “Practical and Political Conceptions of Race,” “Phenomena and Laws of Race Contacts,” “Modern Race Creeds and Their Fallacies,” and “Racial Progress and Race Adjustment.”

29. In section 4 of his lectures — “Modern Race Creeds and Their Fallacies” — Locke critiqued “The Biological Fallacy,” “The Fallacy of the Masses,” “The Fallacy of the Permanency of Race Types,” “The Fallacy of Race Ascendancy,” and “The Fallacy of Automatic Adjustment.”

30. Stewart, Jeffrey C., The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture (New York: Garland, 1983), p. 412.Google Scholar

31. Stewart, , Critical Temper, p. 413.Google Scholar

32. Locke, Alain, “The Problem of Race Classification,”Google Scholar in Harris, , Philosophy of Alain Locke, p. 168.Google Scholar

33. Locke, , “Problem of Race Classification,” p. 165.Google Scholar

34. Locke, , “Problem of Race Classification,” p. 164.Google Scholar

35. Locke, , “Problem of Race Classification,” pp. 164, 168.Google Scholar

36. Locke, , “Problem of Race Classification,” p. 169.Google Scholar

37. Locke, , “Problem of Race Classification,” p. 168.Google Scholar

38. For a recent discussion of this enduring question, see Carrithers, Michael, “Is Anthropology Art or Science?” Current Anthropology 31 (06 1990): 263–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. Herskovits goes on to say, “the individuals would be examined as to their genealogies, which are considered reliable by competent observers.… Where such definite information would be unobtainable, recourse to skin color, nose form, and other racial characteristics would be had to determine the amount of mixture.… Since the larger portion of the population of this section is of heterozygous composition, individuals not only of the first but succeeding filial generations, as well as the children of these, would be available. The Mendelian action of the characters selected would naturally follow as a subject for study, particularly in regard to the F1, F2, and succeeding series (Melville Herskovits, typescript of proposal, c. April 10, 1923, Melville Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives).

40. “I recall that sometime ago you indicated that you would like at some time to meet Mr. Locke whose review of Dixon's ‘Racial History of Man’ you liked. Mr. Locke has returned from Europe and is at present back at Howard University where he teaches. He is planning, however, to spend the eleventh and the twelfth in New York and if you are still interested it might be possible for you to see him while he is here” (Johnson, Charles S. to Herskovits, Melville, 01 8, 1924Google Scholar, Melville Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives).

41. Wissler was a colleague of Boas at Columbia and in Man and Culture (1923) drew upon Boas's critique of Graebner's Methode der Ethnologie, a critique Boas had first voiced in “Scientific Books,” Science 34 (12 8, 1911): 804–10.Google Scholar

42. Melville Herskovits to Alain Locke, Howard University.

43. On April 24, 1924, Locke wrote to Herskovits that he had revised the Survey outline and that “I have tentatively put you down for a short but very important thing on ‘Has the Negro a Unique Social Pattern?’ And I have been bold enough to characterize it as an analysis of the Negro's peculiar social pattern, and an estimate of its capacity in social survival and cultural building” (Melville Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives). However, Locke's displeasure with Herskovits's emphasis led to Locke enlisting contributions from Frank Tannenbaum and Walter White: “You will notice from the enclosed how your article finally pairs up. Your theme is the dilemma from the inside — Tannenbaum's the same from the outside.… I think it was only this point of view [the social dilemmas as opposed to the spiritual and psychological] that differentiated the approach of Herskovits. I evidently didn't get the point over. You see I have shifted him back to his main theme in the Survey article, — viz the complete Americanism of the Negro” (Locke, to White, Walter, c. Summer, 1925, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress)Google Scholar. Herskovits, however, felt that he had understood Locke all too well: “By the way, did you see the Harlem number of the Survey? You were right, for I won hands down, and they printed my paper quite as I had written it” (Herskovits, to Kallen, Horace, 03 27, 1925Google Scholar, Melville Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives).

44. In his annual report to the Board of Fellowships in the Biological Sciences of the National Research Council, Herskovits wrote, “I was fortunate when I came to start work at the Colored Orphan Asylum at Riverdale, New York City, in finding that the records of height and weight for the children who were in the orphanage, and who had passed thru it since 1912, had been kept with sufficient care thru the foresight of the Superintendent Dr. Mason Pittman to allow of very definite work being done on the influence of an orphanage environment on the racial growth curve for this type, which I had gathered or these two traits on the basis of the data gathered from the children of Public School 89, who live at home. Thru the courtesy of Professor Boas, I was afforded assistance in the arduous task of copying the measurements out of the files, and thus saved much time, since it was no small one, there being about 18000 observations on some 1500 children of both sexes” (February 28, 1925, Melville Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives).

45. Herskovits, to Locke, Alain, 02 1, 1924, Howard University.Google Scholar

46. “I am writing to President Durkee by the same mail, telling him of my change in plans and how happy I shall be to accept his very kind offer of cooperation with me in my work. Now, for several things I'd appreciate your doing. First, you might pass the word to your students who are influential among the student body of my coming, and the desirability of supporting my research by allowing themselves to be measured and urging others to do the same. I am going to try for a series of 1000 males, by the way, and I plan to stay until almost June. Again, you might pass the word around among your colleagues, and you might also scout about to see where I might find a convenient nook in which to carry on the actual measuring” (January 5, 1925, Melville Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives).

47. Boas, , “Scientific Books.”Google Scholar In his critique of Graebner's Methode der Ethnologie, Boas notes that “the exclusion of the psychological field seems to me to give to the whole ‘Method’ a mechanical character.… the complete omission of all psychological considerations makes itself keenly felt. The significance of an ethnic phenomenon is not by any means identical with its distribution in space and time, and with its more or less regular associations with other ethnic phenomena. Its historical source may perhaps be determined by geographical—historical considerations, but its gradual development and ethnic significance in a psychological sense, as it occurs in each area, must be studied by means of psychological investigations in which the different interpretations and attitudes of the people themselves toward the phenomenon present the principal material.” And, “the more we learn of primitive culture, the clearer it becomes that not only is the participation of each individual in the culture of his tribe of an individual character, or determined by the social grouping of the tribe, but that also in the same mind the most heterogenous complexes of habits, thoughts and actions may lie side by side, without ever coming into conflict” (“Scientific Books,” pp. 805, 808).Google Scholar

48. Locke, Alain “The Concept of Race as Applied to Social Culture”, Howard Review, 1 (06 1924–1925): 290.Google Scholar

49. Locke, , “Concept of Race,” p. 290.Google Scholar

50. Locke, , “Concept of Race,” p. 296.Google Scholar

51. Locke, , “Concept of Race,” p. 296.Google Scholar

52. Locke, , “Concept of Race,” p. 296.Google Scholar

53. Locke, , “Concept of Race,” p. 296.Google Scholar

54. Jackson, Walter, “Melville Herskovits and the Search For Afro-American Culture,” in Malinowski, Rivers, Benedict and Others: History of Anthropology, ed. Stocking, George (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), vol. 4, p. 95Google Scholar. Also, and more generally, Scott, David, “That Event, This Memory: Notes on the Anthropology of African Diasporas in the New World,” Diaspora 1 (Winter 1991): 261–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Drake, St. Clair “Anthropology and the Black Experience”, Black Scholar, 2(09–10 1980)Google Scholar; Handler, Richard “Boasian Anthropology and the Critique of American Culture”, American Quarterly, 42 (06 1990): 252–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Willis, William S. Jr., “Skeletons in the Anthropological Closet,” in Reinventing Anthropology, ed. Hymes, Dell (New York: Random House, 1974), pp. 121–52Google Scholar; and Szwed, John F., “An American Anthropological Dilemma: The Politics of Afro-American Culture,”Google Scholar in Hymes, , Reinventing Anthropology, pp. 153–81.Google Scholar

55. When Locke first wrote to Herskovits to interest him in the question “Has the Negro a Unique Social Pattern?” Locke's expectations were clearly expressed: “I have been bold enough to characterize it [the question] as an analysis of the Negro's peculiar social pattern, and an estimate of its capacity in social survival and culture building.” But when Herskovits wrote that Harlem was “essentially not different from any other American community,” Locke felt compelled to add in an accompanying editorial note that “old folkways may not persist, but they may leave a mental trace, subtly recorded in emotional temper and coloring social reactions” (Survey Graphic 6 [03 1925]: p. 676)Google Scholar. Not only did Locke challenge Herskovits's image of Harlem but he questioned, as well, the deeper supporting assumptions that Herskovits voiced: “What there is today in Harlem distinct from the white culture which surrounds it, is, as far as I am able to see, merely a remnant from the peasant days in the South. Of African culture, not a trace. Even the spirituals are an expression of the emotion of the Negro playing through the typical religious patterns of white America” (“The Dilemma of Social Pattern,” Survey Graphic 6 [03 1925]: 678).Google Scholar

56. Locke, , “Dilemma of Social Pattern,” p. 676.Google Scholar

57. “My work to date seems to foreshadow the fact that the American Negro is developing a homogenous type, which is being consolidated and the variability of which is, to say the least, no greater than that of White population. And if it be objected that my use of the term “American Negro” be too broad, it can only be asserted that the children studied in New York came from every section of the South as well as from the West Indies and various parts of the North, thus giving a very broad selection. It is hoped that the results of the work now being carried on at Howard University will throw further light on this problem” (Herskovits to the Board of Fellowships in the Biological Sciences [National Research Council], February 28, 1925, Melville Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives, p. 5).

58. “If it is true that the consolidation of the Negro group in this country is occurring, then there must obviously be some factor of social selection at work among these people, which is to account for the fact that breeding within the group takes place.… But that there is a smaller amount of this mixture taking place than was the case in earlier times is apparent from the fact that the genealogies I gathered in New York gave, in only a very few instances, accounts of the person measured being a primary cross; while in the genealogical material gathered at Howard University I have not found one instance of a primary cross in over 200 cases.… I was given the clue to the social factor which may account to a large degree for the development of a homogeneous type, however, in conversations recently with several members of the faculty of Howard University, who were discussing the social situation within the Negro community” (Herskovits to the Board of Fellowships in the Biological Sciences [National Research Council] February 28, 1925, Melville Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives).

59. Herskovits, Report of Progress to the Board of Fellowships in the Biological Sciences, March 1, 1925, to February 13, 1926, Melville Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives, p. 3.

60. Herskovits, Report to Board of Fellowships in the Biological Sciences, January 27, 1926, Melville Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives, p. 2.

61. Ibid., p. 2.

62. As Walter Jackson writes, “The book's novelistic format allowed scope to develop in some depth the personalities of several Saramaccans and to give a sense of how each of these individuals functioned in the culture” (Malinowski, p. 108).Google Scholar

63. Locke, Alain, “Who and What Is Negro?”Google Scholar in Harris, , Philosophy of Alain Locke, p. 209.Google Scholar

64. DuBois, W. E. B. to Kidder, A. V., 01 8, 1927Google Scholar, W. E. B. DuBois Papers, Special Collections and Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Library.

65. In “Identity: Alain Locke's Atavism,” Leonard Harris calls attention to Locke's sense of the limits of “scientific sociology”: It is not that statistics are of no use in understanding social change for Locke, but that the “inner life” of the human experience moves forward in advance of statistical research and in ways not capturable by our scientific powers” (Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 24 [Winter 1988]: 73)Google Scholar. But Harris misses the irony that the science of Boas and Herskovits helped Locke to come to this understanding.

66. In “Culture, Genuine and Spurious,” Sapir writes, “There is no sound and vigorous individual incorporation of a cultured ideal without the soil of a genuine communal culture; and no genuine communal culture without the transforming energies of personalities at once robust and saturated with the cultural values of their time and place” (Mandelbaum, David, ed., Selected Writings of Edward Sapir [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949], p. 322)Google Scholar. As Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin write of Sapir and the distinction Sapir made between a “genuine” and a “spurious” culture, Locke sought to “provide individuals … with a rich corpus of pre-established (traditional) forms and with the opportunity to ‘swingfree’” (“Tradition, Genuine or Spurious,” Journal of American Folklore 97 [07–09 1984], p. 287).Google Scholar

67. Locke, , New Negro, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

68. As Locke writes in The New Negro, “The racialism of the Negro is no limitation or reservation with respect to American life; it is only a constructive effort to build the obstructions in the stream of his progress into an efficient dam of social energy and power. Democracy itself is obstructed and stagnated to the extent that any of its channels are closed. Indeed they cannot be selectively closed. So the choice is not between one way for the Negro and another for the rest, but between American institutions frustrated on the one hand and American ideals progressively fulfilled and realized on the other” (p. 12).

And in a personal letter to Paul Kellog, Locke distinguished what he claimed to be kindred expressions of racial consciousness throughout the world from that which was taking place among black Americans: “It seems to me what they [the Irish Renaissance led by Yeats, Synge, Lady Gregory, etc.] miss is the generic character of such social and cultural awakenings: a more scientific view of culture would give them a more democratic view at the same time” (Locke, Alain to Kellog, Paul, 02 19, 1926Google Scholar, University of Minnesota).

69. “Whether it [race consciousness] actually brings into being new Armadas of conflict or argosies of cultural exchange and enlightenment can only be decided by the attitude of the dominant races in an era of critical change” (Locke, , New Negro, p. 14).Google Scholar

70. Harris, , “Identity,” p. 70.Google Scholar

71. Huggins, , “Alain L. Locke Symposium,” p. 24.Google Scholar

72. Locke, , “Values and Imperatives,” p. 313.Google Scholar

73. “No conception of philosophy, however relativistic, however opposed to absolutism, can afford to ignore the question of ultimates or abandon what has been so aptly though skeptically termed “the quest for certainty” (Locke, , “Values and Imperatives,” p. 313).Google Scholar

74. Locke, , “Values and Imperatives,” p. 314.Google Scholar

75. Locke, , “Values and Imperatives,” p. 321.Google Scholar

76. Thus, Locke proceeds to elaborate modalities of feeling (exaltation, tension, acceptance or agreement, repose or equilibrium). If, for example, one thinks a particular painting to be good or successful, the evaluation is essentially a subjective one rooted in the “form feeling” of repose or equilibrium. Although the particular merits of the painting might be defined in the course of discussion, the initial and all important response was of a more elemental nature.

77. Locke, , “Values and Imperatives,” pp. 332–33.Google Scholar

78. In “Negro Youth Speaks,” for example, Locke quoted Jean Toomer to illustrate both a “modernity of style” and a “vital originality of substance — “Georgia opened me. And it may well be said that I received my initial impulse to an individual art from my experience there” (New Negro, p. 51).Google Scholar

79. In “Some Problems of Methodology in the Social Sciences” (1930)Google Scholar, Boas writes, “The individual can be understood only as part of the society to which he belongs, and that society can be understood only on the basis of the interrelations of the constituent individuals” (Boas, , ed., Race, Language, and Culture [New York: Free Press, 1966], p. 260)Google Scholar. And in “The Aims of Anthropological Research” (1932)Google Scholar, Boas writes, “The problems of the relation of the individual to his culture, to the society in which he lives have received too little attention. The standardized anthropological data that inform us of customary behavior, give no clue to the reaction of the individual to his culture, nor to an understanding of his influence upon it” (Race, Language, and Culture, p. 258)Google Scholar. And in a volume Boas edited on General Anthropology (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1938)Google Scholar, he argues that although “it seems most desirable and worthwhile to understand each culture as a whole and to define its character,” he doubted that “it is possible to give a picture of the culture which is at the same time a picture of a personality” (pp. 680–81).

80. Locke, Alain, “Unity Through Diversity: A Baha'i Principle,” (1930)Google Scholar, in Harris, , Philosophy of Alain Locke, pp. 134–38Google Scholar. Fernandez, James W. explores in “Tolerance in a Repugnant World and Other Dilemmas in the Cultural Relativism of Melville J. Herskovits”Google Scholar the philosophical, methodological, and practical issues that Herskovits faced in his commitment to cultural relativism. As Fernandez writes, “I have posed the dilemmas, the perplexing choices, which Herskovits struggled with: cultural and/or ethical relativism, tolerance and/or tough-mindedness, practical relativism and/or applied anthropology, universals and/or particulars, world society and/or ethnocentrism — dilemmas he struggled with and, indeed, by the nature of the case, could not ever resolve” (Ethos 18 [1990]: 159).Google Scholar