ABSTRACT
The systematic study of racial and ethnic relationships began to take root in institutions of higher education within the United States during the 1930s. Although social scientists had paid attention before that time to groups defined as races and ethnic groups, the earlier emphases differed from what later would predominate. Scholars who founded programs in sociology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century-figures such as William Grahan Sumner and Franklin Giddings-accepted the view from social Darwinism that biology favored some groups over others. W.I.Thomas attributed racial prejudice to an instinct of hate. He wrote in 1904: ‘In the North…there exists a sort of skinprejudice-a horror of the external aspect of the negro-and many northerners report that they have a feeling against eating from a dish handled by a negro’ (p. 610). Edward A.Ross, a central figure in the creation of sociological study at the University of Wisconsin, prepared a treatise in 1904 that ranked groups within American society. His ranking placed at the top those of Anglo-Saxon heritage, and particularly persons who had a Scotch-Irish ancestry.1
