Anti-Semitism experience shaped Boas’s rejection of biological race hierarchies

Evidence

Boas’s own experiences with anti-Semitism had shaped his hostility to segregationist ideas of biologically distinct races (and ethnicities), of the natural human hierarchy of racial and ethnic groups—that is, ideas positioning Whites over Blacks, and further positioning lily-White Anglo-Saxons over semi-White Jews. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 776

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s goal of understanding whether ideas precede policy or policy precedes ideas — here a personal experience (self-interest/identity) shaped Boas’s intellectual position, supporting Kendi’s inversion. — connects to: Boas refuted race-thinking by grounding immigrant differences in environment — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 725