If there was any doubt as to where anti-Black racism originated, the 16 submissions to the notorious Bordeaux essay contest on the “cause of Black skin” make a strong case for themselves. (In 1739, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences announced a contest for the best essay on the sources of “Blackness”; essays were ultimately dispatched from all over Europe, with authors ranging from naturalists to physicians to theologians.) And if there was any person who could not only uncover these never-before-published documents but also make their 18th-century-speak intelligible and relevant today, it is Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor who has written extensively on the history of race and anti-Black racism in the Enlightenment.
In his latest book, Who’s Black and Why?, Gates, with co-editor Andrew S. Curran, annotates “a hidden chapter from the eighteenth-century invention of race,” tracing the origins of intellectual racism back to this essay contest. Here, Gates inaugurates AIR MAIL’s Take Five column, sharing the movies he’s seeing, the books he’s reading, the series he’s watching, and the podcasts he’s listening to … plus, the gadget he can’t live without, and more. —Julia Vitale
