City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Vanishing America, species extinction, racial peril, and the origins of conservation, Miles A. Powell

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Vanishing America

bibliography

Miles A. Powell

species extinction, racial peril, and the origins of conservation

Vanishing America examines discourses of extinction - of species and of peoples - to identify key transitions in American environmental and racial thought between the mid nineteenth and mid twentieth centuries. By 1900 many whites had begun to see themselves as an imperiled race and increasingly identified with the nation's dwindling wildlife. Fearing they would share Indians' anticipated extinction, elite environmental pundits developed racially-charged preservationist arguments that influenced the development of scientific racism, eugenics, immigration restriction, and population control, and which still inform the modern environmental movement. Vanishing America suggests that a long history of drawing connections between environmental health and the mental and physical wellbeing of white Americans has helped create an enduring divide between the nation's environmental movement, on the one hand, and the nation's poor people and nonwhite races on the other.--, Provided by publisher

Introduction: A nation's park, containing man and beast -- Surviving progress -- Preserving the frontier -- A line of unbroken descent -- The last of her tribe -- Dead of its own too-much -- Epilogue: De-extinction