The Puzzling Place of Race in American Political Science

gates threatened to withdraw if "some gentlemen" did not disavow all notions of taking "their negroes" from slaveholders, conflicts over race have been highly visible in American politics (Farrand 1966, v. II: 95, 202-22, 356, 370, 378, 415). One might expect that theoretical accounts and empirical studies of racial issues would always have been among the main themes of the discipline devoted to the study of politics in America. Yet, as many scholars have shown, that has not been the case. Instead, after a late 19th century period of explicit disciplinary racism, through much of the 20th century American political science devoted less attention to race than