Explores American anxieties about race and the nation in the context of American translation of `Essai sur l'inegalite des races humaines' by French nobleman Arthur de Gobineau. Gobineau as Father of Modern Racism; Aspects of `Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races,' by American ethnologists Josiah Nott and Henry Hotz; Differences between races; Translation of European peasant into the American Negro.