Anthony Harkins
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195189506
- eISBN:
- 9780199788835
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189506.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book examines the evolution of one of the most pervasive and enduring American icons from the 18th-century to the present day. Spanning film, literature, and the entire expanse of American ...
More
This book examines the evolution of one of the most pervasive and enduring American icons from the 18th-century to the present day. Spanning film, literature, and the entire expanse of American popular culture, from comics to country music to television and the Internet, the book argues that the longevity of the hillbilly stems from its ambiguity as a marker of both social derision and regional pride. Typically associated with Appalachia or the Ozarks, the “hillbilly” was viewed by mainstream Americans simultaneously as a violent degenerate who threatens the social order, and as a keeper of traditional values of family, home, and physical production. The character was therefore both a foil to an increasingly urbanizing and industrializing America and a symbol of a nostalgic past free of the problems of contemporary life. The book also argues that “hillbillies” have played a critical role in the construction of whiteness and modernity. Middle-class Americans imagined hillbillies, with their supposedly pure Anglo-Saxon or Scottish origins, as an exotic race, akin to blacks and Indians, but still native and white, as opposed to the growing influx of immigrants in the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, the image's whiteness allowed crude caricatures of Southern mountaineers to persist long after similar ethnic and racial stereotypes had become socially unacceptable.Less
This book examines the evolution of one of the most pervasive and enduring American icons from the 18th-century to the present day. Spanning film, literature, and the entire expanse of American popular culture, from comics to country music to television and the Internet, the book argues that the longevity of the hillbilly stems from its ambiguity as a marker of both social derision and regional pride. Typically associated with Appalachia or the Ozarks, the “hillbilly” was viewed by mainstream Americans simultaneously as a violent degenerate who threatens the social order, and as a keeper of traditional values of family, home, and physical production. The character was therefore both a foil to an increasingly urbanizing and industrializing America and a symbol of a nostalgic past free of the problems of contemporary life. The book also argues that “hillbillies” have played a critical role in the construction of whiteness and modernity. Middle-class Americans imagined hillbillies, with their supposedly pure Anglo-Saxon or Scottish origins, as an exotic race, akin to blacks and Indians, but still native and white, as opposed to the growing influx of immigrants in the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, the image's whiteness allowed crude caricatures of Southern mountaineers to persist long after similar ethnic and racial stereotypes had become socially unacceptable.
Katelyn E. Knox
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781781383094
- eISBN:
- 9781781384152
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781383094.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
In Race on Display in 20th- and 21st-Century France Knox turns the tables France’s rhetoric of ‘internal otherness’, asking her reader not to spot those deemed France’s others but rather to ...
More
In Race on Display in 20th- and 21st-Century France Knox turns the tables France’s rhetoric of ‘internal otherness’, asking her reader not to spot those deemed France’s others but rather to deconstruct the very gazes that produce them. Weaving together a vast corpus of colonial French children’s comics, Francophone novels, and African popular music, fashion, and dance, Knox traces how the ways colonial ‘human zoos’ invited their French spectators to gaze on their colonized others still inform the frameworks through which racial and ethnic minorities are made—and make themselves—visible in contemporary France. In addition to analyzing how literature and music depicting immigration, immigrants and their descendants in France make race and ethnicity visible, Knox also illustrates how the works she analyzes self-reflexively ask whether they, as commodities sold within wider cultural marketplaces, perpetuate the culture of exoticism they seek to contest. Finally, Knox contends that to take seriously the way the texts interrogate the relationship between power, privilege, and the gaze also requires reconsidering the visions of normalcy from which racial and ethnic minorities supposedly depart. She thus concludes by exposing a critical ‘blind spot’ in French and Francophone cultural studies—whiteness—before subjecting it to the same scrutiny France’s ‘visible minorities’ face.Less
In Race on Display in 20th- and 21st-Century France Knox turns the tables France’s rhetoric of ‘internal otherness’, asking her reader not to spot those deemed France’s others but rather to deconstruct the very gazes that produce them. Weaving together a vast corpus of colonial French children’s comics, Francophone novels, and African popular music, fashion, and dance, Knox traces how the ways colonial ‘human zoos’ invited their French spectators to gaze on their colonized others still inform the frameworks through which racial and ethnic minorities are made—and make themselves—visible in contemporary France. In addition to analyzing how literature and music depicting immigration, immigrants and their descendants in France make race and ethnicity visible, Knox also illustrates how the works she analyzes self-reflexively ask whether they, as commodities sold within wider cultural marketplaces, perpetuate the culture of exoticism they seek to contest. Finally, Knox contends that to take seriously the way the texts interrogate the relationship between power, privilege, and the gaze also requires reconsidering the visions of normalcy from which racial and ethnic minorities supposedly depart. She thus concludes by exposing a critical ‘blind spot’ in French and Francophone cultural studies—whiteness—before subjecting it to the same scrutiny France’s ‘visible minorities’ face.
Heather Martel
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813066189
- eISBN:
- 9780813058399
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813066189.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
Deadly Virtue argues that the history of the French Calvinist attempt to colonize Florida in the 1560s is key to understanding the roots of American whiteness in sixteenth-century colonialism, ...
More
Deadly Virtue argues that the history of the French Calvinist attempt to colonize Florida in the 1560s is key to understanding the roots of American whiteness in sixteenth-century colonialism, science, and Protestantism. The book places the history of Fort Caroline, Florida, into the context of Protestant colonialism and understandings of the body, emotion, and identity held in common by travelers throughout the early Atlantic world. Protestants envisioned finding a rich and powerful Indigenous king, converting him to Christianity, and then establishing a Protestant-Indigenous alliance to build an empire under Indigenous leadership that would compete with European monarchies. However, when the colony was wiped out by the Spanish, these Protestants took this as a condemnation from their god for this plan of collaborating with Indigenous people and developed separatist strategies for future Protestant colonial projects. By introducing the reader to the humoral model of the body, this book shows how race, gender, sexuality, and Christian morality came to intersect in modern understandings of whiteness.Less
Deadly Virtue argues that the history of the French Calvinist attempt to colonize Florida in the 1560s is key to understanding the roots of American whiteness in sixteenth-century colonialism, science, and Protestantism. The book places the history of Fort Caroline, Florida, into the context of Protestant colonialism and understandings of the body, emotion, and identity held in common by travelers throughout the early Atlantic world. Protestants envisioned finding a rich and powerful Indigenous king, converting him to Christianity, and then establishing a Protestant-Indigenous alliance to build an empire under Indigenous leadership that would compete with European monarchies. However, when the colony was wiped out by the Spanish, these Protestants took this as a condemnation from their god for this plan of collaborating with Indigenous people and developed separatist strategies for future Protestant colonial projects. By introducing the reader to the humoral model of the body, this book shows how race, gender, sexuality, and Christian morality came to intersect in modern understandings of whiteness.
Kendra Marston
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474430296
- eISBN:
- 9781474453608
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474430296.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book is the first extended study into the politics of whiteness inherent within postfeminist popular cinema. It analyses a selection of Hollywood films dating from the turn of the millennium, ...
More
This book is the first extended study into the politics of whiteness inherent within postfeminist popular cinema. It analyses a selection of Hollywood films dating from the turn of the millennium, arguing that the character of the ‘melancholic white woman’ operates as a trope through which to explore the excesses of late capitalism and a crisis of faith in the American dream. Melancholia can function as a form of social capital for these characters yet betrays its proximity to a gendered history of emotion and psychopathology. This figure is alternately idealised or scapegoated depending on how well she navigates the perils of postfeminist ideology. Furthermore, the book considers how performances of melancholia and mental distress can confer benefits for Hollywood actresses and female auteurs on the labour market, which in turn has contributed to the maintenance of white hegemony within the mainstream US film industry. Case studies in the book include Black Swan (Darren Aronofksy 2010), Gone Girl (David Fincher 2014) and Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton 2010).Less
This book is the first extended study into the politics of whiteness inherent within postfeminist popular cinema. It analyses a selection of Hollywood films dating from the turn of the millennium, arguing that the character of the ‘melancholic white woman’ operates as a trope through which to explore the excesses of late capitalism and a crisis of faith in the American dream. Melancholia can function as a form of social capital for these characters yet betrays its proximity to a gendered history of emotion and psychopathology. This figure is alternately idealised or scapegoated depending on how well she navigates the perils of postfeminist ideology. Furthermore, the book considers how performances of melancholia and mental distress can confer benefits for Hollywood actresses and female auteurs on the labour market, which in turn has contributed to the maintenance of white hegemony within the mainstream US film industry. Case studies in the book include Black Swan (Darren Aronofksy 2010), Gone Girl (David Fincher 2014) and Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton 2010).
Harriet Pollack (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496826145
- eISBN:
- 9781496826190
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496826145.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
Responding to work begun in the 2013 collection Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race that mined and deciphered the complexity of her responses to the Jim Crow South, the thirteen diverse voices of New ...
More
Responding to work begun in the 2013 collection Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race that mined and deciphered the complexity of her responses to the Jim Crow South, the thirteen diverse voices of New Essays on Eudora Welty, Class, and Race deepen, reflect on, and respond to those seminal discussions. These essays freshly consider such topics as Welty’s treatment of African-American signifying in her short stories, and her attention to public street performances interacting with Jim Crow rules in her unpublished photographs. They consider her strategic adaptations of Gothic plots, black pastoral, civil war stories, haunted houses, and film noir. They frame Welty’s work with such subjects as Bob Dylan’s songwriting, the idea and history of the orphan in American, and standup comedy. They compare her handling of whiteness and race to that of other contemporary authors such as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Chester Himes, and Alice Walker. Additionally, several discussions bring her master-work The Golden Apples and her novel Losing Battles, under-represented in the earlier conversation, into new focus.
The collection as a whole will help us to understand more clearly Welty’s artistic commentary on her time and place as well as the way her vision developed in a timespan moving America towards increased social awareness. Moreover, as a group, these essays provide insight into Welty as an innovative craftswoman and modernist technician, successfully altering literary form with her frequent pointed makeovers of familiar story patterns, plots, and genres. Together they show her as a remarkable writer idiosyncratically engaging and confidently altering literary history.Less
Responding to work begun in the 2013 collection Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race that mined and deciphered the complexity of her responses to the Jim Crow South, the thirteen diverse voices of New Essays on Eudora Welty, Class, and Race deepen, reflect on, and respond to those seminal discussions. These essays freshly consider such topics as Welty’s treatment of African-American signifying in her short stories, and her attention to public street performances interacting with Jim Crow rules in her unpublished photographs. They consider her strategic adaptations of Gothic plots, black pastoral, civil war stories, haunted houses, and film noir. They frame Welty’s work with such subjects as Bob Dylan’s songwriting, the idea and history of the orphan in American, and standup comedy. They compare her handling of whiteness and race to that of other contemporary authors such as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Chester Himes, and Alice Walker. Additionally, several discussions bring her master-work The Golden Apples and her novel Losing Battles, under-represented in the earlier conversation, into new focus.
The collection as a whole will help us to understand more clearly Welty’s artistic commentary on her time and place as well as the way her vision developed in a timespan moving America towards increased social awareness. Moreover, as a group, these essays provide insight into Welty as an innovative craftswoman and modernist technician, successfully altering literary form with her frequent pointed makeovers of familiar story patterns, plots, and genres. Together they show her as a remarkable writer idiosyncratically engaging and confidently altering literary history.
Amy C. Steinbugler
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199743551
- eISBN:
- 9780199979370
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199743551.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
To explore how interracial intimacy shapes individual racial identities, this chapter temporarily sets aside the sociological concept of racework and takes on a social-psychological perspective. It ...
More
To explore how interracial intimacy shapes individual racial identities, this chapter temporarily sets aside the sociological concept of racework and takes on a social-psychological perspective. It analyzes partners’ experiences in terms of the concept of “identity,” the approach that psychologists and social psychologists have used to understand how individuals think of their own Whiteness and Blackness. The chapter begins by contextualizing White narratives within social-psychological research on Whiteness and then turns to an examination of the mixed impact that interracial intimacy has on White partners’ racial identities. It focuses the analysis on the racial identity of White partners in part because only Whites showed significant variation with respect to the influence of interracial intimacy on racial identity, and in part because that variability has significant potential consequences for theories that propose interracial contact as a means of gradually dissolving White racial prejudice. The narratives in this chapter offer an opportunity to examine that idea more carefully.Less
To explore how interracial intimacy shapes individual racial identities, this chapter temporarily sets aside the sociological concept of racework and takes on a social-psychological perspective. It analyzes partners’ experiences in terms of the concept of “identity,” the approach that psychologists and social psychologists have used to understand how individuals think of their own Whiteness and Blackness. The chapter begins by contextualizing White narratives within social-psychological research on Whiteness and then turns to an examination of the mixed impact that interracial intimacy has on White partners’ racial identities. It focuses the analysis on the racial identity of White partners in part because only Whites showed significant variation with respect to the influence of interracial intimacy on racial identity, and in part because that variability has significant potential consequences for theories that propose interracial contact as a means of gradually dissolving White racial prejudice. The narratives in this chapter offer an opportunity to examine that idea more carefully.
Helena Liu
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781529200041
- eISBN:
- 9781529200096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529200041.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
This chapter examines the hegemony of white masculinity and critiques the imperialist fantasy of white masculine dominance, strength and power. This historical image bestowed white men the right to ...
More
This chapter examines the hegemony of white masculinity and critiques the imperialist fantasy of white masculine dominance, strength and power. This historical image bestowed white men the right to command and control humanity, which translates in contemporary organisational practice to the abiding association of white masculinity with leadership. Classical leadership theories are explored, showing how mainstream texts from charismatic leadership to transformational leadership assume and celebrate a white masculine subject. Media profiles of celebrity CEOs, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs, are analysed to illustrate the ways contemporary business leadership embodies white masculine ideals.Less
This chapter examines the hegemony of white masculinity and critiques the imperialist fantasy of white masculine dominance, strength and power. This historical image bestowed white men the right to command and control humanity, which translates in contemporary organisational practice to the abiding association of white masculinity with leadership. Classical leadership theories are explored, showing how mainstream texts from charismatic leadership to transformational leadership assume and celebrate a white masculine subject. Media profiles of celebrity CEOs, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs, are analysed to illustrate the ways contemporary business leadership embodies white masculine ideals.
Veronica T. Watson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617038891
- eISBN:
- 9781621039808
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617038891.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
The Souls of White Folks: African American Writers Theorize Whiteness is the first study to consider the substantial body of African American writing that critiques Whiteness as social construction ...
More
The Souls of White Folks: African American Writers Theorize Whiteness is the first study to consider the substantial body of African American writing that critiques Whiteness as social construction and racial identity. Arguing against the prevailing approach to these texts (which are generally known as “white life literature”) that says African American writers retreated from issues of “race” when they wrote about Whiteness, instead this body of literature is identified as an African American intellectual and literary tradition that is named here as “the literature of white estrangement.” In chapters that theorize white double consciousness (W.E.B. DuBois and Charles Chesnutt), white womanhood and class identity (Zora Neale Hurston and Frank Yerby), and the socio-spatial subjectivity of Southern Whites during the Civil Rights era (Melba Patillo Beals), the historically situated theories and analyses of Whiteness provided by the literature of white estrangement from the late 19th through the mid-twentieth centuries are explored. The author argues that these texts are best understood as part of a multi-pronged approach by African American writers to challenge and dismantle white supremacy in the U.S. and demonstrates that they have an important place in the growing field of critical whiteness studies. The Souls of White Folk utilizes interdisciplinary approaches to excavate the justifications and meanings of whiteness at various historical moments and is attentive to the ways that African American writers wrote against those mythologies and traditions of whiteness in pursuit of racial and social equality.Less
The Souls of White Folks: African American Writers Theorize Whiteness is the first study to consider the substantial body of African American writing that critiques Whiteness as social construction and racial identity. Arguing against the prevailing approach to these texts (which are generally known as “white life literature”) that says African American writers retreated from issues of “race” when they wrote about Whiteness, instead this body of literature is identified as an African American intellectual and literary tradition that is named here as “the literature of white estrangement.” In chapters that theorize white double consciousness (W.E.B. DuBois and Charles Chesnutt), white womanhood and class identity (Zora Neale Hurston and Frank Yerby), and the socio-spatial subjectivity of Southern Whites during the Civil Rights era (Melba Patillo Beals), the historically situated theories and analyses of Whiteness provided by the literature of white estrangement from the late 19th through the mid-twentieth centuries are explored. The author argues that these texts are best understood as part of a multi-pronged approach by African American writers to challenge and dismantle white supremacy in the U.S. and demonstrates that they have an important place in the growing field of critical whiteness studies. The Souls of White Folk utilizes interdisciplinary approaches to excavate the justifications and meanings of whiteness at various historical moments and is attentive to the ways that African American writers wrote against those mythologies and traditions of whiteness in pursuit of racial and social equality.
TERESA HUBEL
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198075981
- eISBN:
- 9780199081523
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198075981.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter comments on the relative insignificance of whiteness to Hindi film narratives, with white characters turning up, when they do, often as peripheral figures to create the effect of ...
More
This chapter comments on the relative insignificance of whiteness to Hindi film narratives, with white characters turning up, when they do, often as peripheral figures to create the effect of historical accuracy. It argues that in Hindi cinema, whiteness cannot function as it does in the West, where the legacy of imperialism has made it an unmarked category, whose invisibility allows it to function as a norm against which the aberration of racial others may be measured. In Indian films, whiteness is marked; and it is, increasingly, markedly white—to be resisted, or desired, or dismissed.Less
This chapter comments on the relative insignificance of whiteness to Hindi film narratives, with white characters turning up, when they do, often as peripheral figures to create the effect of historical accuracy. It argues that in Hindi cinema, whiteness cannot function as it does in the West, where the legacy of imperialism has made it an unmarked category, whose invisibility allows it to function as a norm against which the aberration of racial others may be measured. In Indian films, whiteness is marked; and it is, increasingly, markedly white—to be resisted, or desired, or dismissed.
Monika Gosin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501738234
- eISBN:
- 9781501738258
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501738234.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
The Politics of Division deconstructs antagonistic discourses that circulated in local Miami press between African-Americans, “white” Cubans, and “black” Cubans during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift and ...
More
The Politics of Division deconstructs antagonistic discourses that circulated in local Miami press between African-Americans, “white” Cubans, and “black” Cubans during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift and the 1994 Balsero Crisis. In its challenge to discourses which pit these groups against one another, the book examines the nuanced ways that identities such as “black,” “white,” and “Cuban” have been constructed and negotiated in the context of Miami’s historical multi-ethnic tensions. The book argues that dominant race-making ideologies of the white establishment regarding “worthy citizenship” shape inter-minority conflict as groups negotiate their precarious positioning within the nation. The book contends that the lived experiences of the African-Americans, white Cubans, and Afro-Cubans involved disrupt binary frames of worthy citizenship narratives, illuminating the greater complexity of racialized identities. Foregrounding the oft-neglected voices of Afro-Cubans, the book highlights how their specific racial positioning offers a challenge to white Cuban-American anti-blackness and complicates narratives that placed African-American “natives” in opposition to (white) Cuban “foreigners,” while revealing also how Afro-Cubans and other Afro-Latinos negotiate racial meanings in the United States. Focusing on the intricacy of interminority tensions in Miami, the book adds dimension to modern debates about race, blackness, immigration, interethnic relations, and national belonging.Less
The Politics of Division deconstructs antagonistic discourses that circulated in local Miami press between African-Americans, “white” Cubans, and “black” Cubans during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift and the 1994 Balsero Crisis. In its challenge to discourses which pit these groups against one another, the book examines the nuanced ways that identities such as “black,” “white,” and “Cuban” have been constructed and negotiated in the context of Miami’s historical multi-ethnic tensions. The book argues that dominant race-making ideologies of the white establishment regarding “worthy citizenship” shape inter-minority conflict as groups negotiate their precarious positioning within the nation. The book contends that the lived experiences of the African-Americans, white Cubans, and Afro-Cubans involved disrupt binary frames of worthy citizenship narratives, illuminating the greater complexity of racialized identities. Foregrounding the oft-neglected voices of Afro-Cubans, the book highlights how their specific racial positioning offers a challenge to white Cuban-American anti-blackness and complicates narratives that placed African-American “natives” in opposition to (white) Cuban “foreigners,” while revealing also how Afro-Cubans and other Afro-Latinos negotiate racial meanings in the United States. Focusing on the intricacy of interminority tensions in Miami, the book adds dimension to modern debates about race, blackness, immigration, interethnic relations, and national belonging.
Will Jackson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780719088896
- eISBN:
- 9781781705827
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719088896.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
Kenya Colony, for the British at least, has customarily been imagined as a place of wealthy settler-farmers, sun-lit panoramas and the adventure of safari. Yet for the majority of Europeans who went ...
More
Kenya Colony, for the British at least, has customarily been imagined as a place of wealthy settler-farmers, sun-lit panoramas and the adventure of safari. Yet for the majority of Europeans who went there life was very different. This book offers an unprecedented new account of what was - supposedly - the most picturesque of Britain's colonies overseas. While Kenya's romantic reputation has served to perpetuate the notion that Europeans enjoyed untroubled command, what the lives of Kenya's white insane powerfully describe are stories of conflict, immiseration, estrangement and despair. Crucially, Europeans who became impoverished in Kenya or who transgressed the boundary lines separating colonizer from colonized subverted the myth that Europeans enjoyed a natural right to rule. Because a deviation from the settler ideal was politically problematic, therefore, Europeans who failed to conform to the collective self-image were customarily absented, from the colony itself in the first instance and latterly from both popular and scholarly historical accounts. Bringing into view the lives of Kenya's white insane makes for an imaginative and intellectual engagement with realms of human history that, so colonial ideologies would have us believe, simply were not there. Tracing the pathways that led an individual to the hospital gates, meanwhile, shows up the complex interplay between madness and marginality in a society for which deviance was never intended to be managed but comprehensively denied.Less
Kenya Colony, for the British at least, has customarily been imagined as a place of wealthy settler-farmers, sun-lit panoramas and the adventure of safari. Yet for the majority of Europeans who went there life was very different. This book offers an unprecedented new account of what was - supposedly - the most picturesque of Britain's colonies overseas. While Kenya's romantic reputation has served to perpetuate the notion that Europeans enjoyed untroubled command, what the lives of Kenya's white insane powerfully describe are stories of conflict, immiseration, estrangement and despair. Crucially, Europeans who became impoverished in Kenya or who transgressed the boundary lines separating colonizer from colonized subverted the myth that Europeans enjoyed a natural right to rule. Because a deviation from the settler ideal was politically problematic, therefore, Europeans who failed to conform to the collective self-image were customarily absented, from the colony itself in the first instance and latterly from both popular and scholarly historical accounts. Bringing into view the lives of Kenya's white insane makes for an imaginative and intellectual engagement with realms of human history that, so colonial ideologies would have us believe, simply were not there. Tracing the pathways that led an individual to the hospital gates, meanwhile, shows up the complex interplay between madness and marginality in a society for which deviance was never intended to be managed but comprehensively denied.
Brett L. Shadle
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719095344
- eISBN:
- 9781781708910
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719095344.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
Kenya’s white settlers have long captivated observers. They are alternately celebrated and condemned, painted as romantic pioneers or hedonistic bed-hoppers or crude racists. If we wish to better ...
More
Kenya’s white settlers have long captivated observers. They are alternately celebrated and condemned, painted as romantic pioneers or hedonistic bed-hoppers or crude racists. If we wish to better understand Kenya’s tortured history, however, we must examine settlers not as caricatures, but as people inhabiting a unique historical moment. We must ask, what animated their lives? What comforted them and what unnerved them, to whom did they direct love, and to whom violence? The Souls of White Folk takes seriously – though not uncritically – what settlers said, how they viewed themselves and their world. It argues that the settler soul was composed of a series of interlaced ideas: settlers equated civilization with a (hard to define) whiteness; they were emotionally enriched through claims to paternalism and trusteeship over Africans; they felt themselves constantly threatened by Africans, by the state, and by the moral failures of other settlers; and they daily enacted their claims to supremacy through rituals of prestige, deference, humiliation, and violence. The book explains how settlers could proclaim real affection for their African servants, tend to them with intimate medical procedures, as well as whip, punch and kick them – for these were central to the joy of settlement, and the preservation of settlement. It explains why settlers could be as equally alarmed by an African man with a fine hat, Russian Jews, and a black policeman, as by white drunkards, adulterers, and judges – all posed dangers to white prestige.Less
Kenya’s white settlers have long captivated observers. They are alternately celebrated and condemned, painted as romantic pioneers or hedonistic bed-hoppers or crude racists. If we wish to better understand Kenya’s tortured history, however, we must examine settlers not as caricatures, but as people inhabiting a unique historical moment. We must ask, what animated their lives? What comforted them and what unnerved them, to whom did they direct love, and to whom violence? The Souls of White Folk takes seriously – though not uncritically – what settlers said, how they viewed themselves and their world. It argues that the settler soul was composed of a series of interlaced ideas: settlers equated civilization with a (hard to define) whiteness; they were emotionally enriched through claims to paternalism and trusteeship over Africans; they felt themselves constantly threatened by Africans, by the state, and by the moral failures of other settlers; and they daily enacted their claims to supremacy through rituals of prestige, deference, humiliation, and violence. The book explains how settlers could proclaim real affection for their African servants, tend to them with intimate medical procedures, as well as whip, punch and kick them – for these were central to the joy of settlement, and the preservation of settlement. It explains why settlers could be as equally alarmed by an African man with a fine hat, Russian Jews, and a black policeman, as by white drunkards, adulterers, and judges – all posed dangers to white prestige.
Camille Walsh
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469638942
- eISBN:
- 9781469638959
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469638942.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
In the United States, it is quite common to lay claim to the benefits of society by appealing to “taxpayer citizenship”--the idea that, as taxpayers, we deserve access to certain social services like ...
More
In the United States, it is quite common to lay claim to the benefits of society by appealing to “taxpayer citizenship”--the idea that, as taxpayers, we deserve access to certain social services like a public education. Tracing the genealogy of this concept, this book shows how tax policy and taxpayer identity were built on the foundations of white supremacy and intertwined with ideas of whiteness in civil rights law and constitutional law. From the origins of unequal public school funding after the Civil War and the history of African American families resisting segregated taxation through school desegregation cases from Brown v. Board of Education to San Antonio v. Rodriguez in the 1970s, this study spans over a century of racial injustice, dramatic courtroom clashes, and white supremacist backlash to collective justice claims.
Incorporating letters from everyday individuals as well as the private notes of Supreme Court justices as they deliberated, this legal history reveals how the idea of a “taxpayer” identity contributed to the contemporary crises of public education, racial disparity, and income inequality.Less
In the United States, it is quite common to lay claim to the benefits of society by appealing to “taxpayer citizenship”--the idea that, as taxpayers, we deserve access to certain social services like a public education. Tracing the genealogy of this concept, this book shows how tax policy and taxpayer identity were built on the foundations of white supremacy and intertwined with ideas of whiteness in civil rights law and constitutional law. From the origins of unequal public school funding after the Civil War and the history of African American families resisting segregated taxation through school desegregation cases from Brown v. Board of Education to San Antonio v. Rodriguez in the 1970s, this study spans over a century of racial injustice, dramatic courtroom clashes, and white supremacist backlash to collective justice claims.
Incorporating letters from everyday individuals as well as the private notes of Supreme Court justices as they deliberated, this legal history reveals how the idea of a “taxpayer” identity contributed to the contemporary crises of public education, racial disparity, and income inequality.
Angelina E. Castagno
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816681631
- eISBN:
- 9781452948645
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816681631.001.0001
- Subject:
- Education, Secondary Education
Educators across the nation are engaged in well-meaning efforts to address diversity in schools given the current context of NCLB, Race to the Top, and the associated pressures of standardization and ...
More
Educators across the nation are engaged in well-meaning efforts to address diversity in schools given the current context of NCLB, Race to the Top, and the associated pressures of standardization and accountability. Through rich ethnographic accounts of teachers in two demographically different secondary schools in the same urban district, this book investigates how whiteness operates in ways that thwart (and sometimes co-opt) even the best intentions and common sense—thus resulting in educational policies and practices that reinforce the status quo and protect whiteness rather than working towards greater equity. Whereas most discussions of the education of diverse students focus on the students and families themselves, the emphasis in this book is on structural and ideological mechanisms of whiteness. Whiteness maintains dominance and inequity by perpetuating and legitimating the status quo while simultaneously maintaining a veneer of neutrality, equality, and compassion. Framed by Critical Race Theory and Whiteness Studies, this book employs concepts like interest convergence, a critique of liberalism, and the possessive investment in whiteness to better understand diversity-related educational policy and practice. Although in theory most diversity-related educational policies and practices promise to bring about greater equity, too often in practice they actually maintain, legitimate, and thus perpetuate whiteness. This book not only sheds light on this disconnect between the promises and practices of diversity-related initiatives, but also provides some understanding of why the disconnect persists.Less
Educators across the nation are engaged in well-meaning efforts to address diversity in schools given the current context of NCLB, Race to the Top, and the associated pressures of standardization and accountability. Through rich ethnographic accounts of teachers in two demographically different secondary schools in the same urban district, this book investigates how whiteness operates in ways that thwart (and sometimes co-opt) even the best intentions and common sense—thus resulting in educational policies and practices that reinforce the status quo and protect whiteness rather than working towards greater equity. Whereas most discussions of the education of diverse students focus on the students and families themselves, the emphasis in this book is on structural and ideological mechanisms of whiteness. Whiteness maintains dominance and inequity by perpetuating and legitimating the status quo while simultaneously maintaining a veneer of neutrality, equality, and compassion. Framed by Critical Race Theory and Whiteness Studies, this book employs concepts like interest convergence, a critique of liberalism, and the possessive investment in whiteness to better understand diversity-related educational policy and practice. Although in theory most diversity-related educational policies and practices promise to bring about greater equity, too often in practice they actually maintain, legitimate, and thus perpetuate whiteness. This book not only sheds light on this disconnect between the promises and practices of diversity-related initiatives, but also provides some understanding of why the disconnect persists.
Melanie Williams
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474405638
- eISBN:
- 9781474434843
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474405638.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This concluding chapter goes back over the time period covered by the book’s preceeding chapters and thinks about the exclusisons from the category of star which have operated in British cinema, with ...
More
This concluding chapter goes back over the time period covered by the book’s preceeding chapters and thinks about the exclusisons from the category of star which have operated in British cinema, with particular emphasis on the whiteness of the ‘English Rose’ ideal which still dominates British female stardom in spite of some inroads towards a greater BAME presence and greater ethnic diversity. The exclusionary middle-class and heteronormative dimensions to idealised visions of British femininity are also assessed.Less
This concluding chapter goes back over the time period covered by the book’s preceeding chapters and thinks about the exclusisons from the category of star which have operated in British cinema, with particular emphasis on the whiteness of the ‘English Rose’ ideal which still dominates British female stardom in spite of some inroads towards a greater BAME presence and greater ethnic diversity. The exclusionary middle-class and heteronormative dimensions to idealised visions of British femininity are also assessed.
Edgar Garcia
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226658971
- eISBN:
- 9780226659169
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226659169.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter investigates what anthropologist Michael Taussig calls “the death space of signification,” or the act of language that “challenges the unity of the symbol, the transcendent totalization ...
More
This chapter investigates what anthropologist Michael Taussig calls “the death space of signification,” or the act of language that “challenges the unity of the symbol, the transcendent totalization binding the image to that which it represents.” Taussig refers to linguistic practices that he saw in the Colombian Amazon in the 1970s and 80s, where shamans were tasked with healing people suffering from the violence and terror of the rubber extraction business. Existentially threatened by neocolonial governance, the shamans ritualized erasure and negativization to break apart the dominant symbols of that governance, interpolating in the gaps of these signifiers new concretions of space, time, being, belonging, and, indeed, political disappearance. Pushing into that pliability, this chapter examines the lateral movement of shamanic technique across neoliberal borderlands into the writings of Gloria Anzaldúa and William Burroughs, two writers whose signal methods of cutting and canceling text were derived from encounters with folk healing. The comparison of this apparently incompatible pair further problematizes our reception of authors who bear different social locations yet encounter comparable challenges in a set of linguistic techniques. Such a reading reframes Anzaldúa’s field-defining mestiza intersectionality as a position not of identity formation but of identity deformation.Less
This chapter investigates what anthropologist Michael Taussig calls “the death space of signification,” or the act of language that “challenges the unity of the symbol, the transcendent totalization binding the image to that which it represents.” Taussig refers to linguistic practices that he saw in the Colombian Amazon in the 1970s and 80s, where shamans were tasked with healing people suffering from the violence and terror of the rubber extraction business. Existentially threatened by neocolonial governance, the shamans ritualized erasure and negativization to break apart the dominant symbols of that governance, interpolating in the gaps of these signifiers new concretions of space, time, being, belonging, and, indeed, political disappearance. Pushing into that pliability, this chapter examines the lateral movement of shamanic technique across neoliberal borderlands into the writings of Gloria Anzaldúa and William Burroughs, two writers whose signal methods of cutting and canceling text were derived from encounters with folk healing. The comparison of this apparently incompatible pair further problematizes our reception of authors who bear different social locations yet encounter comparable challenges in a set of linguistic techniques. Such a reading reframes Anzaldúa’s field-defining mestiza intersectionality as a position not of identity formation but of identity deformation.
Heather Martel
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813066189
- eISBN:
- 9780813058399
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813066189.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter explains how the story of Fort Caroline underpins the history of American white supremacy through a review of the scholarship on the history of race, placing the category “elect” into a ...
More
This chapter explains how the story of Fort Caroline underpins the history of American white supremacy through a review of the scholarship on the history of race, placing the category “elect” into a historical continuum with whiteness. As with the status of the elect, whiteness seemed to be fixed and visible: apparent in their handsome, masculine bodies; in their stable, obedient, and moral families; and in their wealth and status. When Calvinist predestinarian logic enters the historical narrative of American race, it becomes possible to see it was the virtue of grace that made whites construct their own identities as naturally moral, trustworthy, and worthy of liberty.Less
This chapter explains how the story of Fort Caroline underpins the history of American white supremacy through a review of the scholarship on the history of race, placing the category “elect” into a historical continuum with whiteness. As with the status of the elect, whiteness seemed to be fixed and visible: apparent in their handsome, masculine bodies; in their stable, obedient, and moral families; and in their wealth and status. When Calvinist predestinarian logic enters the historical narrative of American race, it becomes possible to see it was the virtue of grace that made whites construct their own identities as naturally moral, trustworthy, and worthy of liberty.
Rod Earle and James Mehigan (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781447353065
- eISBN:
- 9781447353089
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447353065.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Education
Drawing on critical social theory and arguments that prison is a profoundly misunderstood institution only loosely related to trends in crime, Earle and Mehigan write against the grain of celebrating ...
More
Drawing on critical social theory and arguments that prison is a profoundly misunderstood institution only loosely related to trends in crime, Earle and Mehigan write against the grain of celebrating the successes of prison education. Anchored in the radical scholarship of OU social science, they seek to extend criticism of imprisonment beyond its reform and toward abolition. Questions of race, racism and colonial patterns of inclusion and exclusion drive an argument that demands a more qualified enthusiasm for prison education.Less
Drawing on critical social theory and arguments that prison is a profoundly misunderstood institution only loosely related to trends in crime, Earle and Mehigan write against the grain of celebrating the successes of prison education. Anchored in the radical scholarship of OU social science, they seek to extend criticism of imprisonment beyond its reform and toward abolition. Questions of race, racism and colonial patterns of inclusion and exclusion drive an argument that demands a more qualified enthusiasm for prison education.
Lisa Uddin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816679119
- eISBN:
- 9781452950587
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679119.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Ethical Issues and Debates
Why do we feel bad at the zoo? In a fascinating counterhistory of American zoos in the 1960s and 1970s, Lisa Uddin revisits the familiar narrative of zoo reform, from naked cages to more naturalistic ...
More
Why do we feel bad at the zoo? In a fascinating counterhistory of American zoos in the 1960s and 1970s, Lisa Uddin revisits the familiar narrative of zoo reform, from naked cages to more naturalistic enclosures. She argues that reform belongs to the story of cities and feelings toward many of their human inhabitants. In Zoo Renewal, Uddin demonstrates how efforts to make the zoo more natural and a haven for particular species reflected white fears about the American city—and, pointedly, how the shame many visitors felt in observing confined animals drew on broader anxieties about race and urban life. Examining the campaign against cages, renovations at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. and the San Diego Zoo, and the cases of a rare female white Bengal tiger and a collection of southern white rhinoceroses, Uddin unpacks episodes that challenge assumptions that zoos are about other worlds and other creatures and expand the history of U.S. urbanism. Uddin shows how the drive to protect endangered species and to ensure larger, safer zoos was shaped by struggles over urban decay, suburban growth, and the dilemmas of postwar American whiteness. In so doing, Zoo Renewal ultimately reveals how feeling bad, or good, at the zoo is connected to our feelings about American cities and their residents.Less
Why do we feel bad at the zoo? In a fascinating counterhistory of American zoos in the 1960s and 1970s, Lisa Uddin revisits the familiar narrative of zoo reform, from naked cages to more naturalistic enclosures. She argues that reform belongs to the story of cities and feelings toward many of their human inhabitants. In Zoo Renewal, Uddin demonstrates how efforts to make the zoo more natural and a haven for particular species reflected white fears about the American city—and, pointedly, how the shame many visitors felt in observing confined animals drew on broader anxieties about race and urban life. Examining the campaign against cages, renovations at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. and the San Diego Zoo, and the cases of a rare female white Bengal tiger and a collection of southern white rhinoceroses, Uddin unpacks episodes that challenge assumptions that zoos are about other worlds and other creatures and expand the history of U.S. urbanism. Uddin shows how the drive to protect endangered species and to ensure larger, safer zoos was shaped by struggles over urban decay, suburban growth, and the dilemmas of postwar American whiteness. In so doing, Zoo Renewal ultimately reveals how feeling bad, or good, at the zoo is connected to our feelings about American cities and their residents.
Shana Walton and Alexandra Jaffe
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199795437
- eISBN:
- 9780199919321
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199795437.003.0010
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter analyzes the humorous blog Stuff White People Like, examining both the stances towards Whiteness taken by the author as well as the stances taken up by readers in online commentaries. ...
More
This chapter analyzes the humorous blog Stuff White People Like, examining both the stances towards Whiteness taken by the author as well as the stances taken up by readers in online commentaries. The new media forum allows people who come to the site firstly to overtly display and “perform” the underlying concepts introduced but submerged by the author in his blogs; and secondly to reveal the deeply racialized discourse that permeates American society. While these activities in some ways challenge White privilege, the analysis shows that more often, using a racialized stance allows the author and readers to simultaneously parody a privileged class habitus, and participate in and benefit from it. The chapter argues that reflexivity with respect to race and class privilege is one of the central forms of cultural capital (along with esthetics) that this site offers to its readers and online discussion participants.Less
This chapter analyzes the humorous blog Stuff White People Like, examining both the stances towards Whiteness taken by the author as well as the stances taken up by readers in online commentaries. The new media forum allows people who come to the site firstly to overtly display and “perform” the underlying concepts introduced but submerged by the author in his blogs; and secondly to reveal the deeply racialized discourse that permeates American society. While these activities in some ways challenge White privilege, the analysis shows that more often, using a racialized stance allows the author and readers to simultaneously parody a privileged class habitus, and participate in and benefit from it. The chapter argues that reflexivity with respect to race and class privilege is one of the central forms of cultural capital (along with esthetics) that this site offers to its readers and online discussion participants.
