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the Post World War II Era

the Post World War II Era. ETHN 100 Week 7 Session 2. Last Session. Analyze video clips to explore the “social construction” of race. Explore the structural-cultural lineage of slavery and the Jim Crow South. Today. Explore the structural-cultural lineage of slavery and the Jim Crow South .

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the Post World War II Era

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  1. the Post World War II Era ETHN 100 Week 7 Session 2

  2. Last Session • Analyze video clips to explore the “social construction” of race. • Explore the structural-cultural lineage of slavery and the Jim Crow South.

  3. Today • Explore the structural-cultural lineage of slavery and the Jim Crow South. • Discuss Lipsitiz’s argument as it relates to African Americans before, during, and after World War II.

  4. From Slavery to Reconstruction to Jim Crow • Slavery is abolished • Key question: How to establish cultural and structural systems to reestablish Black-White relations? • Jim Crow – A song-and-dance caricature of blacks performed by whites in blackface • Nickname for laws that segregated southern society. • Supposed guiding notion: Separate but equal. • Anti-miscegenation • Education • Private Businesses • Public Accommodations

  5. Key Questions • What were the structural and cultural continuities between slavery, reconstruction, and Jim Crow? In other words, what about the plantation system remained relatively in place or unchanged? • What belief system or ideology regarding power relations did southern whites rationalize segregation? • How were identities with regards to race, class, gender, and sexuality shaped by these factors?

  6. Master-Slave Relations • The American brand of slavery was a system of paternalistic domination, creating, in some degree, a father-child relationship between master and slave. • Slaves lacked virtually all legal rights. They could not own or inherit property, testify in court, hire themselves out, or make contracts. • Slave laws provided that marriage between slaves held none of the rights of marriage between free people. • Families could be broken up in trade with no consideration given to keeping husband, wife, and children intact as a single unit. • Laws forbade teaching slaves to read and write. • Interpretation of Slave Laws • Left almost entirely to the master, not to the courts. • This wide discretion utter cruelty was not uncommon.

  7. Physical versus Social Distance • Maintenance of social distance between the races, not physical distance, was central to reinforcing the racial political and economic system. • Physical contact was rare between most slaves and masters. The majority of slaves were field hands. Personal relationships between household slaves and master were rarer and quite different.

  8. Social Intimacies • Social intimacy came in some forms: • Concubinage between White men and Black women • Raising of white children by black “mammies” • It was out of this closeness that the myth of racial harmony in the Old South emerged. • These were of course relationships between unequals. • Where did we see this in the relationship between Julia and David Dickson?

  9. Rationalizing Separate But Equal • Southern Whites systematically dismantled the progress of Reconstruction. • The dominant culture developed an ideology that the system in place was a happy one. Cultural expressions symbolic of this strategy: • Minstrel characters: i.e. Jim Crow, Zip Coon, Mammy, Uncle Tom, Buck, Wench, Mulatto (“Tragic Mulatto”), Pickaninny. http://black-face.com • DW Griffith’s “Birth of A Nation” also known as “The Clansman”

  10. Timeline: From Reconstruction to Civil Rights • Reconstruction (1865 – 1877) • Jim Crow (1876-1965) • Industrial Revolution (1870-1914) • The Great Black Migration (1910 – 1930) • The Great Depression (1929 – 1945) • World War II (1939 – 1945) • Brown V. Board of Education (1954) • Civil Rights Movement (1950 – 1980)

  11. Discussion Questions from Lipsitz’s “Possessive Investment in Whiteness” • What does Lipsitz mean by “possessive investment in whiteness” and how does this phrase reflect the argument he makes in the article? • Break down the notion of whiteness Lipsitz posits. What does it mean? How has it developed? • Lipsitz argues that “[f]rom the start, European Americans in North America established structures encouraging possessive investment in whiteness” (p. 371). What examples does he give? • “…the racialized nature of social democratic policies of the United States since the Great Depression has, in my judgment, actually increased the possessive investment in whiteness among European Americans over the past half century” (p. 372). What examples does Lipsitz give, and how do they illustrate this statement?

  12. Next Time • Post-Industrialization and contemporary demographics • No readings due • No online session for Week 8 • WA2 due next week.

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