Laslett, Barbaraa, and Katherine Nash. "Family Structure in Los Angeles, California: 1850-1900." Duke University Press 20.1 (1996): 1-39. JSTOR. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
Laslett and Nash's article deals with the myriad family dynamic in Los Angeles in the latter half of the 19th century. This examination of the western family provides insight into the effect migration and immigration have on the territory in shaping the modern, nuclear family of the early 20th century. The portrayal of western women could also prove to be especially helpful in creating contrast as well as parallels to the social renaissance taking place on the East Coast. What with western migration of young, eastern borne Americans and the immigration of mexican Americans, the western family model becomes extremely diverse and liberal.
Laslett and Nash's article deals with the myriad family dynamic in Los Angeles in the latter half of the 19th century. This examination of the western family provides insight into the effect migration and immigration have on the territory in shaping the modern, nuclear family of the early 20th century. The portrayal of western women could also prove to be especially helpful in creating contrast as well as parallels to the social renaissance taking place on the East Coast. What with western migration of young, eastern borne Americans and the immigration of mexican Americans, the western family model becomes extremely diverse and liberal.
John Mitchell was a writer during the Reconstruction era and advocated for racial equality. According to Ann Holder "Editor and publisher of the weekly Planet from 1884 to 1929, John Mitchell gained some minor celebrity in his lifetime, but is no longer widely remembered. However, Mitchell was in many ways an exemplary figure among the network of activists/intellectuals who redeployed the discursive logics of race and sex in the fight for full citizenship, even as their political resources and the cultural landscape narrowed, and the violence against them intensified. His editorial work provides a case study of African American-identified radicalism that articulated the demand of non-racial or color-blind citizenship and put forward racial claims for public redress, based on histories of racial exploitation" (Holder 161). Holder states"Throughout his career Mitchell not only acknowledged, but celebrated a multi-racial polity. [. . .] He called attention to the diversity that enlarged and strengthened the African American community, and provided consanguineous connections to white southerners' (Holder 163). (Lawless)
Holder, Ann S. "What's Sex Got To Do With It? Race, Power, Citizenship, And "Intermediate Identities" In The Post-Emancipation United States." Journal Of African American History 93.2 (2008): 153-173. America: History & Life. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. (Lawless)
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Ann S. Holder’s work, "What's Sex Got To Do With It? Race, Power, Citizenship, And "Intermediate Identities", examines “the post-emancipation United States, a moment of stark conflict between the commonly acknowledged history of interracial sex and new efforts to establish a fiction of racial difference” (153). Holder discusses various established and forgotten black Americans that fought during the Reconstruction era, such as Frederick Douglas and John Mitchell Jr. According to Holder after the Civil War, there was a great fear among whites that freed black American men would rape white women because of the way slave owners treated female slaves; this is the fiction that white males created in the hopes of forcing racial distinction (160). She also records different racial laws, stating that in 1884“ the state legislature had passed a new law declaring all marriages between African Americans and whites to be illegal, and versions of that law remained on the books until 1968” (Holder 157). Holder's work is detailed and to the point, however in the final pages her main focus is on John Mitchell's story and less about the various laws. (Lawless)
Carter, Everett. “Critical Realism.” Howells and the Age of Realism. Hamden: Archon, 1966. Print. 170-244.
Carter defines Critical Realism as literature that truthfully reports warped and maladjusted social relationships so that men may study and improve them. Carter’s observation would make Howells one of the early American protest authors. Carter proposes that its development is bound up in the economic turmoil and strife of America during the 1880’s and 1890’s that changed Howells from an optimistic believer – that existing American institutions had produced a satisfactory way of life – into a humble and agonized doubter, critical of American life and the industrialism in the Reconstruction era. Howells recognized the growing inequities between capital and labor, shortly after the bombing in Haymarket Square, 1886. As a child in his father’s print shop, Howells had also experienced the inequalities of overwork and perpetual indebtedness. In his political and economic awakening, Howells noted his sympathy for African American suffering. Howells would later apply this same sensitivity toward problems of race and class to all groups oppressed into hopeless poverty.
Posted by Jeff Laude
Posted by Jeff Laude
Emerson, Everett. Mark Twain: A Literary Life. Philidelphia: University of Pennsylvania P, 2000. Print.
Emerson’s literary biography of Twain explores the relationships between the texts and its creator’s life. Emerson notes that Huck’s vernacular was drawn from Twain’s encounter with a hotel servant, a black boy, whose conversation Twain had written down. However, Twain drew from the atmosphere of the pre-Civil War South and memories of his boyhood experiences when drafting Tom Sawyer. He was fascinated with childhood innocence and naivety—themes that Twain explored in working through the creative process of both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Twain treated his characters as real boys that he knew so well. Emerson proposes that Huck’s narrative functions as a catharsis for Twain who explored class tensions from his own marital social uplifting and civilizing, in addition to the problems of race and class rooted in the Old South. After publishing the Prince and the Pauper, Twain described society as being polarized between the privileged and the deprived, which Emerson implies would later become the subtext in Huckleberry Finn about life along the Mississippi River.
Posted by Jeff Laude
Posted by Jeff Laude
Goodman, Susan, and Carl Dawson. William Dean Howells: A Writer’s Life. Berkeley: University of California P., 2005. Print.
By 1860, Howells had endorsed interracial marriage, and An Imperative Duty provides a model for what his contemporaries called ‘absorption,’ or the mingling of separate races into one race. The biographers suggest that to the dismay of recent critics, Imperative’s ending presents racial identity as if it were an illness to be cured. However, another interpretation is that Howells reveals the social problem of America’s intolerance of interracial marriage, and the adversity within its prejudice. The failure to change such a social climate results in expatriate-ism. Emerson says that, Like W.E.B. Du Bois, Howells believed prejudice toward African Americans to be the result of slavery, and therefore the product of social rather than inherited characteristics. Du Bois praised Howells for facing, the country’s ignorance, folly, and evasion of racial issues. The biographers propose that An Imperative Duty helped to create a market for fiction, especially African American fiction, presenting characters of mixed races.
Posted by Jeff Laude
Posted by Jeff Laude
Johnson, Claudia Dust, ed. Race in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven, 2009. Print. Social Issues in Literature.
This spectrum of essays and literary criticism reflects that Huckleberry Finn is one of our darkest visions of human nature and American society; wherein, the theme of race is central issue of Twain’s novel. Critics argue a variety of points and views about race in Huckleberry Finn, and debate the prevailing arguments about whether or not Twain’s novel is anti-racist or reinforcement of racist institutions; such as, Toni Morrison’s “In Defense of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” This text provides a sense of the cultural context in the time of Twain’s publication, in essays such as, Terrel Dempsey’s “Runaway Slaves in Sam Clemens’ World” and David L. Smith’s “Romanticism, Religion, and Racism.” The book suggests contextual questions about Huckleberry Finn for classrooms and individual readings. This work ends with additional essays about the issues of race in the twenty-first-century American society, indicating that Twain’s novel raises themes that are still prevalent.
Posted by Jeff Laude
Posted by Jeff Laude
Nettels, Elsa. “Language, Race, and Nationality in Howells’s Fiction.” Language, Race, & Social Class in Howells’s America. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1988. Print. 87-104.
Sources vary about Howells’ position on scientific racial theories—genetically or socially inherited. Nettels proposes that although Howells affirmed the unity of mankind, he accepted the widely held belief that race determines temperament, and that ethnic groups are differentiated by inherited racial traits. Nettels implies that Howells’ portrayal of blacks documents actual conditions and reflects the attitudes and assumptions that Howells shared with his contemporaries. However, Howells’ characters often deflate the very stereotypes that they perpetuate—per example Dr. Olney and Rhoda. Nettels notes that Olney also rejects the stigmas and fears possessed by Rhoda’s aunt that the traits of Rhoda’s black ancestors will reappear in her or her children; but, the doctor who rejects the probability of reversion, also repeatedly refers to blacks as the inferior race—reflecting common beliefs, though hypocritical in Olney’s case. Nettels infers that although Howells does not caricature his black figures, he creates no fully realized black characters to replace the stereotypes.
Posted by Jeff Laude
Posted by Jeff Laude
Birnbaum, Michele. “Racial Hysteria: Female Pathology and Race Politics in Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy and W.D. Howell’s An Imperative Duty.” African American Review. 33.1 (1999): 7-23. EBSCO. Web 5 March.
In this article, Michele Birnbaum examines the issues of the “race problem” and the “woman question” in terms of what she calls the mixed blood hysteric that is seen in both William Dean Howell’s An Imperative Duty and E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy. Both novels take a scientific approach to the “tragic mulatta” figure, using physicians to set up the mulatta as a case study rather than a genre type. Birnbaum argues that because both novels have doctors, and the diagnoses of hysteria as a representation of womanhood, the novels create a gendered discourse. Both racial conflict and gender intermix, making hysteria a sign of racial disease. This gender intermix and feminine infirmity allows a reaffirmation of the masculinity of the physicians in both novels. Birnbaum ultimately argues that African Americans represent the salvation of white America. AG
In this article, Michele Birnbaum examines the issues of the “race problem” and the “woman question” in terms of what she calls the mixed blood hysteric that is seen in both William Dean Howell’s An Imperative Duty and E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy. Both novels take a scientific approach to the “tragic mulatta” figure, using physicians to set up the mulatta as a case study rather than a genre type. Birnbaum argues that because both novels have doctors, and the diagnoses of hysteria as a representation of womanhood, the novels create a gendered discourse. Both racial conflict and gender intermix, making hysteria a sign of racial disease. This gender intermix and feminine infirmity allows a reaffirmation of the masculinity of the physicians in both novels. Birnbaum ultimately argues that African Americans represent the salvation of white America. AG
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Daugherty, Sarah B. “ ‘An Imperative Duty:’ Howells and White Male Anxiety.” ALR. 30.3 (1998): 53-64. JSTOR. Web. 5 March 2014.
Sarah B. Daugherty’s article, “ ‘An Imperative Duty:’ Howells and White Male Anxiety,” is a highly readable article with a focus on both Howell’s life and the similarities shown in Dr. Olney’s character. She argues that Howells experimented with the idea of providence and racial harmony, where whites were saved from puritanism while blacks were civilized. This experiment fails because Daugherty claims that the existence of blacks undermined “faith in a natural order.” The first half of the article focuses on Howells himself. The novel then becomes a human comedy shadowed by cosmic tragedy. In making this argument, Daugherty spends the first half of the article focusing on Howells’ personal history. In the second half of the article, Olney is analyzed in both comparison to Howells and in terms of New England culture. AG
Sarah B. Daugherty’s article, “ ‘An Imperative Duty:’ Howells and White Male Anxiety,” is a highly readable article with a focus on both Howell’s life and the similarities shown in Dr. Olney’s character. She argues that Howells experimented with the idea of providence and racial harmony, where whites were saved from puritanism while blacks were civilized. This experiment fails because Daugherty claims that the existence of blacks undermined “faith in a natural order.” The first half of the article focuses on Howells himself. The novel then becomes a human comedy shadowed by cosmic tragedy. In making this argument, Daugherty spends the first half of the article focusing on Howells’ personal history. In the second half of the article, Olney is analyzed in both comparison to Howells and in terms of New England culture. AG
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Comte de Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur. "Chapter XVI."Recapitulation: The Repressive Characteristics of the Three Great Races; the Superiority of the White Type, And, within This Type, of the Aryan Family"" 1853-1855. An Imperative Duty. Ed. Paul R. Petrie. Broadview Editions ed. Buffalo: Broadview, 2010. 150-55. Print.
Excerpted essays like this one and others appear in Petrie’s edition of William Dean Howells’s An Imperative Duty, a novel that Petrie notes on the book’s jacket “imagines interracial marriage sympathetically at a time when racist sentiment was on the rise” (Petrie). As such, all essays in the third appendix, “Appendix C,” entitled, “Interracial Marriage and the ‘Science’ of Race” must take into account this interpretation of Howells’s novel, as well as the sarcastic-laden quotation marks around “science” in the title, which demonstrates a bias towards viewing these pseudoscientific views on race with skepticism and dismissively. Petrie informs that what would pass “muster” (150) for science in previous centuries would not now, but maintains that these views still had a profound influence. This includes the influence of de Gobineau’s work on Nietzsche and Hitler among other infamous famous figures.
De Gobineau became the father of scientific racism and initiated the idea of the Aryan master race made infamous by Adolf Hitler in the book, The Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races,” though one should know that de Gobineau was a fiction writer and diplomat and never a scientist. In his book, he pegs “negroids” (152) below whites and people of yellow skin lower on the racial hierarchy based on traits including an animalistic pelvis shape (153), their voracious appetite for all carrion (153), uncontrollable intensity of desire, lust for violence, and the inability to distinguish good from evil (153). Whites, conversely, lived a life of “honour” (153), peace and tranquility unknowable by the negroid, who can only be controlled by the same government that whites so rightly reject, that of tryannical despotisms.
On the last page of this excerpted essay, de Gobineau speaks against the hybridization of race, which dilutes the “white monopoly of beauty, intelligence, and strength” (154). He alludes to the metaphor of the Tower of Babel to suggest that race mixing leads to confusion and lower quality of human life. He concludes, “Such is the lesson of history. It shows us that all civilizations derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a society is great . . . so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it” (154). (KB)
Excerpted essays like this one and others appear in Petrie’s edition of William Dean Howells’s An Imperative Duty, a novel that Petrie notes on the book’s jacket “imagines interracial marriage sympathetically at a time when racist sentiment was on the rise” (Petrie). As such, all essays in the third appendix, “Appendix C,” entitled, “Interracial Marriage and the ‘Science’ of Race” must take into account this interpretation of Howells’s novel, as well as the sarcastic-laden quotation marks around “science” in the title, which demonstrates a bias towards viewing these pseudoscientific views on race with skepticism and dismissively. Petrie informs that what would pass “muster” (150) for science in previous centuries would not now, but maintains that these views still had a profound influence. This includes the influence of de Gobineau’s work on Nietzsche and Hitler among other infamous famous figures.
De Gobineau became the father of scientific racism and initiated the idea of the Aryan master race made infamous by Adolf Hitler in the book, The Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races,” though one should know that de Gobineau was a fiction writer and diplomat and never a scientist. In his book, he pegs “negroids” (152) below whites and people of yellow skin lower on the racial hierarchy based on traits including an animalistic pelvis shape (153), their voracious appetite for all carrion (153), uncontrollable intensity of desire, lust for violence, and the inability to distinguish good from evil (153). Whites, conversely, lived a life of “honour” (153), peace and tranquility unknowable by the negroid, who can only be controlled by the same government that whites so rightly reject, that of tryannical despotisms.
On the last page of this excerpted essay, de Gobineau speaks against the hybridization of race, which dilutes the “white monopoly of beauty, intelligence, and strength” (154). He alludes to the metaphor of the Tower of Babel to suggest that race mixing leads to confusion and lower quality of human life. He concludes, “Such is the lesson of history. It shows us that all civilizations derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a society is great . . . so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it” (154). (KB)
Dalrymple, William. "White Mischief." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 8 Dec. 2002. Web. 9 Mar. 2012.
Dalrymple, a British library researcher in India, beautifully blends one man’s elaborate, onomastic research into his own familial heritage with a painstakingly detailed cross-section of British and Indian colonial history. More important is the aphoristic conclusion at which Dalrymple arrives, writing, “At a time when East and West, Islam and Christianity, appear to be engaged in another major confrontation, this unlikely group of expatriates provides a timely reminder that it is very possible - and has always been possible - to reconcile the two worlds and build bridges across cultures. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. But they have met and mingled in the past; and they will do so again” (The Guardian).
The article leading to this connection to our own modern need to think and act as culturally-sensitive global citizens begins with an account of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, a British resident-ambassador who adopted a number of Indian customs, including customary moustaches, decorating his hands with Henna, writing Urdu poetry, and other mannerisms in dress and other culturally significant areas. Most troublesome to the governments of Britain and the Bengal region, Kirkpatrick had adopted Shi’a Muslim as his religion and had impregnated a 14-year-old noble girl.
After noting how the Kirkpatrick’s split the raising of their children, the boys as Scottish Christians, the girls as Indian Muslims, Dalrymple comes across his own ancestry records of his Indian heritage and realizes had been erased. Most importantly, he paints the picture of a society that was far more culturally mixed than historians have let on. Dalrymple notes that by 1780, one-third of British men living as ex-patriates in the British Raj had bequeathed wills to their Indian wives, while many Indian wives chose to ex-patriate with their retiring husbands to England.
Dalrymple undoubtedly writes the article as a reaction to the trends that began just before and during the Victorian period in the 1830s, where practices of race-mixing gradually faded away and by the 1857 mutiny and Mughal genocide, had ended completely. Though the article never says so, one must wonder if based on the 2002 date, Dalrymple wrote in the lingering anti-Muslim aftermath of 9/11, though his message is timeless. (KB)
Dalrymple, a British library researcher in India, beautifully blends one man’s elaborate, onomastic research into his own familial heritage with a painstakingly detailed cross-section of British and Indian colonial history. More important is the aphoristic conclusion at which Dalrymple arrives, writing, “At a time when East and West, Islam and Christianity, appear to be engaged in another major confrontation, this unlikely group of expatriates provides a timely reminder that it is very possible - and has always been possible - to reconcile the two worlds and build bridges across cultures. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. But they have met and mingled in the past; and they will do so again” (The Guardian).
The article leading to this connection to our own modern need to think and act as culturally-sensitive global citizens begins with an account of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, a British resident-ambassador who adopted a number of Indian customs, including customary moustaches, decorating his hands with Henna, writing Urdu poetry, and other mannerisms in dress and other culturally significant areas. Most troublesome to the governments of Britain and the Bengal region, Kirkpatrick had adopted Shi’a Muslim as his religion and had impregnated a 14-year-old noble girl.
After noting how the Kirkpatrick’s split the raising of their children, the boys as Scottish Christians, the girls as Indian Muslims, Dalrymple comes across his own ancestry records of his Indian heritage and realizes had been erased. Most importantly, he paints the picture of a society that was far more culturally mixed than historians have let on. Dalrymple notes that by 1780, one-third of British men living as ex-patriates in the British Raj had bequeathed wills to their Indian wives, while many Indian wives chose to ex-patriate with their retiring husbands to England.
Dalrymple undoubtedly writes the article as a reaction to the trends that began just before and during the Victorian period in the 1830s, where practices of race-mixing gradually faded away and by the 1857 mutiny and Mughal genocide, had ended completely. Though the article never says so, one must wonder if based on the 2002 date, Dalrymple wrote in the lingering anti-Muslim aftermath of 9/11, though his message is timeless. (KB)
Grady, Henry W. "In Plain Black and White." 1885. An Imperative Duty. Ed. Paul R. Petrie.
Broadview Edition ed. Buffalo: Broadview, 2010. 163-65. Print.
Petrie includes this selection by a white Southerner to illustrate the effect of the Pace v. Alabama case summarized below. Petrie writes that Grady, a journalist, advocates for “whites-only reconciliation between North and South” based on a combination of pseudoscience, as followed by the likes of Joseph Comte de Gobineau and Samuel George Morton, as well as sociological and pragmatic reasons for legally denying the rights of interracial relationships. In an overly grandiose move, Grady speaks for all Southerners, asserting that the “South will never adopt . . . [the] suggestion of social intermingling of the races. It can never be driven into it” (163). Calling for a separate but equal society, Grady clamors that both races wanted to avoid the “antagonism” (164) of intermingling, ignoring the fact that white Europeans initiated and perpetuated this antagonism. Grady employs a logical fallacy, which for lacking a proper name may be called “False Prediction” nearly akin to a slippery slope fallacy in which he asserts that if Northern states like Vermont were to have the same population of blacks as the South did, they too would enact such legislation, leading to war (165) and the sullying of the best qualities of whites. Grady anecdotally points to a case where a Northern minister set to create a mixed church, only to see it “decimated” (165) one month later, resulting in the establishment of two separate churches. One should note the diction choices made by Grady that betray his “fact-based” assertions; his choice of words like “in my opinion” (164), his reliance on hypothetical “if” statements and unsupported statements of the races’ “instincts” (165) to remain divided irrevocably weaken his unfounded argument.
(KB)
Broadview Edition ed. Buffalo: Broadview, 2010. 163-65. Print.
Petrie includes this selection by a white Southerner to illustrate the effect of the Pace v. Alabama case summarized below. Petrie writes that Grady, a journalist, advocates for “whites-only reconciliation between North and South” based on a combination of pseudoscience, as followed by the likes of Joseph Comte de Gobineau and Samuel George Morton, as well as sociological and pragmatic reasons for legally denying the rights of interracial relationships. In an overly grandiose move, Grady speaks for all Southerners, asserting that the “South will never adopt . . . [the] suggestion of social intermingling of the races. It can never be driven into it” (163). Calling for a separate but equal society, Grady clamors that both races wanted to avoid the “antagonism” (164) of intermingling, ignoring the fact that white Europeans initiated and perpetuated this antagonism. Grady employs a logical fallacy, which for lacking a proper name may be called “False Prediction” nearly akin to a slippery slope fallacy in which he asserts that if Northern states like Vermont were to have the same population of blacks as the South did, they too would enact such legislation, leading to war (165) and the sullying of the best qualities of whites. Grady anecdotally points to a case where a Northern minister set to create a mixed church, only to see it “decimated” (165) one month later, resulting in the establishment of two separate churches. One should note the diction choices made by Grady that betray his “fact-based” assertions; his choice of words like “in my opinion” (164), his reliance on hypothetical “if” statements and unsupported statements of the races’ “instincts” (165) to remain divided irrevocably weaken his unfounded argument.
(KB)
Nott, J.C. "Hybridity of Animals, Viewed in Connection with the Natural History of Mankind"" 1854. An Imperative Duty. Broadview Editions ed. Buffalo: Broadview, 2010. 155-59. Print.
Josiah C. (J.C.) Nott was an American physician who, under the influence of Samuel George Morton (Petrie 155) promoted the belief found in Crania Americana (1839) that due to their smaller skull sizes, blacks and mulattoes were inferior to whites in the most important of human characteristics: intelligence. Nott’s anecdotal evidence from living in the American South suggested that mulattoes, a focus of his unlike other racial “scientists” like de Gobineau, were inferior in their shorter lifespan, susceptibility to chronic diseases, their proclivity to have abortions and their inability to properly nurse and raise children.
Also unlike de Gobineau, Nott does not advocate for the degradation of humanity nor their treatment as brutes (159). Nott, however, does not believe in the equality of the races, going on to illustrate, both in word and image, that the negro was closer anatomically to orangutans than whites, even though by his own admission, blacks and African primates were more dissimilar physiologically than they were similar. While his claims are ludicrous by today’s standards of science and humanistic morality, Nott’s argument is made better than his contemporaries, for he makes the following concession in his conclusion: “It will doubtless be objected by some that extreme examples are here selected; and this is candidly admitted” (159). (KB)
https://archive.org/details/Craniaamericana00Mort
Josiah C. (J.C.) Nott was an American physician who, under the influence of Samuel George Morton (Petrie 155) promoted the belief found in Crania Americana (1839) that due to their smaller skull sizes, blacks and mulattoes were inferior to whites in the most important of human characteristics: intelligence. Nott’s anecdotal evidence from living in the American South suggested that mulattoes, a focus of his unlike other racial “scientists” like de Gobineau, were inferior in their shorter lifespan, susceptibility to chronic diseases, their proclivity to have abortions and their inability to properly nurse and raise children.
Also unlike de Gobineau, Nott does not advocate for the degradation of humanity nor their treatment as brutes (159). Nott, however, does not believe in the equality of the races, going on to illustrate, both in word and image, that the negro was closer anatomically to orangutans than whites, even though by his own admission, blacks and African primates were more dissimilar physiologically than they were similar. While his claims are ludicrous by today’s standards of science and humanistic morality, Nott’s argument is made better than his contemporaries, for he makes the following concession in his conclusion: “It will doubtless be objected by some that extreme examples are here selected; and this is candidly admitted” (159). (KB)
https://archive.org/details/Craniaamericana00Mort
Pace v. State of Alabama. 2010. An Imperative Duty 161-163. Supreme Court. 1883. Print.
Petrie includes a text of the 1883 Supreme Court decision in his appendix to illustrate the “tortuous” (161) lengths to which even the nation’s highest judicial figures would go to uphold notions of “scientific” racism. In the case, Tony Pace and Mary Cox were convicted of violating laws prohibiting interracial marriage under Alabama statute 4189, which forbade “any white person and any negro (or descendent there of up to and including three generations removed) from living in adultery with or fornicating with each other” (162). The penalty for such an act was up to seven years in prison, though Pace and Cox were sentenced two the two-year minimum. Their lawyer countered with the couple’s protection under the 14th amendment. Writing for the Court, Stephen J. Field, however, countered that it did not violate the couple’s rights to equal rights because like whites, blacks were equally liable to prosecution under the anti-interracial laws, affirming the judgment as “no discrimination” (163) had occurred. Petrie aptly contextualizes the law, calling it a precursor to the landmark “separate but equal” (161) Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896. (KB)
Petrie includes a text of the 1883 Supreme Court decision in his appendix to illustrate the “tortuous” (161) lengths to which even the nation’s highest judicial figures would go to uphold notions of “scientific” racism. In the case, Tony Pace and Mary Cox were convicted of violating laws prohibiting interracial marriage under Alabama statute 4189, which forbade “any white person and any negro (or descendent there of up to and including three generations removed) from living in adultery with or fornicating with each other” (162). The penalty for such an act was up to seven years in prison, though Pace and Cox were sentenced two the two-year minimum. Their lawyer countered with the couple’s protection under the 14th amendment. Writing for the Court, Stephen J. Field, however, countered that it did not violate the couple’s rights to equal rights because like whites, blacks were equally liable to prosecution under the anti-interracial laws, affirming the judgment as “no discrimination” (163) had occurred. Petrie aptly contextualizes the law, calling it a precursor to the landmark “separate but equal” (161) Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896. (KB)
Pascoe, Peggy. "Race, Gender, and Intercultural Relations: The Case of Interracial Marriage." Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies 12.1 (1991): 5-18. JSTOR. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
Pascoe speaks to scholars who have studied interracial marriages, namely social scientists and historians, who, according to Pascoe, have treated race and gender as if they were “immutable” categories (5); race as a biological one and gender as a social construct. Through a feminist lens, Pascoe wishes to unite these into one discourse, starting with the fact that in 1664, Maryland was among the first colonies to tie these two issues into one law, forbidding marriages between “English freeborn women” and “negro slaves” (6). Pascoe notes that miscegenation was not a black/white phenomenon exclusively. Western states like California and New Mexico vigorously prosecuted marriages between white women specifically and those of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino descent (6). Pascoe indirectly alludes to the same Pace v. Alabama case detailed by Paul Petrie in his edition of An Imperative Duty (2010) where the Supreme Court denied a mixed couple’s appeal based on the 14th amendment on the grounds that anti-miscegenation laws did not discriminate against blacks specifically, but prevented all races from marrying interracially. Using the University of Chicago’s Survey of Race Relations in the 1920s, Pascoe supports her claim of the immutability of gender and race, citing interviews of various ethnic groups, including Hawaiians, Japanese, and whites, who made marriage decisions based on both gender and race, focusing on issues of how certain races were had more manly men (Hawaiian), better economic providers (whites), or had women who were more feminine (Japanese). One of Pascoe’s main conclusions is that like gender, now widely accepted as a social construct, so, too, did historians have to come to understand race as a social phenomenon “without real content” (9), one built on social attitudes and stigmas, not biological differences, that allowed racism and white supremacy to reign. (KB)
Pascoe speaks to scholars who have studied interracial marriages, namely social scientists and historians, who, according to Pascoe, have treated race and gender as if they were “immutable” categories (5); race as a biological one and gender as a social construct. Through a feminist lens, Pascoe wishes to unite these into one discourse, starting with the fact that in 1664, Maryland was among the first colonies to tie these two issues into one law, forbidding marriages between “English freeborn women” and “negro slaves” (6). Pascoe notes that miscegenation was not a black/white phenomenon exclusively. Western states like California and New Mexico vigorously prosecuted marriages between white women specifically and those of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino descent (6). Pascoe indirectly alludes to the same Pace v. Alabama case detailed by Paul Petrie in his edition of An Imperative Duty (2010) where the Supreme Court denied a mixed couple’s appeal based on the 14th amendment on the grounds that anti-miscegenation laws did not discriminate against blacks specifically, but prevented all races from marrying interracially. Using the University of Chicago’s Survey of Race Relations in the 1920s, Pascoe supports her claim of the immutability of gender and race, citing interviews of various ethnic groups, including Hawaiians, Japanese, and whites, who made marriage decisions based on both gender and race, focusing on issues of how certain races were had more manly men (Hawaiian), better economic providers (whites), or had women who were more feminine (Japanese). One of Pascoe’s main conclusions is that like gender, now widely accepted as a social construct, so, too, did historians have to come to understand race as a social phenomenon “without real content” (9), one built on social attitudes and stigmas, not biological differences, that allowed racism and white supremacy to reign. (KB)
Shaheen, Aaron. "The Social Dusk Of That Mysterious Democracy": Race, Sexology, And The New Woman In Henry James's "The Bostonians." Atq 19.4 (2005): 281-299. America: History & Life. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
Verena Tarrant is a blank slate in which other's write their desires on to. Saheen shows the way in which Olive and Basil's desire for Verena is racially driven. Olive likens Verena to both a gypsy and someone from Bohemia. Saheen asserts that considering how narrow the definition of whiteness was during this time period, that both examples would fall outside of this definition. Olive desires to save Verena to the point of buying her, which could be a reflection of the way in which Douglas and Sojourner Truth were purchased out of slavery by white patrons. For Basil Verena does not only embody this otherness in race, but she also is posed in such way as to restore his southern masculinity if he can somehow “cleanse” her sexuality and race.
-ec
Verena Tarrant is a blank slate in which other's write their desires on to. Saheen shows the way in which Olive and Basil's desire for Verena is racially driven. Olive likens Verena to both a gypsy and someone from Bohemia. Saheen asserts that considering how narrow the definition of whiteness was during this time period, that both examples would fall outside of this definition. Olive desires to save Verena to the point of buying her, which could be a reflection of the way in which Douglas and Sojourner Truth were purchased out of slavery by white patrons. For Basil Verena does not only embody this otherness in race, but she also is posed in such way as to restore his southern masculinity if he can somehow “cleanse” her sexuality and race.
-ec