Book

Black for a day : white fantasies of race and empathy

Gaines, Alisha, author

Overview

\"In 1948, journalist Ray Sprigle traded his whiteness to live as a black man for four weeks. A little over a decade later, John Howard Griffin famously 'became' black as well, traveling the American South in search of a certain kind of racial understanding. Contemporary history is littered with the surprisingly complex stories of white people passing as black, and here Alisha Gaines constructs a unique genealogy of 'empathetic racial impersonation' - white liberals walking in the fantasy of black skin under the alibi of cross-racial empathy. At the end of their experiments in 'blackness,' Gaines argues that these debatably well-meaning white impersonators arrived at little more than false consciousness\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Subject: Passing (Identity) United States History 20th century. / Impersonation. / Empathy Political aspects. / African Americans Social conditions 20th century. / United States Race relations History 20th century.
• ISBN: 9781469632827, 9781469632834

Item info:

1 item available

1 item total in all locations

Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
E185.625.G35 2017	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE