Book Chapter

Blackness/Whiteness

Smethurst, James

2010

Overview

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading

• Publisher: Wiley‐Blackwell
• Subject: African‐American slavery, defining what freedom was for white Europeans and North Americans ‐ black cultural illiteracy separating Europeans and white North Americans from colored peoples of the world / blackness/whiteness / Douglass's autobiographies, first two, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and My Bondage and My Freedom / Ellison's novel, proposing a vision of American national genesis, not simply of Afro‐America / Ellison, simple but radical argument that the category of “white” is not possible without the category of black / in The Great Gatsby, Nick and Gatsby crossing the Queensboro Bridge into New York City ‐ greeted by a sign of disorder and modern urban life in America / origins of US racial hierarchy in a labor system ‐ people as property, black writers investigating relationship between economics and race formation / race as a “construction,” an “invention,” or a sort of performance / sort of subservient individualism promoting envy or contempt for one's peers, self‐hatred, violence against oneself and community ‐ displacement of the rage against being judged ugly
• ISBN: 0631208925, 9780631208921