Journal Article

The Group-Fantasy Origins of Segregation and the Superman, or How I Got into Harvard, Class of 1965

Adams, Kenneth Alan

2022

Overview

Individuals or groups targeted for sacrifice function as poison containers for the split-off emotions of the privileged, i.e., White males who tout patriarchal prerogatives and racial superiority as justification. Like nothing in over a century, the past five years have demonstrated the fragility of American democracy and the importance of We the People as author and director of the collectivity's efforts toward a more perfect union. Since the founding, the answer has been, White males, and as Daniel W. Drezner of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy has noted, our Trumpian experience has elucidated nothing if not the ways in which the United States has stacked the deck against minorities.3 We have begun to talk about systems rather than individuals--about White privilege and White patriarchy-the notion that White people and especially White males have benefitted in American history at the expense of minorities.4 To improve our imperfect union, psychohistory prescribes empathy and introspection as a means for comprehending problems and a pathway to working toward solutions.5 With these concerns in mind, and taking into account New York Times columnist Ezra Klein's suggestion that many of America's success stories \"didn't come from merit alone,'\"11 set out to understand and explain how privilege worked in the most consequential career event of my life, when I was admitted to Harvard University.7 Since educational opportunity is a primary mechanism of upward mobility,8 such an approach seemed a particularly apposite focal point to examine how privilege was accorded at a critical juncture to a White male. The goal of the project was to connect the psychohistorian-to-be to the history in which he was embedded, to use psychohistory to demonstrate how social laws and norms-premised on group-fantasies-shaped social reality to benefit a particular White male, while denying opportunity to African Americans.9 The goal is to illuminate the macrocosm by contrasting it to the microcosm. The segregated way of life in Gadsden was decades old, originally constructed by Jim Crow laws which were passed just before the end of Reconstruction-doubtless using the Bible as the justification.27 In 1875, Article I, Section 33, of the Constitution of Alabama provided \"separate schools 'for children of African descent.

• Publisher: Association for Psychohistory, Inc
• Subject: African Americans / Book awards / British & Irish literature / Children / Collectivity / Empathy / English literature / Golding, William (1911-1993) / Higher education / Males / Patriarchy / Secondary schools / Segregation / Tuition / White people / White supremacy