Open wound : the long view of race in America / William McKee Evans.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Evans, William McKee.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--History.

African Americans.

African Americans--Southern States--History.

African Americans--Civil rights--History.

Racism--United States--History.

Racism.

United States--Race relations.

United States.

Southern States--Race relations.

Southern States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (345 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this boldly interpretive narrative, William McKee Evans tells the story of America's paradox of democracy entangled with a centuries-old system of racial oppression. This racial system of interacting practices and ideas first justified black slavery, then, after the Civil War, other forms of coerced black labor and, today, black poverty and unemployment. At three historical moments, a crisis in the larger society opened political space for idealists to challenge the racial system: during the American Revolution, then during the "irrepressible conflict" ending in the Civil War, and, finally, during the Cold War and the colonial liberation movements. Each challenge resulted in an historic advance. But none swept clean. Many African Americans remain segregated in jobless ghettoes with dilapidated schools and dismal prospects in an increasingly polarized class society. Evans sees a new crisis looming in a convergence of environmental disaster, endless wars, and economic collapse, which may again open space for a challenge to the racial system. African Americans, with their memory of their centuries-old struggle against oppressors, appear uniquely placed to play a central role.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

Interpretive Overview

Prologue: Race and the Human Race

PART 1 The Colonial Period

1. How the American Racial System Began: Atlantic Slavery Becomes Market-Driven and Color-Defined

2. Anglo Americans Adopt the Atlantic Racial System

3. The Construction of Planter Hegemony, 1676-1776

4. The Era of the American Revolution: The Challenge to Slavery and the Compromise

PART 2 The Antebellum Republic

5. The Old South's Triumph

6. The Old South's Crisis and the Emergence of the White Solidarity Myth

7. Emancipated but Black: Freedom in the Free States

8. The Planter and the "Wage Slave": A Reactionary Alliance

9. King Cotton's Jesters: The Minstrel Show Interprets Race for the White Working Class

The War of the Cabins: The Struggle for the Soul of the "Common Man

PART 3 The Racial System Challenged and Revised

11. The Republican Revolution and the Struggle for a "New Birth of Freedom

12. Reconstruction: The Radical Challenge, 1865-77

13. Between Slavery and Freedom: The Conservative Quest for a Halfway House

PART 4 The Racial System in a Rising Superpower

14. The Age of Segregation at Its Zenith: The Racial System in a World of Colonialism

15. Radical Challenge, Liberal Reform: African Americans Gain New Allies

16. The American Century, the American Dilemma

17. The Black Freedom Movement

18. The Racial System in the Age of Corporate Globalism, Technological Revolution, and Environmental Crisis

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-320) and index.

ISBN:

9786613063861

9781283063869

1283063867

9780252091148

0252091140

OCLC:

1086957777