White southerners recognized that the perpetuation of segregation required whites of all ages to uphold a strict social order―especially the young members of the next generation. White children rested at the core of the system of segregation between 1890 and 1939 because their participation was crucial to ensuring the future of white supremacy. Their socialization in the segregated South offers an examination of white supremacy from the inside; showcasing the culture's efforts to preserve itself by teaching its beliefs to the next generation.In Raising Racists: The Socialization of White Children in the Jim Crow South; author Kristina DuRocher reveals how white adults in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries continually reinforced race and gender roles to maintain white supremacy. DuRocher examines the practices; mores; and traditions that trained white children to fear; dehumanize; and disdain their black neighbors. Raising Racists combines an analysis of the remembered experiences of a racist society; how that society influenced children; and; most important; how racial violence and brutality shaped growing up in the early-twentieth-century South.
#187088 in Books Daniel O Sayers 2014-12-09Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .56 x 6.00l; .0 #File Name: 0813060184288 pagesA Desolate Place for a Defiant People The Archaeology of Maroons Indigenous Americans and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp Co Published with the Society for Historical Archaeology
Review
54 of 54 people found the following review helpful. Sayers examines African American communities in the Great Dismal SwampBy William T. Lodge5 stars; but ONLY if you are very interested in the topic! If you are; Sayers work gives a new perspective on Southern African Americans before the Civil War. Sayers examines African American communities in the Great Dismal Swamp. The idea that there was an option to form a community like this was new to me. Runaways could run not to freedom in a Northern state; but to a free Black community? Fascinating stuff.Be aware that this is a piece of academic writing. It's not for people who are not serious about African American history. If you are; buy Sayers book! You will get a lot of valuable information.5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Into the Great Dismal Swamp with MarxBy H. L. ChappellI have always been interested in the maroons; the escaped slaves who made their way into the vast reaches of the Great Dismal Swamp; a wetland so forbidding that even the slave catchers and their dogs were afraid to pursue escapees into the depths. While Dr. Sayers has studied the swamp and the archeology of the maroons for many years; and the story is a fascinating one; this book could have done with a little less politics and a lot more fact and presentation of research. Dr. Sayers is an avowed Marxist; which is just fine; but larding even this most scholarly work with polemic and Marxist interpretation makes it all but unreadable for even a serious student of archeology.28 of 41 people found the following review helpful. The Great Dismal World Outside the SwampBy David SwansonThe Smithsonian magazine recently published an article about the Great Dismal Swamp. I picked up the book that the article is based on; but the article does a better job of telling the story; I don't recommend the book.The Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina appears to have been a place where African; European; and Native Americans found refuge from slavery; indenture; and genocide -- and not just momentary refuge; but permanent settlement that lasted for centuries with little interaction with the outside world -- but also little written record or record of any kind.Daniel O. Sayers has been digging into the ground of the Great Dismal Swamp since 2003 and bringing out tiny specks of evidence. His conclusion that "some of the most successful and transformative social radicals of the modern era have gone unnoticed and unrecognized for centuries;" is based on one very brief second-hand comment that people worked together and treated each other well in the Swamp; plus a good deal of circular reasoning: Because a small group separated from modern enterprise would likely behave as most small groups do and would lack modern enterprise; or because a group of African-Americans would likely rely on some African traditions; Sayers can conclude that the Swamp dwellers lived more communally than did those on the outside.Fundamentally; we just don't know. Did these settlements resemble Occupy encampments with more mosquitoes but fewer FBI infiltrators? We really do not know. People vanished from the rest of the world into a nearby but unreachable alternative dimension. A good question for students of U.S. history might be: How would you have lived in the Great Dismal Swamp? Such a question might create a useful critique of today's society as well as of that of the British colonies and the early United States.What would cause people to choose to isolate themselves in a water-soaked world full of thick vegetation; panthers; bears; giant snakes; and swarms of mosquitoes too thick to see through? What would they flee for that? Why; the glorious world of the Founding Fathers; of course.Yogi Berra's "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded;" was foreshadowed by Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood in 1714 who called the Swamp "a no man's land" to which "loose and disorderly people daily flock."George Washington; future first president of the United States; worked enslaved people to death digging a canal known as "Washington's Ditch" into the Swamp. That was the culture from which people fled. What did they flee to? What stories was someone born in the Swamp told about the world beyond it? When some or all of the residents apparently came out after the U.S. Civil War; were they glad they did? Did they have any regrets about leaving behind the world they'd created in the Swamp?What would you flee today? Apart from climate change and nuclear apocalypse; which you cannot flee; what would you flee? What would you replace it with? Putting this line of thinking into our heads may be; for better or worse; the primary legacy the people of the Great Dismal Swamp pass down to us. Let's make the most of it.
