Whiteness, Racism, And The Ascendant Middle Class
A Sedgwickian reading for the sake of a Sedgwickian reading isn’t particularly useful. In answering the “so what?” question rightly begged of a “between men” reading. We should consider the ways that the courtship was inseparably linked to Charles’ treatment of racism in the new South. Which climaxes in the novel’s climatic event: a race riot based on the historical election day riots in Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898. 25,which occurred as a result of growing racial tensions united with the growing divide of economic opportunity among the people there and the relations between these inequalities and divides to paint a hyperreal portrayal of the post-Civil War South in terms of aesthetics and those who populated it, all of whom represent different ideas and motifs that existed during Chesnutt’s time. I argue that, when considered together, the erotic triangle and the shift of cultural power from the southern aristocracy to the nascent middle class effectively determine Marrow’s pessimistic conclusions concerning the future of race relations in the South.
In actual fact the Marrow’s concern was whether or not Ellis’s class ascension could signal the possibility of the finest people of each race coming together to form a coalition based on the sensibilities of a professional middle class. This was hope mostly as stated by one of the race novelist, Dr Miller. Miller does lament with Mr. Watson a lawyer, on the condemnation of the whole race on basis of the general principles. “Try as we may to build up the race in the essentials of good citizenship and win the good opinion of the best people, some black scoundrel comes along, and by a single criminal act, committed in the twinkling of an eye, neutralizes the effect of a whole year’s work” (611). In his concept Miller envisioned the likelihood and frustrations that could be inherent while seeking a recognition from whites middle class which he decided to exclude on the basis of race.
However, in the post on the essentials of good citizenship which have a cure effect on the white really prejudice, Miller took for granted that racism was really a prejudice against the lower class marked as criminals. Based on this reasoning, Dr. Miller, implied that whites, believe that blacks are inferior since their views were based on African Americans who were to achieve the gentle standards of middle class white. Miller went to argue that when colored men should demonstrate to their community in which they lived that they possessed character and power, that men would find ways in which to enlist their services for the public good.
The sentimentalities which Dr. Miller talked about in his interactions with the powers of Wellington are the ones that Charles Chesnutt expressed in his essay “The Future American” (1900). He wrote:
“The steady progress of the colored race in wealth and culture and social efficiency will, in the course of time, materially soften the asperities of racial prejudice and permit them to approach the whites more closely, until, in time, the prejudice against intermarriage shall have been overcome by other considerations. It is safe to say that the possession of a million dollars, with the ability to use it to the best advantage, would throw such a golden glow over a dark complexion as to override anything but a very obdurate prejudice. (Essays 133) In the future America, Chesnutt’s essay argues that class will supplant race, and the African American will have “an important and valuable” part (Essays 135). ”
Chesnutt, argued that, capital and education did drain the force of racial prejudice once “the more objectionable Negro traits are eliminated, and his better qualities correspondingly developed” (Essays 135). The likelihood of a class alliance that crosses racial boundaries in Dr. Miller’s book even in Chesnutt’s hope what each “likes to believe. ” Even as it has made look possible, this wish has continued to thwart throughout Marrow. Dr. Burns, a white doctor did present the like hood of cross- race and class-based identification. It’s clearer that Dr Mille felt more kinship with his fellow professional than with the African American agricultural laborers.
Marrow is anxious novel about the future, it tries racial prognostication not unlike that seen in the writings of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson. 29 Chesnutt sent a copy of Marrow to Congressman. William H. Moody desiring that it might lodge “a new point of view in the mind of a gentleman of influence, whose position gives him opportunity to act” (176). 30 He did hope that his book would help shape the New South’s future, however, the racial prognostication meant to occur in Marrow proved none too easy a task. Chesnutt who struggled in choosing an ending for his novel, suggested the complexity inherent in envisioning what happened the day after the riot. Two earlier incarnations of the novel definitively portray Dr. Miller curing young Dodie. The “Plot for Short Story: Race Riot” ends with the doctor refusing to stay in town under the white man’s protection whereas the “Race Riot Story” concludes with the doctor moving away from town in a Jim Crow car. 31 The conclusion Chesnutt finally chose leaves Dodie’s fate undecided and is much less definitive, ending with the line “There’s time enough, but none to spare” (718).
In a conclusion rife with antinomy, Marrow ultimately cannot envision the day after the riot or the means by which racial prejudice would be wiped from the face of the future America. The future seems one in which race will continue to function as a strong line of disunion, hierarchy and power. Towards the end of the novel, the potential transformative cultural ascendency of the middle class represents much of the same. Chesnutt prophetically imagines the “liberal racism” that would one day be associated with the North and, later, the post-Civil Rights era. Ellis is horror-stricken by the day’s events in part because “a show of force would have been quite sufficient to overawe” (690). He did oppose the violence since intimidation could do (690).
Willie Harrell did argue that Chesnutt did not offer solutions to the problems of racial because Chesnutt did recognize that the future of his race was a dilemma yet uncertain. Yet Chesnutt wrote “The Future American” was able to envision how racial uplift might usher in an era of equality. It’s almost impossible to speculate what had changed for Chesnutt between his final “The Future American” essay in September 1900 and the writing of a novel he had begun planning that very same month. Whether attributable to the creative process race story he had being told by physician Wilmington, Chesnutt did lament in a letter to John P. Green, “If I could propose a remedy for existing evils that would cure them over night, I would be a great man. But I am only a small social student who can simply point out the seat of the complaint” (“To Be an Author” 156).
Though, the novel might have reached the author’s creative limit and could not ultimately imagine of a future America in which all races would be afforded equality or the road to country that could arrive there, neither could it dish out with a sense of urgency born of the hope that nonetheless remained Despite Ellis’s failure, and the failure of the white professional middle class he represents, to usher in an era of cross-racial solidarity, “There is time enough. ” For what, remains inarticulate, just beyond the novel’s horizon.
Works Cited
- Marten, James. “Bringing Up Yankees: The Civil War and the Moral Education of Middle-Class Children. ” The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle-Class. New York: Routledge, 2001. 86-100.
- McWilliams, Dean. Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race. Athens: The U of Georgia P, 2002.
- Rabinowitz, Howard N. The First New South, 1865-1920. Arlington Height, IL: Harland Davidson, 1992.
- Robertson, Michael. Stephen Crane. Journalism, and the Making of Modern American Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 1997.
- Roggenkamp, Karen. Narrating the News: New Journalism and Literary Genre in Late Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers and Fiction. Kent, OH: The Kent State UP, 2005.
- Schudson, Michael. Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers. New York: Basic Books, 1978.
- -----. “The Profession of Journalism in the United States. ” The Professions in American History. Ed Nathan O. Hatch. Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 1988. 145 162. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English
