The Specter of Sex

Gendered Foundations of Racial Formation in the United States

Sally L. Kitch

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781438427546, 9781438427539
• eBook ISBN: 9781438427683
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

Genealogy of the formation of race and gender hierarchies in the U.S.

Top Three Finalist for the 2010 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association

Theories of intersectionality have fundamentally transformed how feminists and critical race scholars understand the relationship between race and gender, but are often limited in their focus on contemporary experiences of interlocking oppressions. In The Specter of Sex, Sally L. Kitch explores the "backstory" of intersectionality theory-the historical formation of the racial and gendered hierarchies that continue to structure U.S. culture today. Kitch uses a genealogical approach to explore how a world already divided by gender ideology became one simultaneously obsessed with judgmental ideas about race, starting in Europe and the English colonies in the late seventeenth century. Through an examination of religious, political, and scientific narratives, public policies and testimonies, laws, court cases, and newspaper accounts, The Specter of Sex provides a rare comparative study of the racial formation of five groups-American Indians, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and European whites-and reveals gendered patterns that have served white racial dominance and repeated themselves with variations over a two-hundred-year period.

Table of contents

• The Specter of Sex
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction:The “Purloined Letter” of Gendered Race
• PART I. Roots
• PART II. Bodies
• PART III. Blood
• PART IV. Citizenship
• PART V. Implications
• Notes
• Index