Raising Racists

The Socialization of White Children in the Jim Crow South

Kristina DuRocher

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780813175782, 9780813130019
• eBook ISBN: 9780813139845
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. “My Mother Had Warned Me about This”: Parental Socialization in the Jim Crow South
• 2. “We Learned Our Lessons Well”: The Growth of White Privilege in Southern Schools
• 3. Consumerism Meets Jim Crow’s Children: White Children and the Culture of Segregation
• 4. “The Course My Life Was to Take”: The Violent Reality of White Youth’s Socialization
• 5. Violent Masculinity: Ritual and Performance in Southern Lynchings
• 6. “Is This the Man?”: White Girls’ Participation in Southern Lynchings
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index