| Black for a Day: White Fantasies of Race and Empathy Contributor(s): Gaines, Alisha (Author) |
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ISBN: 1469632829 ISBN-13: 9781469632827 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $98.01 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: May 2017 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Minority Studies - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - Social Science | Discrimination & Race Relations |
| Dewey: 305.800 |
| LCCN: 2016046558 |
| Physical Information: 0.69" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (1.17 lbs) 230 pages |
| Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Ethnic Orientation - Multicultural |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In 1948, journalist Ray Sprigle traded his whiteness to live as a black man for four weeks. A little over a decade later, John Howard Griffin famously became black as well, traveling the American South in search of a certain kind of racial understanding. Contemporary history is littered with the surprisingly complex stories of white people passing as black, and here Alisha Gaines constructs a unique genealogy of empathetic racial impersonation--white liberals walking in the fantasy of black skin under the alibi of cross-racial empathy. At the end of their experiments in blackness, Gaines argues, these debatably well-meaning white impersonators arrived at little more than false consciousness. Complicating the histories of black-to-white passing and blackface minstrelsy, Gaines uses an interdisciplinary approach rooted in literary studies, race theory, and cultural studies to reveal these sometimes maddening, and often absurd, experiments of racial impersonation. By examining this history of modern racial impersonation, Gaines shows that there was, and still is, a faulty cultural logic that places enormous faith in the idea that empathy is all that white Americans need to make a significant difference in how to racially navigate our society. |
Contributor Bio(s): Gaines, Alisha: - Alisha Gaines is assistant professor of English at Florida State University. |