White Women's Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United StatesOxford University Press, 1999 M02 4 - 272 pages This study reinterprets a crucial period (1870s-1920s) in the history of women's rights, focusing attention on a core contradiction at the heart of early feminist theory. At a time when white elites were concerned with imperialist projects and civilizing missions, progressive white women developed an explicit racial ideology to promote their cause, defending patriarchy for "primitives" while calling for its elimination among the "civilized." By exploring how progressive white women at the turn of the century laid the intellectual groundwork for the feminist social movements that followed, Louise Michele Newman speaks directly to contemporary debates about the effect of race on current feminist scholarship. "White Women's Rights is an important book. It is a fascinating and informative account of the numerous and complex ties which bound feminist thought to the practices and ideas which shaped and gave meaning to America as a racialized society. A compelling read, it moves very gracefully between the general history of the feminist movement and the particular histories of individual women."--Hazel Carby, Yale University |
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Page 7
... progress " of non - white races in terms of their ( lack of ) conformity to Anglo- American Protestant middle - class gender relations . One of the most profound ironies of this history , then , is that at the INTRODUCTION 7.
... progress " of non - white races in terms of their ( lack of ) conformity to Anglo- American Protestant middle - class gender relations . One of the most profound ironies of this history , then , is that at the INTRODUCTION 7.
Page 9
... progress , and woman's protection within the home were interconnected in ways that made it impossible for black women to re- pudiate altogether the prevailing ideologies of the cult of domesticity and true wom- anhood . Like their white ...
... progress , and woman's protection within the home were interconnected in ways that made it impossible for black women to re- pudiate altogether the prevailing ideologies of the cult of domesticity and true wom- anhood . Like their white ...
Page 10
... progress meant that they had to disavow their cultural past , adopt patriarchal gender norms , and celebrate white cultural practices . The strictures of social evolu- tion required that black women ascribe to that which white women ...
... progress meant that they had to disavow their cultural past , adopt patriarchal gender norms , and celebrate white cultural practices . The strictures of social evolu- tion required that black women ascribe to that which white women ...
Page 14
... progress . On the other hand , the multiple ways in which white woman's rights activists made use of evolu- tionist racism in their responses to scientific and medical literature , in their travel writing and ethnographies , in their ...
... progress . On the other hand , the multiple ways in which white woman's rights activists made use of evolu- tionist racism in their responses to scientific and medical literature , in their travel writing and ethnographies , in their ...
Page 17
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Abolitionism abolitionist African African Americans Alice Fletcher Anglo-Saxon Anthony anthropology antisuffrage antisuffragists argued assimilation Bederman Beecher biological black women Boston Catharine Beecher Charlotte Perkins Gilman Chicago Chinese Christian cited Clarke's Coolidge discourse Dodge domestic economic Elizabeth Cady Stanton enfranchisement equality evolution evolutionary evolutionist theories female Feminism feminist Frances Willard French-Sheldon History ideology immigration imperialism inferior Journal Julia Ward labor legislation male Manliness & Civilization Margaret Mead Mary Abigail Dodge Mary Roberts Smith Mead's missionary moral National Native Negro nineteenth century Papatutai patriarchal political Popular Science Monthly protection race racial progress racism reformers Roberts Smith role Ross Separate Spheres Sex in Education sexual differences Shaler social Sociology Southern Workman suffragists Sultan to Sultan superiority Susan temperance tion traits United University Press Victorian Ward Western white elites white middle-class white racial white suffragists white women Willard woman question Woman Suffrage woman's movement woman's rights woman's sphere womanhood wrote York