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 |
From inside the book
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Page 5
... reformers as devoted friends of the race . Perhaps focusing on the earlier days and conveniently forgetting the later tensions , Robert H. Terrell , a black justice of the municipal court in Washington , D.C. , would recall having heard ...
... reformers as devoted friends of the race . Perhaps focusing on the earlier days and conveniently forgetting the later tensions , Robert H. Terrell , a black justice of the municipal court in Washington , D.C. , would recall having heard ...
Page 6
... reformers to ad- dress black women's specific experiences of gender oppression meant that the white woman's movement would remain mostly white , even when individual women of color were invited to become members of white - dominated ...
... reformers to ad- dress black women's specific experiences of gender oppression meant that the white woman's movement would remain mostly white , even when individual women of color were invited to become members of white - dominated ...
Page 7
... reformers , white woman's rights activists measured the ( lack of ) " social progress " of non - white races in terms of their ( lack of ) conformity to Anglo- American Protestant middle - class gender relations . One of the most ...
... reformers , white woman's rights activists measured the ( lack of ) " social progress " of non - white races in terms of their ( lack of ) conformity to Anglo- American Protestant middle - class gender relations . One of the most ...
Page 8
... reformers offered themselves as models of black womanhood to prove to white racists that there was nothing inher- ently inferior about the black race . Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin , a leader in the National Association of Colored Women ...
... reformers offered themselves as models of black womanhood to prove to white racists that there was nothing inher- ently inferior about the black race . Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin , a leader in the National Association of Colored Women ...
Page 9
... reformers also used evolutionist discourses of civilization to justify their own social activism . They asserted their duty to “ elevate ” and “ uplift ” the masses of black women , upholding the values of domes- ticity , chastity ...
... reformers also used evolutionist discourses of civilization to justify their own social activism . They asserted their duty to “ elevate ” and “ uplift ” the masses of black women , upholding the values of domes- ticity , chastity ...
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Common terms and phrases
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