Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights
Beginning in the mid nineteenth century in America, childhood became synonymous with innocenceoa reversal of the previously- dominant Calvinist belief that children were depraved, sinful creatures. As the idea of childhood innocence took hold, it became racialized: popular culture constructed white children as innocent and vulnerable while excluding black youth from these qualities. Actors, writers, and visual artists then began pairing white children with African American adults and children, thus transferring the quality of innocence to a variety of racial-political projectsoa dynamic that Robin Bernstein calls racial innocence. This phenomenon informed racial formation from the mid nineteenth century through the early twentieth, while enabling sharply divergent political agendas to appear, paradoxically, to be innocuous, natural, normal, and therefore justified. Racial Innocence takes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which Bernstein analyzes as scriptive things that invite or prompt historically-located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation.Integrating performance studies with literary and visual analysis, Bernstein offers singular readings of theatrical productions, literary works, material culture including Topsy pincushions and Raggedy Ann dolls, and visual texts ranging from fine portraiture to advertisements for lard substitute. Throughout, Bernstein shows how innocence gradually became the exclusive province of white childrenountil the Civil Rights Movement succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself.
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Contents
Playing Innocent Childhood Race Performance
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1 |
The Divergent Paths of Racial Innocence
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30 |
2 Scriptive Things
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69 |
Slavery as a Tender Embrace from Uncle Toms to Uncle Remuss Cabin
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92 |
Color plates
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132 |
4 The BlackandWhiteness of Raggedy Ann
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146 |
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abolitionist adults advertisement African American Aiken antebellum arbor scene argued Baum Beloved Belindy Billings's black children black dolls blackface Burnett cards chapter characters Chicago childhood innocence Clarks color Cordelia Howard Cottolene cotton cuddle Daisy Turner Dakota Fanning Dinah doll play doll tests doll’s Douglass enslaved Eva's example figure Frank Baum Golliwogg Gruelle's handkerchief Harriet Beecher Stowe Harris Harris's Henny History Ibid illustration imagined James Jewett Johnny Gruelle Kenneth Clark literature Little Eva Mammy Marcella material culture minstrel Negro nineteenth century pain Patchwork Girl performance pickaninny plantation poem race racial innocence Raggedy Ann Raggedy Ann Stories Raggedy Auntie reader Scarecrow script scriptive things sentimental sexual Shirley Temple slaveholding slavery slaves stage Stowe’s Stowe's novel surrogation tender theater tion Tom’s Topsy topsy-turvy doll Topsy's twentieth century Uncle Remus Uncle Tom's Cabin University Press violence visual white child white children white dolls white girl women York