{"id":21329,"date":"2012-03-12T18:48:58","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T18:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=21329"},"modified":"2012-03-12T18:48:58","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T18:48:58","slug":"birth-in-the-briar-patch-charles-w-chesnutt-and-the-problem-of-racial-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=21329","title":{"rendered":"Birth in the Briar Patch: Charles W. Chesnutt and the Problem of Racial Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Birth in the Briar Patch: Charles W. Chesnutt and the Problem of Racial Identity<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Southern Literary Journal<\/a>
\nVolume 41, Number 2<\/a>, Spring 2009
\npages 1-20
\nDOI: 10.1353\/slj.0.0040<\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Worden<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of English
\nUniversity of Colorado, Colorado Springs<\/em><\/p>\n

In his speech \u201cThe Courts and the Negro,\u201d written around 1908, Charles W. Chesnutt<\/a> faults the American government\u2019s geographic location for the limits and widespread denials of the Fourteenth Amendment\u2019s power. The government\u2019s central location in Washington, D.C. perpetuated racism, Chesnutt argued, for \u201cinevitably the administration, the courts, the whole machinery of government takes its tone from its environment\u201d (Charles 896). This racism, present within the \u201cclubs and parlors\u201d of the South, feeds the \u201cattitudes of presidents and congressmen and judges toward the Negro,\u201d and therefore, \u201cto men living in a community where service and courtesy in public places is in large measure denied the Negro, there seems to be no particular enormity in separate car laws\u201d (897). Chesnutt goes on to reference the U. S. Supreme Court\u2019s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson<\/a><\/em> decision, which ruled in favor of Louisiana\u2019s<\/a> segregated railroad cars: \u201cAnd under Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em>, there is no reason why any Northern State may not reproduce in its own borders the conditions in Alabama<\/a> and Georgia<\/a>. And it may be that the Negro and his friends will have to exert themselves to save his rights in the North (903). The federal government’s southern context, then, both defers any institutional remedy to America’s racism and produces racism through association…<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Birth in the Briar Patch: Charles W. Chesnutt and the Problem of Racial Identity The Southern Literary Journal Volume 41, Number 2, Spring 2009 pages 1-20 DOI: 10.1353\/slj.0.0040 Daniel Worden, Assistant Professor of English University of Colorado, Colorado Springs In his speech \u201cThe Courts and the Negro,\u201d written around 1908, Charles W. Chesnutt faults the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,20],"tags":[333,898,897,10010,10009,3864],"class_list":["post-21329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-charles-chesnutt","tag-charles-w-chesnutt","tag-charles-waddell-chesnutt","tag-daniel-worden","tag-southern-literary-journal","tag-the-southern-literary-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}