As you continue reading The Making of a Southerner, think about how Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin narrates the material and psychological aftereffects of the Civil War. What does she say about Lost Cause ideology? (You can read about the Lost Cause here and here.) How do both whites and blacks react to the loss what she terms the "old order"? Are there moments in the text that you feel her dislocate her allegiances from this old order and nod toward her conversion to racial equality? Keep reacting to the text's subtle critiques of southern paternalism, racism, and plantation-based ideologies.
You might want to also continue to think about the issues of tone, narrative, and point of view that we discussed in class yesterday.
On page 126 in the text, Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, describes going to a Confederate veterans’ camp with her father on different occasions. She says, “Nothing, it seems, had prepared me, who was but a child, for the humdrum, everyday labor that when into preserving a Lost Cause.” Here, she seems to distance herself from the ideology of the Lost Cause. She recognizes, even as a child, that carrying on this tradition may not be worth the effort pursuing. For her, carrying on this tradition by making, what seem to be unnecessary trips out of town hold no lure or excitement.
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing her father beat the cook, Lumpkin talks of feelings that may lead to her conversion. Still a child, she knows that what she witnesses her father doing is not right. Although she has been brought up to believe that white people are supreme, she realizes that her father should not beat another woman.
Sorry to be posting so late, I just go off work.
ReplyDeleteThere was one passage in this section that made me stop; re-read; and then mull it over in my mind. This passage comes from page 137. It is the scene in school where Lumpkin is in a debate with another "Yankee" boy about whether or not "Negros Are Equal To White People." I found it interesting how Lumpkin talks about how she had written down all the arguments her family had given her about why African Americans aren't equal to whites. She said that "one could guess the scorn at the arguments that flowed from his Yankee home." I found this curious because it is like Lumpkin is implying here that raism is imbred. She was born into a family that didn't accept blacks as equals and was therefore instilled with the same beliefs. There was really no other choice for either of them. She makes it clear that both she and the Yankee boy were just arguing what they had been taught.
She also makes a point to say that she was encouraged by her peers with their applause.So not only is racism nourished and taught by her family, but also it is encouraged by all the other children with the same background.
Lumpkin makes it a point that the South at this time was a collective. It was an us v. them mentality and if one were to break free of this mentality, it seems the only option would be to seek refuge from those surroundings. This of course alludes to her later choice to head north.
I don't know, I just found that intriguing.
In the last class, Lumpkin's use of 'they' on page 17 was seen as distancing herself from the views she was expressing. However, she was also talking about a distant past, one in which she was not alive to experience. It would only be natural for her to say 'they' and not 'we;' she wasn't there. Saying 'we' would have been strange and out of place.
ReplyDeleteOn page 98-99, we can see Lumpkin using her usual method of distancing herself by putting words into quotation marks, clearly telling us that this is someone else's words. She uses the phrase "so men said" letting the reader know these are not her opinions. Lumpking also lets us know that her Father told her all this and that wasn't an active participant.
On the other hand, we can see her inclusion into this world that is full of secrets. She knows "the aim" of the KKK and clearly has insider information as she discusses the dying out of the "real" clan. Lumpking says "so it is believed" pointing out her inclusion into the truth.
This section mentions the "old order" and the conspiracy of public denouncement of the KKK whil in reality prominent men were using it as a way of reestablishing the "old order" or white dominance. They were claiming their rights as Southern gentlemen after being emasculated by the defeat in the Civil War and the following Restoration. They use it as way of finally taking back the control they feel was stolen from them. The upper crust can get away with this by blaming the KKK on the lower class and hides behind the fake "real" Ku Klux Klan.
With the defeat of the confederacy, by the union, the southern way of life would be disrupted forever. When the slaves were freed, it caused white plantation owners a severe loss. They could no longer provide for their own families on lands that were owned by them for generations. White plantation owners tried to find new ways to reap their lands to provide imcome by bringing in new workers, but they rarely ever stayed in conditions that Lumpkin describes that white landowners had for negroes. When the old order had passed it not only left white land owners at a loss to find a way to support an income, but it also left the black slaves in a position to find ways of survival. They could stay and work, or try and eek out a living of their own. Being landless, and unable to buy land, these people could hardly to a thing in order to survive. Lumpkin defines this very well when she talks about the southern way of life and how the old order came to an end. How were these two races of people who were heavily dependent on each other to make a living now?
ReplyDeleteThe pages that stand out to me discuss the limbo phase after slavery has been legally abolished, but before it is truly removed from society. On page 64, Lumpkin states that the statesmen realized that abolishing slavery was problematic for the Southern society, because labor used to be “controlled at will.” To solve this problem, “revisions” were made, except the “Black Code” simply uses different terminology to keep slavery more or less present. As I read this section, the tone sounds very mechanical, as though Lumpkin is writing the law down without revealing any opinion on the situation. At this point it is unclear which side of the fence Lumpkin is on. She does appear to be objective and honest, but not yet moving toward conversion. When describing Hazard's wage method, beginning on page 68, she is recognizing the planter's ingenious plan. Lumpkin's tone does not become less subtle until later, around page 86, when her writing sounds less mechanical.
ReplyDeleteIt is important for us to analyze the text through the lens we have crafted with our previous works: that of black autobiography as the intellectual phoenix of generations of auto-oppression. In each of our previous studies, the black protagonists were alienated as a result of their ambition. They made anthropological observations about their race and opted for an intellectual, elevated position. They were not infallible, but their accounts indicate that they were certainly progressive.
ReplyDeleteLumpkin is operating from the same position: the relatively-stoic biographical nature of these first books mirrors the oppressive black unconscious with which each of our previous writers grappled. Page 87 particularly parallels black accounts: “Thirty years after reconstruction, I, a child, must still feel it. Seeing the faces of older men suffuse with emotion when some untoward thing stirred their hardly buried memories, I, too, would feel namelessly oppressed.”
Just as young blacks felt oppressed by the psychological ghosts of slavery, so is Lumpkin affected by the painful, and most importantly, self-inflicted, nostalgia that plagues older Southerners.
I had forgotten to post, better late than never. I was drawn to page 144 where she is discussing the ideology of the Southern Gentleman in context of her father's campaign for Senator. She is showing how corrupt the whole process of government was. She notices that her father's passion for the "interest of the land" didn't help him politically. The men who lead were "...of a different kind...The represented "interests" Her narrative before and after this all focus around the corruption in the political world. The voter's poll tax, the questions the registrar could try to stump someone with (p 140). The corruption was no longer aimed at the Negro, but at men white and black. Only with this does it seem to come to light to her as a child that this is all very wrong. In retrospect, I think some of the images are there because they do sting. They are meant to be statements of "how could you" from someone who has grown and formed opinions of her own that overthrow those imposed on her as a child. Statements like that on p 138 where she says "It had taken astute legal minds to find a phrase such as 'equal and separate' for gerring our segregation laws by."
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