Race and National Identity

Race and National Identity

“One may question whether the United States ever possessed the common body of ideas and values that some commentators look back on with nostalgia, or if one may point to the exclusions of gender, race, class, and education that enabled such a comforting illusion of consensus” (Clayton 9). In essence, Clayton is speaking of a national identity. In order to say the United States has a national identity, we must agree that race and national identity weave together in the United States. Reading the novels discussed in the earlier blogs this relation of race and national identity becomes clear.

“The collective identity of a nation state can be accessed through the stories it tells about its own history…” (Andrews). Faulkner’s novel “Absalom, Absalom” is one of these stories. Set during the time surrounding the Civil War, the novel could be a story of the creation of America’s national identity.

Consider the main character, Thomas Sutpen. Born in the mountains of the north, Sutpen eventually comes to a small southern town to found his dynasty, a pure white family that will survive long after he is gone. This seems to parallel the founding of the South. Wherein, white settlers eventually moving to the South began to build plantations and their own dynasties, with their own ideals. Sutpen begins his master plan by detaching himself from his past. The illusion of Sutpen’s entry to the town on his horse, “…as though they had been created out of thin air…,” (Faulkner 24) was the first of many ways Faulkner showed this detachment. The parallel here is after years of creating their ideals and fortunes, the states of the South tried to break away from the North.

Sutpen begins his family and becomes wealthy, only to find out that past transgressions with his first wife are coming back to haunt him. The Civil War begins with the North (the Southern states “past”) refusing to allow the South to detach from the nation. At this point Sutpen’s master plan begins to unravel, at the same time the South’s army is begins to suffer defeats.

The issue of race weaves throughout both the novel and the United States preceding and during the Civil War. The idea of a national identity requires that all the nation’s citizens have the both an equal and shared view. In both the novel and our nation, the white race was the bearer of our nation’s “identity.” Blacks were slaves at the mercy of their white owners without rights or a voice, or in some cases seen only as “wild beasts” (Faulkner 10). The white men who had the wealth to own land and slaves became the bearers of the national identity. This shows that not only was the term citizen reserved for the white race, the title was primarily for the wealthy males.

Race and national identity have always been intertwined. The United States has always been identified as a white nation. Other races are often times seen and depicted as being less American than whites. The books that we have read this quarter, especially those by Toni Morrison, really delve into this issue. Morrison often talks about how African Americans are used in literature. They are used simply as an aid to white people, and are usually depicted as something that no one should aspire to be. She also says that what it means to be American has always been associated with what it means to be white. Some people like to say the United States is a melting pot where all different types of people are accepted, but many times this is not the case. Immigrants are often looked down upon, and people get uneasy about different races immigrating to the United States. This shows how much race and national identity are related, and how the white race is seen as being the official race of America.

Manning Marable, in an article from the social issues website wiseto.com talks about the American identity in regards to race. Marable talks about how U.S. nationality is defined historically in that the power and privilege has always been in the hands of a certain race and class: white males. He says, “Despite the orthodox cultural ideology of the so-called ‘melting pot,’ power, privilege and the ownership of productive resources and property has always been unequally allocated in a social hierarchy stratified by class, gender and race” (Marable). This quote is very important in that it shows that America has always hid behind the “melting pot” idea in order to come off as being accepting of all races, and that there is not one true American identity. He goes on to say, “to be an ‘all-American’ is, by definition, not to be an Asian-American, Pacific-American, American Indian, Latino, Arab-American or African-American.” It is because of this “whiteness” within the dominant national identity, that Americans generally make few distinctions between “ethnicity” and “race”---and the two concepts are usually used interchangeably. Americans actually impose a racial identity on radically different ethnic groups” (Marable). This is a great quote and it is a great example of what being an American is defined as.

An article written by Glenn C. Loury entitled “Race and Identity in America” from the book “One by One from the Inside Out : Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America,” talks about the issues of African Americans finding obtaining an identity in American culture. Throughout the article he talks about passing, and describes himself as been fascinated and disgusted with it at the same time. This got me thinking about the novel we read in class of the same name. “Passing” by Nella Larsen goes hand in hand with this particular article. Loury talks about how intriguing the idea of passing was because it enabled black people to take part in the advantages of white people in society. The African Americans who took to passing were simply trying to fit into the stereotyped American identity. To be truly American meant to be white and to have the privileges that went along with being white. I think that in “Passing” the characters were fascinated and disgusted at the same time with the idea of passing. It meant a better life with more privileges in American society, but it also meant rejecting your race and who you truly were. I think that this was a dilemma that a lot of people of color had to go through because to engage in American society, and to be soon as truly “American” meant to deny your own race and assimilate to the culture of white people. This article was extremely helpful and related to the topic of Race and National Identity in many ways.

Bridget R. Cooks in the article, “Fixing race: visual representations of African Americans at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893” discusses the cartoons which appeared in Harper’s Weekly in the 1890’s, showing how far back the negative depiction of African Americans goes (image at top). There was an exhibit to celebrate America’s achievements since its founding, and this picture shows how many whites did not want African Americans to be there. This particular picture depicts African Americans as being wild, barbaric, and in no way comparable to the white race. They were depicted this way because whites were very fearful that their national identity would be tainted by including African Americans in the equation. Therefore, African Americans were depicted as being savage and completely different from what it was to be truly American at the time, and that was being white. This picture shows African Americans looking beast-like and not very much like real humans. These pictures found in Harper’s Weekly are a perfect example to show how race was so closely related to national identity. (Cooks).

National identity played a different role in Jazz than it did in Absalom, Absalom. Faulkner’s work was mainly about Sutpen’s creation of his own American dream. However, Toni Morrison used Jazz as an attempt to describe, the concerns from an African American community’s point of view and the roots of their collective search for identity. The unidentified narrator remains close to the lives of those in black Harlem, and does not focus the story on any white characters, except Vera Louise, the mother of biracial Golden Gray. The legacy left behind from slavery comes up as a theme throughout the story. In fact, the migrating of blacks to the City demonstrates their distancing from their past.

Characters, such as Golden Gray, demonstrate the conflict between exploring one’s racial past. After Golden Gray finds out he is half black, he decides to find his father and kill him. (Jazz, 142- 143) This search leads him to his father, Henry, who explains to him that he has a choice of which race he wants to embrace. Although Golden Gray’s light skinned appearance led him to be able to have a choice, most other characters in the African American community were not given that opportunity to be “free”.

Finding freedom in the black community, after the Civil War, was a part of finding their national identities. It was a struggle for many African Americans and former slaves. An example can be seen on page 31 of Jazz. The train attendant speaks of how disappointed he was to see that once the train past Delaware- the line where segregation was lifted- few African Americans got up and mingled throughout the train. This can lead one to question were they really free? They finally became physically free, but in their minds they had no idea what it really meant to be free, since they had been in bondage for so long. This bondage of the mind, seemed to hinder some members African Americans in their quest to find their national identity.

MLA Citations

Andrews, Molly. "National identity and national narratives" Paper presented at the annual

meeting of the ISPP 31st Annual Scientific Meeting, Sciences Po, Paris, France, Jul 09,

2008 . 2009-02-03.

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p254711_index.html

Cooks, Bridget R. “Fixing race: visual representations of African Americans at the World’s

Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.” Routledge. 2007: 435-465.

Clayton, Jay. The Pleasures of Babel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom. 1936. New York: Vintage International, 1986.

Loury, Glenn C. “Race and Identity in America: A Personal Perspective.” The History Place:

Points of View. 1997. 5 March 2009.

.

"Malcom X Explains Black Nationalism." YouTube. 11 May 2006. 8 March 2009

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO6Co8v2XjY>.

Marable, Manning. "Beyond Racial-Identity Politics." Race and Ethnicity. Ed. Alma M. Garcia

and Richard A. Garcia. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2001.

<http://socialissues.wiseto.com/Articles/FO3020630048/>.

By: Jenn Leever, Michael Viox, and Charlene Winburn