This title shows how the five senses shaped southern racial stereotypes.For at least two centuries, argues Mark Smith, white southerners used all of their senses - not just their eyes - to construct racial difference and define race. His provocative analysis, extending from the colonial period to the mid-twentieth century, shows how whites of all classes used the artificial binary of ""black"" and ""white"" to justify slavery and erect the political, legal, and social structure of segregation.Based on painstaking research, ""How Race Is Made"" is a highly original, always frank, and often disturbing book. Sensory racial stereotypes were invented and irrational, but at every turn, Smith shows, these constructions of race, immune to logic, signified difference and perpetuated inequality. In order to come to terms with the South's past and present, Smith says, we must explore the sensory dynamics underpinning the deeply emotional construction of race. ""How Race Is Made"" takes a bold step toward that understanding.
- ISBN13 9780807859254
- Publish Date 1 September 2008 (first published 1 February 2006)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 5 June 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint The University of North Carolina Press
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 208
- Language English