Why White Boys Sing the Blues:
Lott explores "Racial Cross-Dressing"
By John Crouch, Attorney at Law,
Crouch & Crouch, Arlington, Virginia; (703)
528-6700;
Other Crouch Articles
Eric Lott, Professor of English at U. Va., spoke to a packed hall at Swem
last Thursday about "Racial Cross-Dressing and the Construction of
American Whiteness." He treated antebellum minstrel shows, Elvis, Mick
Jagger, Vanilla Ice and Lee Atwater as one continuous phenomenon, which
is significant not as racism or exploitation, but rather for what it reveals
about whites' notions of whiteness and blackness. To Lott, these "blackface"
performances show a white male "fascination" with the color line,
a self-conscious desire to assume a black identity temporarily.
Lott described this sentiment as natural, not because white Americans somehow
lack the earthy, casual virtues they attribute to blacks, but rather because
they define certain painful and pleasurable experiences as black in order
to maintain an artificially "respectable" white self-image. Lott
pointed out that minstrel shows began in the 1840s, when women's Victorian
standards of morality were becoming increasingly powerful in white society.
White males reacted, like Huck Finn, by seeking opportunities "to be
Negroes together." (Lott saw much the same thing happening from the
1950s onward.)
Lott added that gestures of nonchalance were consciously copied from black
men and became part of every white man's "equipment for living."
He cited cakewalking, whistling through the teeth, and a rolling, swaying
gait as gestures nineteenth-century white men used to express their freedom
from Victorian decorum.
Early minstrels, like their audiences, were mostly working-class northern
white men. The better ones spent months among gangs of black laborers, receiving
rigorous instruction in their songs and dances. Lott sees these white "minstrels"
as bohemian artists, not racists.
The minstrel business created little opportunity for blacks themselves,
but it did show some respect for their skills. One antebellum troupe got
most of its material from its porter. The best minstrel ever was William
Henry Lane, a Black known as Juba. He out-danced and caricatured every other
minstrel, and was most renowned for imitating others' imitations of himself.
Lott thought it ironic that Juba was never paid simply to dance as himself,
but only to imitate his imitators.
Lott also discussed Norman Mailer's essay on "The White Negro,"
based on a ridiculously idyllic, primeval, childlike view of black life.
He then critiqued John Howard Griffin, who dyed himself black and wrote
Black Like Me. Lott said "White Like Me" was more apt. To him,
the book revealed little about the black experience, and much about how
a white man saw black men. Griffin was deeply affected by physical closeness
with blacks, and imagined his black self as virile, threatening, cool and
unencumbered.
Lott concluded that whites not only see blacks as people, but also as symbols
of many subversive or competing human values, including fertility, freedom,
physical prowess, and humility. While this just makes life more complicated
for black Americans, it also means that white prejudices are not wholly
malevolent or selfish.
John Crouch
Williamsburg, Va.
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