Premium
Gender, Race, and Rumours: Re‐examining the 1943 Race Riots
Author(s) -
Johnson Marilynn S.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
gender and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-0424
pISSN - 0953-5233
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0424.00099
Subject(s) - race (biology) , ideology , gender studies , narrative , identity (music) , sociology , criminology , political science , law , politics , linguistics , philosophy , physics , acoustics
Focusing on three riots of the World War II era – those of Beaumont (Texas), Detroit, and New York's Harlem – this essay examines the rumours that sparked these disturbances to uncover the gendered ideologies that underlie racial violence. In these rumour narratives, women appear as either rape victims or tortured mothers, while men appear as either depraved rapists or noble protectors. The deployment of these images helped forge a defensive collective identity that facilitated the outbreak of violence. Because racial and gender ideologies were intimately linked, the author argues, race riots must be analysed through the lens of gender in order to be fully understood.