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If You're Not Black You're White: A History of Ethnic Relations in St. Louis
Author(s) -
Bourgois Philippe
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
city and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1548-744X
pISSN - 0893-0465
DOI - 10.1525/city.1989.3.2.106
Subject(s) - ethnic group , politics , white (mutation) , ideology , race (biology) , context (archaeology) , spanish civil war , history , sociology , gender studies , political science , ethnology , anthropology , archaeology , law , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
Ethnicity in st.louis is polarized around a white‐versus‐black antagonism that melts non‐blacks into the category of whites. Discrimination against blacks in St. Louis is best understood in regional historical context as the political‐ economic and cultural confrontation of three societies—southern plantation, western rural, and northern industrial. This historical case study—from Indian conquest through black slavery and the Civil War to a 1917 industrial race riot and finally today's "rust belt" decay—reveals how ideologies generated around ethnicity interact with political structures to drive social processes in as important a manner as do more strictly material or economic forces. [African‐ Americans, ethnic discrimination, Midwest urban U.S., history of race relations, St. Louis]