Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century [Paperback]

Kevin K. Gaines (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0807845434 | ISBN-13: 978-0807845431

Amidst the violent racism prevalent at the turn of the twentieth century, African American cultural elites, struggling to articulate a positive black identity, developed a middle-class ideology of racial uplift. Insisting that they were truly representative of the race's potential, black elites espoused an ethos of self-help and service to the black masses and distinguished themselves from the black majority as agents of civilization; hence the phrase 'uplifting the race.'

A central assumption of racial uplift ideology was that African Americans' material and moral progress would diminish white racism. But Kevin Gaines argues that, in its emphasis on class distinctions and patriarchal authority, racial uplift ideology was tied to pejorative notions of racial pathology and thus was limited as a force against white prejudice.

Drawing on the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Hubert H. Harrison, and others, Gaines focuses on the intersections between race and gender in both racial uplift ideology and black nationalist thought, showing that the meaning of uplift was intensely contested even among those who shared its aims. Ultimately, elite conceptions of the ideology retreated from more democratic visions of uplift as social advancement, leaving a legacy that narrows our conceptions of rights, citizenship, and social justice.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Around the turn of the century, between the dying hopes of Reconstruction and the ardent desires of the civil rights movement was uplift, an ideology whereby African American elites believed they could earn respect--and rights--by adopting bourgeois mores. In his first three chapters, Gaines, a scholar of history and African American studies at Princeton, outlines some of the problems and concerns of uplift ideology, and while much of it is intriguing, his biggest beef often seems to be that uplift was not ahead of its time, being neither feminist enough nor sufficiently concerned with the needs of the lower classes. In the six remaining chapters, Gaines offers illustrations through profiles of African Americans. There's Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose dialect poems appealed to whites by continuing stereotypes; W.E.B. Du Bois, whose The Philadelphia Negro tried to reconcile the ideology of self-help with the realities of racism. There are ``race men and women'' who demean the lower classes, and African American men who ignore the plight of women while suffragists ignore the plight of African Americans. In the early chapters, Gaines sexualizes too much without enough substantiation (``the mammy stereotype... provided whites with a forgiving image of maternal black womanhood that released them from a guilty awareness of black women as victims of rape by white men''). But by the end, readers will be left with a much more subtle understanding of the sad paradox of uplift, of African Americans trying to belong to a society that was defined in part by their exclusion.

Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Gaines•s book is a refreshing demonstration of what can be yielded from a serious and scholarly contemplation of our American past."
—American Quarterly

A bold and exciting work.

Journal of Southern History

Readers will be left with a much more subtle understanding of the sad paradox of uplift.

Publishers Weekly

A challenging exploration of an important strand of African American thought--the ideology of racial uplift.

Journal of American History

An immensely insightful and informative work, richly documented and provocative in its arguments and conclusions.

Colin A. Palmer, City University of New York

Product Details

• Paperback: 342 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (January 17, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807845434
• ISBN-13: 978-0807845431
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #333,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Modern idealism for the African American Culture, October 23, 2000

By 

La-Shanda West (Homestead, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Hardcover)

Kevin Gaines does a remarkable job in identify the problems that face many African Americans living in the Twentieth Century. His studies is focused around the Civil Right Era where you have powerful leaders involved with the "Black Freedom Movement." Noted key players are Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. His arguements are based around the problems in the South and the violation of civil and human rights. The Federal and local (Southern) governments are the key institutions that supported the unjust treatment of African Americans for over many centuries. Gaines seem to argue that if there is a change in the way politics are incorporated in the poor black communities to help build a middle/working class society then the poverty rate would decrease and race would not be a barrier.