South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

by Imani Perry

Du Bois explained that in the Redemption South, the White worker was offered Whiteness to set himself apart from the Black worker. And no matter how hungry, how imprisoned by labor, how deprived he was, that was his gift, or grift as the case might be. One way to read this is in simple Marxian terms: the working class was divided against itself by means of the false consciousness of race. But that is too easy an interpretation in a society that had been forged by race. Whiteness was an article of faith. It redeemed suffering. And afforded compensation in the ability to feed bloodthirstiness—lynching, burning, beating, raping, humiliating—which also became matters of faith. That might not provide a tidy economic explanation, but it became an undeniable and central aspect of the social order. It was material.