A Nation of Outsiders Quotes

“Minstrelsy and its descendants gave its white and black performers and fans lessons in how to act black by defining what blackness looked and sounded like onstage. And it taught them why to act black. Blackness could be anything. Blackness could be everything. African Americans might be enslaved, Jim Crowed, disfranchised, lynched, raped, abused, cheated, and discriminated against, but the minstrel show made “blackness” into a medium of transformation and transcendence so powerful that at times, within limits, it even worked for black people.”
― Grace Elizabeth Hale, A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America