The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780195132793)

How did African-American slaves view their white masters? As demons, deities or another race entirely? When nineteenth-century white Americans proclaimed their innate superiority, did blacks agree? If not, why not? How did blacks assess the status of the white race? Mia Bay traces African-American perceptions of whites between 1830 and 1925 to depict America's shifting attitudes about race in a period that saw slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, and urban migration.

Much has been written about how the whites of this time viewed blacks, and about how blacks viewed themselves. By contrast, the ways in which blacks saw whites have remained a historical and intellectual mystery. Reversing the focus of such fundamental studies as George Fredrickson's The Black Image in the White Mind, Bay investigates this mystery. In doing so, she uncovers and elucidates the racial thought of a wide range of nineteenth-century African-Americans--educated and unlettered, male and female, free and enslaved.

Author: Mia Bay
ISBN-10: 0195132793
ISBN-13: 9780195132793
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 02/10/2000
Pages: 296
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 9.27h x 6.14w x 0.78d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 12/01/1999 pg. 663
Library Journal 12/01/1999 pg. 156
Qbr the Black Book Review 12/01/2001 pg. 11