The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925

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
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 02/10/2000
Pages: 296
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 9.27h x 6.14w x 0.78d
ISBN13: 9780195132793
ISBN10: 0195132793
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Minority Studies
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies
- History | United States | 19th Century

About the Author

Mia Bay is Assistant Professor of History and Co-Director of the Center for Historical Analysis at Rutgers University.

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