Two Australian historians (brothers, incidentally) from the
University of Sydney examine the ways in which black style has been
interpreted and the political and social implications it has
carried from slavery to WW II. African-American history has been
written on the black body in a variety of ways, many of them cruel
and inhuman. Slaves were branded, had their ears cropped, were
whipped mercilessly. A slave's body was not his/her own property in
the most literal sense, but as the Whites observe in this
engrossing volume, there were many ways in which they could assert
some small measure of independence. Focusing on such variegated
indicators of black style as dress, hair, body language, and dance,
the authors reveal an evolving semiotics of black self-creation
that has been designed from its very outset to impose a degree of
individuality on the numbing uniformity bred of slavery, poverty,
Jim Crow laws, and white racism. In the first half of the book,
which is concerned with the period before emancipation, the authors
draw creatively on a multitude of sources - ranging from the
memoirs and diaries of travelers in the South to handbills
advertising rewards for the capture of runaway slaves - to recreate
a largely forgotten aspect of black daily life. This volume
represents an excellent example of how to use the most unlikely
materials, such as newspaper-sponsored beauty pageants from the
'20s, to examine how a people's culture defines its values in the
face of oppression. Although the book is occasionally a bit
repetitive in the early going, as its authors seek to build a case
with somewhat slender evidence, it is well written and
intelligently argued. It even has that rarity of rarities in a
university press book: a preface that is delightfully funny. A
highly useful contribution to black history from an unexpected
direction, in every sense of that phrase. (Kirkus Reviews)
Shane White and Graham White consider the deeper significance of
the ways in which African Americans have dressed, walked, danced,
arranged their hair, and communicated in silent gestures. They ask
what elaborate hair styles, bright colors, bandanas, long watch
chains, and zoot suits, for example, have really meant, and discuss
style itself as an expression of deep-seated cultural imperatives.
Their wide-ranging exploration of black style from its African
origins to the 1940s reveals a culture that differed from that of
the dominant racial group in ways that were often subtle and
elusive. White and White argue that the politics of black style is,
in fact, the politics of metaphor, always ambiguous because it is
always indirect. To tease out these ambiguities, they examine
extensive sources, including advertisements for runaway slaves,
interviews recorded with surviving ex-slaves in the 1930s,
autobiographies, travelers' accounts, photographs, paintings,
prints, newspapers, and images drawn from popular culture, such as
the stereotypes of Jim Crow and Zip Coon.
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