In this sense, then, Du Bois's photographs of a biracial child signal both white violence upon African American bodies and an unde- niable white desire for the black body.
So important. White people's disdain and hatred for African Americans was so strong that they'd rather murder them than share a room with them, however, it wasn't strong enough to keep white people from creating interracial children during slavery. I think Thomas Jefferson can attest to that.
mulatto
Another new vocabulary term for me. "A person of mixed ancestry"
.17 As Mary Ann Doane has argued, the individual of mixed ancestry, "whose looks and ontology do not coincide, poses a threat to... the very idea of racial cate- gorization"
She hit it right on the head here. The fact that people could look white but come from an African American heritage, and other white people couldn't tell the difference and therefore treated them as equals without running into any problems, threatened racial categorization, because it proved that "black people" (based on ancestry rather than skin color, but still all the same to them) could fit into the middle class white group unproblematically - so why racially segregate when it was proven that African Americans weren't all savages and criminals, but rather equals when their heritage wasn't physically apparent?
. White hysteria
I think this is an important term. White hysteria was conducted over not being able to distinguish between races anymore. There had been so much racial mixing throughout slavery (mostly forced but we aren't ready for that conversation yet), that there were white people with black ancestry. The white hysteria was from not being able to differentiate between "pure" white people, and white people with African American heritage.
accoutrement
This is a new vocabulary word for me. Accoutrement: "additional items of dress or equipment, or other items carried or worn by a person or used for a particular activity", according to the dictionary from Oxford Languages.
cultural privilege
Aha, such an important term! I love Sage's comment that it's the privilege of purity. White people have always believed themselves to be high and mighty and the "savior" of what they believed to be "lower" ethnicities that were beneath them. Their privilege has always been self made through their perceptions of how pure they are and how it's their job to guide these "lower" ethnicities onto the path of righteousness that they've always been walking.
The laws that equated "one drop" of "African blood" with blackness encouraged those who believed them- selves to be white to scrutinize other white bodies for the imagined signs of hidden blackness.
I think it's interesting that this exhibit caused white people to start scrutinizing themselves, like suddenly blackness was some kind of disease they could all get and no one safe.
their acquaintances for "tell-tale" markers that would reveal them to be criminals in disguise
What markers were they looking for besides African American? Was there anything in addition to skin color that labeled people as criminals, or this really solely based on skin color?
In short, the images in Du Bois's albums repeat the formal signifiers of the criminal mugshots institutionalized in U.S. prisons and police archives in the late nineteenth century.
What was his exact thinking behind having his subjects pose this way?I understand he wanted to portray the "criminal" lense through which African Americans were seen, but I feel like taking some pictures to humanize them as well could've been beneficial to objecting that "criminal" perspective and displaying that they were people too. Did he take any pictures meant to humanize his subjects, or were all the pictures reminiscent of modern day mugshots?
In other words, when projected through the eyes of white others, the image of the African American middle-class individual often transmuted into the mugshot of an African American criminal.
No matter what class and no matter how generous, thoughtful, hard-working, or compassionate an African American could be, they would always be seen as nothing more than a criminal, a liar, and a thief through the white gaze.
The immediacy with which Du Bois's white judge moves from an imagined social equality in the parlor to the desire to lynch is both terrifying and telling
Super important again. The thought of social equality is so terrifying and horrible to a white man that he immediately resorts to death threats and thoughts of torture and murder to prevent it. In the white man's mind, murder was less of a sin than equality was.
In their place, your people can be honest and respectful; and God knows, I'll do what I can to help them. But when they want to reverse nature, and rule white men, and marry white women, and sit in my parlor, then, by God! we'll hold them under if we have to lynch every Nigger in the land."
I think this quote is SO important, especially with what's going on today. This is 100% the MAGA mindset whether they admit it or not. The white supremacists who crawled out of the woodwork when Trump became president believe in treating African Americans even less than this quote. They don't want them in this country at all. It's so sad how prevalent this mindset still is today in 2021.
"the negro is much more criminal as a free man than he was as a slave"
Aha! One of the biggest reasons used to defend slavery - when they're slaves they can be controlled. White Americans biggest fear was losing control over the African Americans. Claiming that they defer back to "violence" and "criminality" if not under white control was yet another excuse to rationalize and advocate for slavery. Between this and the constant portrayal of African Americans as criminals, it was almost impossible for them to change their image through the white gaze without African American journalists and photographers such as Du Bois coming forward and displaying them in a different light.
Lamenting the demise of "disci- pline" under slavery, the same writer proposed that "a substitute must be found" to ensure the "mental and moral discipline" of the African American (Winton 1414)
I can't help but think that this is how a lot of the police force still thinks today, along with so many of the public. Live Eda Seyhan wrote in her article, even visual evidence can fail to sway the public. In the case of a white police officer brutalizing black teenagers at a pool party, the public still claimed in the defense of the police officer, calling the teenagers "hooligans" and using one of white America's favorite excuses to criminalize African American's, "they were smoking weed". Something to note, is alright when being done by white Americans, it only becomes a crime when it's being done by African Americans. If the public doesn't still view African Americans like this today, then why are there still people defending police brutality in cases where there's video evidence to prove the police are in the wrong?
. Certainly the pho- tographs differ dramatically from the racist caricatures of Sambo, Zip Coon, and Jim Crow, stereotypes that fueled white fantasies of natural racial superi- ority.
Just something I found important - I think it was so important to have an African American photographer to represent African Americans through their own eyes and the eyes of their culture during this time period, because these photos were the only way to represent African Americans through a different lense than the one of criminality and suspect behavior that white journalists/photographers/etc represented them through. This was one of the first times they were represented differently for everyone to see.
"The camera was the cen- tral instrument by which blacks could disprove representations of us created by white folks"
I think this relates back to Eda Seyhan's article again. She also spoke about using cameras and technology to disprove representations of African Americans created by white people. She even used the example of the police officer who shot a man multiple times claiming the man had lunged for his tazor and he reacted in self defense, until a video surfaced of the African American man running away when he was shot. I think pictures and videos can help with African American's images when they're falsely labeled and represented by white people, however, the justice system is so flawed that even if evidence surfaces, especially in the case of police brutality, the offenders often aren't charged or punished.
I would like to suggest that, by replicating the formal characteristics of both the middle-class portrait and the criminal mugshot, Du Bois's "American Negro" pho- tographs subvert the visual registers and cultural discourses that consolidat- ed white middle-class privilege in opposition to an imagined "negro criminality" at the turn of the century.
This was an aha moment after my previous question. The nice clothes are meant to represent the white middle-class privilege while the solemn face displays the "criminality" associated with being black during the time period. Smiling wouldn't have portrayed the way African Americans were perceived - as criminals merely because of their skin color. Yay for aha moments!
Du Bois's "American Negro" por- traits are disturbing, even shocking, in the way they mirror turn-of-the-centu- ry criminal mugshots. Indeed, the images appear uncannily doubled, con- noting both middle-class portraits and criminal mugshots simultaneously.
Why do you think he chose to take photographs like this? Surely he could've asked his subjects to smile, or taken photographs while they did something, but instead, based on the image, they seem to be staring solemn faced past the camera. What do you think the purpose was of asking them to pose this way? Or do you think he asked them to pose at all? Maybe this is how they wanted to be photographed to bring awareness to their lives during the time period?
Types of American Negroes, Georgia, U.S.A. (Volumes I-III) and Negro Life in Georgia, U.S.A.
What is his purpose behind publishing this? As stated earlier in the article, during this time period there were African Americans through the lense of white supremacists, and then there were African Americans through the lense of African American communities. I'm assuming the purpose behind this publication wasn't to educate or bring awareness to African Americans, but rather to bring awareness to white people in an attempt to alter the white gaze. Was it meant to alter the perception of African Americans in the eyes of white people during this time period? Or was it meant to educate both white and black people in the future on the different "types" of African Americans there were?
Specifically, I argue that Du Bois's photographs challenge the discourses and images that produced an imagined "negro criminality" and propelled the crime of lynching in turn-of-the-century U.S. culture.
This relates a lot to what Seyhan discussed in his article about police brutality and media. While these videos have started a lot of protests and the BLM movement, there's always going to be people who will watch such videos and believe there is no police brutality going on. While I think they really help bring awareness to the cause (as well as exploiting the deceased unfortunately), I think the argument could also be made that we're becoming "numb" to these images and videos. We have access at our fingertips to literally watch people die everyday and it's desensitizing us to the reality and brutality of what's going on.
"sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others
Vasquez talked about this in her article on journalism exploiting the bodies of the father and daughter duo that drowned seeking asylum. She talked about trying to identify what that picture was meant to mean to her as an immigrant herself, and realizing that it's not. Everything that's published in journals, etc is meant for the "white gaze". Vasquez, along with so many others, sees people of the same ethnicity as her exploited to satisfy the white gaze. She sees herself constantly represented through the eye of white people.