The Making of Modern America: Rebirth of a Nation and the Concept of Race

Three significant cases, however, lend credence to Lears’ claim that “the whole concept of race, never more than the flimsiest of cultural constructions,” but that it “acquired unprecedented biological authority” throughout the book.

Lears’ first justification is that some societies were being used to lynch the black people. Lynching is thought to be an example of white supremacy over the black race that white people used as a means of relieving their sexual tensions with black people. The biological composition of the black population contributed to the sexual anxiety, which made the white population fearful of their propensity for rape. Also, the culture of lynching was being used by the whites to ensure that is clear differences between the white and the black race.

The second argument used by Lears to support the claim is the concept of the black energy which is linked to their biology. After the end of the civil war, the black people were involved in farming their farms which seemed to have been successful. The success of the black farmers made the former slave owners in the South to come up with measures to control the black people which included lynching based on accusations that they were involved in interracial rape cases. The third support used by Lears is the lack of the biracial harmony between the whites and the blacks, and this is more so in the Gilded Age South. There was an attempt to drive the blacks away from the public life by the whites. The period increased the view of race being more of biological far from the earlier cultural view.

Bibliography

Lears, Jackson. Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009