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To make his argument, Leverenz casts an unusually wide net, from ancient and modern cultures of honor to social, political, and military history to American literature and popular culture.
He highlights the convergence of whiteness and honor in the United States from the antebellum period to the present. The Civil War, the civil rights movement, and the election of Barack Obama represent racial progress; the Tea Party movement represents the latest recoil.
From exploring African American narratives to examining a 2009 episode of Hardball—in which two white commentators restore their honor by mocking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder after he called Americans “cowards” for not talking more about race—Leverenz illustrates how white honor has prompted racial shaming and humiliation. The United States became a nation-state in which light-skinned people declared themselves white. The fear masked by white honor surfaces in such classics of American literature as The Scarlet Letter and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and in the U.S. wars against the Barbary pirates from 1783 to 1815 and the Iraqi insurgents from 2003 to the present. John McCain’s Faith of My Fathers is used to frame the 2008 presidential campaign as white honor’s last national stand.
Honor Bound concludes by probing the endless attempts in 2009 and 2010 to preserve white honor through racial shaming, from the “birthers” and Tea Party protests to Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” in Congress and the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. at the front door of his own home. Leverenz is optimistic that, in the twenty-first century, racial shaming is itself becoming shameful.
Leverenz's discussion of Barack Obama's candidacy and presidency, as well as the rise of the Tea Party, offers a trenchant commentary on the persistence of the race issue in American life. Recommended.
Exciting, fascinating, and passionately argued, Honor Bound is a bold work of interdisciplinary scholarship that explores how racial shaming has evolved in what too many people (too easily) believe to be a 'post-civil rights/post-racial' world.
Powerful as well-crafted history and as provocative meditation on the present, Honor Bound shows white supremacy to be not just a shame, but a system based on shaming.
Robust, invigorating, and thoroughly researched, Honor Bound: Race and Shame in America illuminates with uncommon clarity the tragic core of injustice at the heart of our national culture.'
In Honor Bound, David Leverenz uncloaks, in chilling detail, the deepest drives of a supremacist consciousness that takes itself and the unearned privileges accrued to itself as the norm.
Leverenz's discussion of Barack Obama's candidacy and presidency, as well as the rise of the Tea Party, offers a trenchant commentary on the persistence of the race issue in American life. Recommended.
Exciting, fascinating, and passionately argued, Honor Bound is a bold work of interdisciplinary scholarship that explores how racial shaming has evolved in what too many people (too easily) believe to be a 'post-civil rights/post-racial' world.
Powerful as well-crafted history and as provocative meditation on the present, Honor Bound shows white supremacy to be not just a shame, but a system based on shaming.
Robust, invigorating, and thoroughly researched, Honor Bound: Race and Shame in America illuminates with uncommon clarity the tragic core of injustice at the heart of our national culture.'
In Honor Bound, David Leverenz uncloaks, in chilling detail, the deepest drives of a supremacist consciousness that takes itself and the unearned privileges accrued to itself as the norm.
DAVID LEVERENZ is professor emeritus of English at the University of Florida. He is the author of The Language of Puritan Feeling (Rutgers University Press), Manhood and the American Renaissance, and Paternalism Incorporated.
Introduction
Chapter 1. Fear, Honor, and Racial Shaming
Hardball versus Eric Holder
Fear, Honor, and Fictions of Race
Racial Shaming
Slavery Still Matters
Chapter 2. How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?
Two Explanations
Fear and Honor
Shaming and Civil Rights
Chapter 3. Honor Bound
Tocqueville on American Honor
When Honor Turned White
"The Souls of White Folk"
Chapter 4. Four Novels
The Scarlet Letter
Honor and Shaming from Huck to Humbert
Challenging White Honor
Chapter 5. Two Wars
The Barbary Pirates, 1783-1815
The Clash of Civilizations
The Second Iraq War, 2003 - ?
Chapter 6. The 2008 Campaign
The 2008 Presidential Campaign
Honor Unbound
Chapter 7. To the Tea Party -- and Beyond?
"You Lie!"
The Drumbeat of Public Shaming
The Gates Arrest
Notes
Index
