Gender Roles In Grace Hale's 'Making Whiteness'?

Race-relations after the reconstruction era became worse, but it the issue grew outside of just race. Gender became a primary factor in determining the social hierarchies, especially in the south. In Grace Hale’s book titled Making whiteness she explores the roles of both black and white families within the south. Southern white women were able to not only reconstruct traditional race and gender roles, but they reinvigorated old southern ideology. White women were able to create their dynamics in the home, and that included the creation of the mammie. Both the creation of the mammie and southern white woman using the home as a symbol to represent the old south, and overall reinvigorate the Lost Cause. The gender roles following the reconstruction

Mammies were seen as subordinates in the house hold, and it created segregation within the family dynamic. Regardless, without the creation of the mammie southern whiteness was meaningless (Hale, Pg. 114). White men post-civil war created the image of blackness as the idea of a black beast rapist in the workplace and society. The creation of the black male beast was the contrast to the creation of the mammie. It became for white southern to better position themselves within society, in regard to their power. The white southerners had felt defeated because the loss of the war, and the mammie helped promote their masculinity because it allowed them to justifiably oppress black

This also allowed for segregation to become more widely spread. The southern white home became the symbol of white supremacy. White southern women were still constrained to the domestic sphere so it was important to leverage African domestic labor to gain power. The mammie became a celebrated figure within society because they were caregivers to white children and this is where children learned race relations; in the integrated white southern homes. The creation of the mammie helped reinvigorate the ideas of the old south and Lost cause. There were many visual representations of mammies created by white southern woman (pg. 117). Often times there was a celebration of black mammies serving white children and families, this created the dynamic of inferiority. The mammie became a sort of motherly figure to the child as a caregiver, which threatened white supremacy. White southern woman combatted this by forming in groups outside of the home, for example the Daughters of the Confederation was created. They were responsible for creating a lot of the rhetoric and visual representation for the black mammie in the south. And because of the white woman being in power of creating the representation of blackness, the representation of the mammie, it created the feeling of superiority amongst white