Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

Reynolds shifts his attention to popular culture in the early 20th century—specifically, boxing. White racism and Black resistance to that racism played out in the boxing ring, where “White people used White fighters to prove superiority over Black people” and “Black people used Black fighters as a way to symbolically beat on White America’s racism” (129). When a Black man won a fight, it was like “All Black people knocked out a White man” (131). For white people, however, the victory was dismissed by expressing it in terms of the “natural savagery” of “the Black aggressor” (130).

The most controversial Black athlete in boxing was Jack Johnson, who won the heavyweight title in 1908. His unbeatable success in the ring and his romantic involvement with white women outside of it greatly alarmed much of white America. White society pursued Johnson until he spent time in jail for allegedly trafficking a white sex worker across state lines.

Reynolds then discusses Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The book reinforced stereotypes of African savagery while celebrating the white man’s ability to be the most skilled person for any pursuit and to protect women from predatory Africans. Tarzan was the symbol of triumphant white masculinity that never materialized in the boxing ring.

Reynolds discusses another influential piece of popular culture: D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. The film glorified the Ku Klux Klan and presented Black men as universal predators that threatened the purity of white women. In the movie, a Black man—played by a white actor in blackface—attempts to rape a white woman, but she kills herself before he can commit the crime. The Klan seeks revenge and kills the would-be rapist. Reynolds stresses that while rape is a serious issue and victim blaming is utterly wrong, mere allegations of sexual violence “were often used as an excuse to lynch Black men” (137)—men who overwhelmingly did not actually commit the offenses.

As President Woodrow Wilson screened the movie in the White House, Black people continued to vacate the South for Northern and Midwestern cities to escape the type of violence so glorified in the film.

Reynolds compares two organizations structured to help Black people according to distinct visions. One organization was the NAACP, or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Founded by Du Bois and other prominent activists, the NAACP included Black and white members, as well as members with diverse racial backgrounds.

Unsatisfied with the personnel in the New York City NAACP office—Reynolds writes that “no one dark-skinned worked there. It was as if the only Black people who could succeed in America were biracial or lighter skinned” (140)—the Jamaican visitor Marcus Garvey created the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). UNIA was antiracist rather than assimilationist like the NAACP. Garvey’s organization existed “to focus on African solidarity, the beauty of dark skin and African American culture, and global African self-determination” (141).

Garvey noticed the significant social divide that existed between dark-skinned and light-skinned Black people, a phenomenon called colorism. Eugenicists in scientific circles argued that higher proportions of “White (Nordic) blood” increased brainpower, allowing light-skinned African Americans to begin to overcome “natural” Black inferiority.

American engagement in World War I played a significant role in shaping racism and antiracism within the US. As Black soldiers risked their lives abroad, white society in the US continued to treat Black people as second-class citizens or worse. For Du Bois, the juxtaposition of the relatively good treatment Black soldiers met in France to the continued racism in the US redirected his thinking. Reynolds writes that after “so many years trying to convince Black people to mold themselves into a version of White people” (142), he started to favor pushback. He said, “it was time for a New Negro […] that would no longer sit quietly, waiting to assimilate” (143). Meanwhile, racists doubled down and incited enough violence to earn the summer of 1919 the label “Red Summer,” which Reynolds calls “the bloodiest summer since Reconstruction” (143).

Du Bois continued to publish revolutionary intellectual work on Black people, much of which acknowledged and honored Black women who Reynolds argues were usually denied a place in “the race conversation” (144). These “antiracist strides” did not fully dissolve Du Bois’s leanings towards uplift suasion, however. The US government deported Marcus Garvey, the greatest antiracist challenger to uplift suasion, leaving no significant challenge to Du Bois.

This chapter discusses the Harlem Renaissance, the cultural movement that created explosive strides in Black intellectual, social, and artistic life. In the mid-1920s, “Du Bois wanted to make sure they used their art to advance Black people by getting White people to respect them” (147), writes Reynolds. Conversely, antiracists like Langston Hughes challenged this view, insisting that “they should be able to make whatever they wanted to express themselves as whole humans without worrying about White acceptance” (148).

Many white people responded to the increased visibility and empowerment of the Black community by reinvigorating racist narratives of American history since Reconstruction, falsely suggesting “that innocent White people were tortured by Black Republicans during Reconstruction” (149). Reynolds notes that these assertions were “almost laughable” but had severe consequences, like a renewed appreciation for Birth of a Nation.

Claude G. Bowers’s The Tragic Era: The Revolution After Lincoln circulated this mythology, but Du Bois quickly responded with Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880. This book told a more accurate history of the “Whiteness first” policies of Reconstruction (150). By 1933, Du Bois “had finally turned toward antiracism” and “broke ground on a new idea—antiracist socialism” (151). Influenced in part by the disproportionate suffering Black people endured during the Great Depression, Du Bois argued for “Black safe spaces” born of “voluntary nondiscriminatory separation” (152), a stance contrary to his earlier ideology and that of the NAACP.

During World War II, Black people articulated a “Double V Campaign” that focused on “victory against racism at home and victory against fascism abroad” (155), writes Reynolds. Though the US emerged victorious and powerful from the war, its blatant racism tarnished its international image. Even as President Truman urged civil rights legislation, the South resisted. Yet again, writes Reynolds, “White people started to perpetuate lies about Black people being inferior to keep the world of racism spinning” (157). As “Dixiecrats,” Southern Democrats within Truman’s own party, tried to prevent his election, Black voters helped secure Truman’s victory. According to Reynolds, that victory resulted in “a few game-changing civil rights cases” (157).

In 1948, the Supreme Court decision in Shelley v. Kraemer delivered a blow to racist, segregationist housing policy. White people who feared or detested the prospect of Black neighbors fled their integrating neighborhoods in a process called “White flight.” In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional and began the integration of Black kids into white schools. Reynolds reminds the reader that it is inherently racist to mix schools in this particular way because the concepts of good education and fair opportunities all centered on the white schools, whereas Black schools free from white kids apparently remained decidedly inferior.

Around this time, white vigilantes brutally murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till, a crime that “lit a fire under the civil rights movement” (160), writes Reynolds. Martin Luther King Jr. became the leader of this invigorated movement which entailed decisive, nonviolent action orchestrated by King and entities like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Their peaceful actions elicited “vicious violence” from racists that continued to embarrass the US all over the globe. America and the rest of the world watched police and their bloodhounds brutalize Black bodies in Birmingham. In response to domestic and international outrage, President John F. Kennedy—who, according to Reynolds, really didn’t have much of a choice” (163)—started to push through civil rights legislation.

Alongside King, Malcolm X emerged as an alternative leader in the civil rights movement, who, along with the Nation of Islam to which he belonged, “focused on the liberation of Black people through discipline, self-defense, community organizing, and a fortified understanding of who Black people were regardless of White people’s opinions” (162), Reynolds writes. As the Kennedy administration met with Dr. King and approved the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, they largely ignored Malcolm X, Black women, and any other Black leaders who might have made white people uncomfortable with radical politics, intellectual works, or even their sexual orientation. Du Bois died the day before the march, firmly established in his late life as an antiracist activist.