Chesnutt's White Supremacist Ideology In America

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White supremacist ideology in America sprang from a necessity to rationalize the system of chattel slavery. What white supremacy eventually became is a way to repress the human fruits of these kidnapped peoples so as to protect the socio-economic status and ego of the white man from perceived harm.The threat of the black person was acknowledged even when they were the most oppressed beings in the country, as more white people came in, their fear of losing out to the black man in the labor force was prounounced. According to W.E.B Dubois, immigrant workers (mostly from Europe), “wanted a chance to become capitalists; and they found that chance threatened by the competition of a working class whose status at the bottom of the economic structure seemed permanent and inescapable” (18). …show more content…
Attempts to squash the potential of African Americans were continually underway, a fact which author Charles W. Chesnutt was well aware of and wished to tackle in his work as a writer. Chesnutt’s approach to dealing with the state of race affairs in America was considered decidedly meek. The novel The Marrow of Tradition however, is laced with what he hoped would be considered his most in depth and provocative ideas to date which would cause some opposition. In the 1901 novel, The Marrow of Tradition, Chesnutt presents fear of the potential of African Americans as the driving force of white supremacy, through the reactions of the white supremacist characters to their black