When former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries came out of retirement on the fourth of July; 1910 to fight current black heavywight champion Jack Johnson in Reno; Nevada; he boasted that he was doing it "for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a negro." Jeffries; though; was trounced. Whites everywhere rioted. The furor; Gail Bederman demonstrates; was part of two fundamental and volatile national obsessions: manhood and racial dominance.In turn-of-the-century America; cultural ideals of manhood changed profoundly; as Victorian notions of self-restrained; moral manliness were challenged by ideals of an aggressive; overtly sexualized masculinity. Bederman traces this shift in values and shows how it brought together two seemingly contradictory ideals: the unfettered virility of racially "primitive" men and the refined superiority of "civilized" white men. Focusing on the lives and works of four very different Americans—Theodore Roosevelt; educator G. Stanley Hall; Ida B. Wells; and Charlotte Perkins Gilman—she illuminates the ideological; cultural; and social interests these ideals came to serve.
#986303 in Books 2013-12-29Ingredients: Example IngredientsOriginal language:EnglishPDF # 1 10.80 x 1.20 x 8.30l; .0 #File Name: 0205905544515 pages
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