Sunday, June 23, 2013
Genovese's audience?
Anybody want to weigh in on who they think Genovese was writing Roll Jordan Roll for? Throughout the book I couldn't help but wonder who the intended audience was when describing the scenery of a present day (at the time) black church, telling the story of being given poor directions by a black person in the south in the past and relating the morality that slaves had to adopt to the current "black community."
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I think that this is an extremely interesting and challenging question. However, I think that placing this book in its historic context can help inform the question. Roll, Jordan, Roll was published in 1972. Therefore, Genovese was writing during a period when race relations in the United States were still extremely contentious. Genovese contends that a "White and black southerners, however different they may claim to be and in some ways are, have come to form one people in vital respects" (Genovese 1972, xv). It appears as though Genovese is trying to demonstrate how the interaction between races throughout American history has developed a national American culture. He contends that the relationship and interactions between races has produced "one people." Therefore, I think that his intended audience is both scholars and the general public. Genovese may be offering his contemporaries a new way of understanding race relations and the development of contemporary American culture.
ReplyDeleteWell stated Mark, and a good question Yates. I agree with Mark's post. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964; MLK was murdered in 1968; in 1972 the Nixon administration's domestic focal point was "law and order" after the turbulent 1960s; the Vietnam War was still ongoing. Without having more info, it seems apparent that Genovese wants to counter the traditional mantra of white Southern (and Northern) racists who were not yet ready to accept the changes that were coming to America's racist past. The book, ten years in the making through the sixties, gave a scholarly justification for supporting the emergence and acceptance of the black consciousness by white America.
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