White in all the wrong places: white rural poverty in the postbellum US South

Many examinations of whiteness have proceeded on an unacknowledged equation of whiteness with various forms of privilege. I suggest that when differences within whiteness are brought into consideration, a more nuanced engagement with such representations and constructions becomes possible. This argument I make through an analysis of post-Civil War travel accounts of the US South, to demonstrate how prising open the presumed links between a white identity and privilege allows movement beyond a whiteness-as-power framework. In this way, I show that a textual analysis which holds at arm’s length such assumptions facilitates a more engaged understanding of constructions of whiteness in the US South and elsewhere.

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