Grace Elizabeth Hale’s Making Whiteness demonstrates how the culture of segregation came to be. In the second half of her book, Hale argues the contradictions embedded in the culture of segregation that Southern whites have created and the way lynching had modernized and perfected violence which would then be used as a means for consumer culture. This paper will begin with a short summary of Hale’s arguments; next it will touch upon the importance of violent display on the phenomenon of public lynching. Altogether it will become evident that participation and consumer culture of lynching was used as a method for Southern whites to preserve their superior status.
After emancipation African Americans were now free to purchase and consume goods in the same space as whites. This …show more content…
The backlash to segregation generated the growth of African American stores; blacks were now creating their own identities and spaces. Threatened by their success, whites could not control the mass consumption of blacks. Hale argues the unsuccessfulness of segregation signs and the false sense of white superiority and racial order in the South. Ultimately, whites turned to public violence as a way to hold onto their power. Lynching as a spectacle modernized and perfected violence whilst providing entertainment and producing a product for consumer culture (Hale year 203). Souvenirs from lynching sites and body parts of those who were killed were collected and displayed in grocery stores, and those who could not make it to the event were able to purchase photos of victims (Hale year, 229). Public lynching became a ritual and central to the new culture and order of the South, which also