WHITES IN BLACKFACE, BLACKS IN WHITEFACE: RACIAL FLUIDITIES AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES By JASON RICHARDS A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2005 Copyright 2005 by Jason Richards TABLE OF CONTENTS page ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: HISTORY AND THEORY..........................................................1 Blackface and the Minstrel Show.................................................................................3 The Critical Paradox.....................................................................................................9 Blackface and American Literature............................................................................17 Blackface and Making American Selfhood................................................................18 Blackface and National Identities...............................................................................21 Notes...........................................................................................................................30 2 LOCALIZING THE EARLY REPUBLIC: WASHINGTON IRVING AND BLACKFACE CULTURE .........................................................................................32 Storytelling, Cultural Hybridity, and Blackface Desire..............................................34 Washington Irving in the Blackface Breeding Grounds.............................................40 Dislocating Local Identity ..........................................................................................44 Localizing National Identity.......................................................................................51 Notes...........................................................................................................................56 3 IMITATION NATION: BLACKFACE MINSTRELSY AND THE MAKING OF AFRICAN AMERICAN SELFHOOD IN UNCLE TOM’S CABIN ..........................58 Red, White, Blue, and Blackface................................................................................61 Blackface George Washington ...................................................................................62 Black Sam, Uncle Sam ...............................................................................................66 Adolph and George Harris: (Un)making African American Selfhood.......................71 Notes...........................................................................................................................83 4 MELVILLE’S (INTER)NATIONAL BURLESQUE: WHITEFACE, BLACKFACE, AND “BENITO CERENO”..............................................................85 Babo’s White Mask ....................................................................................................87 Blackface Delano........................................................................................................94 Cereno, the Dark Dandy ...........................................................................................101 iii The Menacing Shave ................................................................................................108 Notes.........................................................................................................................114 5 BLACKFACE VIOLENCE: DISTORTING CULTURE, HISTORY, AND FEELING..................................................................................................................116 “A Turn of the Wheel”: Blackface Revolution in The Bondwoman’s Narrative.....121 Blackface Revenge in The Garies and Their Friends ...............................................125 Whipping up Minstrel Types in Blake......................................................................131 Notes.........................................................................................................................142 6 WORKING IN THE WHITE WAY: HORATIO ALGER’S RAGGED DICK AND BLACKFACE MINSTRELSY.......................................................................144 Jim Crow and the Preindustrial Presence .................................................................149 Zip Coon and Aristocratic Decline...........................................................................155 Deminstrelization and Working in the White Way ..................................................160 Notes.........................................................................................................................166 7 AFTERWORD; OR, THE AFTERMATH: DARKTOWN STRUTTERS AND BAMBOOZLED ........................................................................................................168 Fixing and Mixing Race in Darktown Strutters .......................................................169 Bamboozled and the Dance of Death........................................................................174 Notes.........................................................................................................................180 LIST OF REFERENCES.................................................................................................181 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...........................................................................................191 iv Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy WHITES IN BLACKFACE, BLACKS IN WHITEFACE: RACIAL FLUIDITIES AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES By Jason Richards August 2005 Chair: Malini Johar Schueller Major Department: English This project examines how literary uses of blackface minstrelsy both stabilize and destabilize raced and national identities by investigating texts that involve figurative and literal representations of whites in blackface and blacks in whiteface. The narratives I analyze employ minstrelsy not only to create and sustain raced identities, but also to register slippages, overlaps, and inversions across the color line—paradoxically reinforcing and subverting racial hierarchies. I am ultimately concerned with how this paradox reveals the often contradictory nature of American selfhood. By drawing on postcolonial theory to explore how minstrelsy shaped national identity, I have sought to recontextualize blackface, which has remained largely outside discussions of postcoloniality in American studies. My first chapter recovers evidence of nascent blackface culture in the early texts of Washington Irving, evidence that has been wholly overlooked, probably because Irving began writing before minstrelsy formalized. I argue that by drawing on the local and v biracial complexities of blackface culture, Irving confronts post-colonial realities in the early national period. In the subsequent three chapters, I address blackface as a fully formed, national phenomenon. Chapter 3 illustrates how black characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin employ minstrelsy and colonial mimicry to resist and conform to aspects of American identity while testing racial barriers to self-making and achieving differing degrees of selfhood. Chapter 4, on Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno,” complicates the conventional reading of Babo as a slave in virtual blackface by arguing that he also performs a version of whiteface and that the captains Amasa Delano and Benito Cereno, who represent the North and South respectively, resemble blackface buffoons. Chapter 5 illustrates how Hannah Crafts, Frank Webb, and Martin Delany use blackface violence to challenge a hegemonic nationalism and emphasize the emotional, cultural, and historical violence committed against blacks through minstrelsy. Chapter 6 argues that the young bootblack and eponymous hero of Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick performs the popular minstrel roles of the ragged Jim Crow and the richly dressed Zip Coon, roles that allegorize class and sectional tensions. Dick distinguishes himself from these figures as he uncovers his whiteness and works to achieve middle-class respectability. The project ends with an afterword that addresses minstrelsy’s legacy by discussing two recent works, Wesley Brown’s Darktown Strutters and Spike Lee’s Bamboozled. vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: HISTORY AND THEORY Blackface minstrelsy, a nineteenth-century staged entertainment form wherein whites “blacked up” and gave their impressions of blacks and black life, has had enormous consequences for American racial formation, national identity, American literature, music, and film. Combining comedy, dancing, music, singing, and acting, the minstrel show, and the various performance cultures from which it grew, helped lay the groundwork for much of American popular culture. While its most prominent feature was blackface makeup, minstrelsy was as much about burlesquing blacks as satirizing society, as much about fixing race as making race fluid and adaptable. Rooted in the anxieties and desires that erupted over blackness during the slave trade, minstrelsy’s more immediate origins are spread throughout the mid-Atlantic, particularly in New York, where the form boomed around the Civil War. Although it faded from the stage by the twentieth century, then reemerged in early American cinema, before receding again during Civil Rights, blackface minstrelsy colors our culture still, persisting in various, less recognizable forms. For instance, in 2004 a black comedy