Ed, at Gin & Tacos, made a fantastic observation about this photo of a 1960 lunch counter sit-in at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, NC, protesting the exclusion of black customers.
“The most interesting thing about it,” he writes:
…is that the employee behind the Whites Only lunch counter is also black. That’s curious, since on the scale of intimate social contact one would think that having someone handle your food ranks above sitting next to a fully clothed stranger on adjacent stools.
This, he observes, tells us something important about prejudice.
When I first saw this picture and learned about this period in our history… I thought that racism was about believing that another race is inferior. Like most people I got (slightly) wiser with age and eventually figured out that racism is about keeping someone else beneath you on the social ladder… If you actually thought black people were dirty savages you wouldn’t eat anything they handed you. But of course it has nothing to do with that. You’re fine being served food because servility implies social inferiority. And you don’t want to sit next to them simply because it implies equality.
When we observe efforts to uphold unequal social conditions, it’s smart to think past notions of hatred and fear (like the term homophobia unfortunately implies) and instead about how the privileged are benefiting and what they would lose along with their superordinate status. Hate may be useful for justifying inequality, but at its root it’s about power and resources, not emotions.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 6
Cactus_Wren — March 10, 2014
James Loewen has pointed out something like this, in Lies My Teacher Taught Me: that people who readily employed black cooks and maids and gardeners also employed moving companies that advertised "All White Help", because the movers who pack your belongings, load them into the truck, unload them and put them in your new home aren't your employees. You haven't contracted with them: you've contracted with a moving company, which in its turn hires them to tramp around in your home and handle your furniture.
David M — March 10, 2014
That argument seems entirely wrong. One could easily think that someone was inferior, worthy of contempt, little better than a savage, even hate them, and still be happy with them serving your sandwiches. In fact, you may even be glad that they are serving you, *bevause* you hate them.
Intimate Inequality at the Woolworth’s Lunch Counter, 1960 | iheariseeilearn — March 10, 2014
[…] Intimate Inequality at the Woolworth’s Lunch Counter, 1960. […]
Shawna McComber — March 10, 2014
I don't now if this is entirely true but I do believe it is partly true. Perhaps people who are intolerant, racist, sexist or any other sort of -ist and -obic, may be so due to one factor or the other. Certainly it seems likely that fear and hatred are interrelated. Power, control, security in knowing your way of living is the right way, all of those things seem to be part of it. Believing the people you hate/fear are evil or filthy helps to support the righteousness of keeping them "in their place".
Bill R — March 11, 2014
Blacks always "served" so the man behind the counter fills a normal role.
Racism, a psychological necessity for slavery, was originally about inferiority, even to the extent that whites thought blacks to be subhuman. The social pecking order was a simple matter of fact in those days.
In the post slavery period beliefs about inferiority remained, but since law granted a patina of equality it became more critical to actively reenforce social stature.
I suspect we've got another hundred years or more to go before Americans put all this behind us.
feimineach.com — April 25, 2014
[…] When I first saw this picture and learned about this period in our history… I thought that racism was about believing that another race is inferior. Like most people I got (slightly) wiser with age and eventually figured out that racism is about keeping someone else beneath you on the social ladder… If you actually thought black people were dirty savages you wouldn’t eat anything they handed you. But of course it has nothing to do with that. You’re fine being served food because servility implies social inferiority. And you don’t want to sit next to them simply because it implies equality. [Rest.] […]