American racial ideology gendered all whites masculine and all blacks feminine

Evidence

For nineteenth-century African Americans, distinctions between the feminine and masculine identity were complicated by a racial system that superimposed “male” characteristics upon all whites (male and female) and “feminine characteristics” upon all blacks (male and female). Theories of racial essence, what George Fredrickson termed “romantic racialism,” paralleled and overlapped essentialist gender assumptions. During the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, both blacks and whites subscribed to theories of innate characteristics and behaviorism that captured the soul of each race. Within the human family, so romantic racialists theorized, black people embodied an essence that was musical, emotional, meek, and religious. In contrast, the white race was perceived to be intellectual, pragmatic, competitive, and with a disposition to dominate. The counterposing of the two races paralleled the feminine-masculine dichotomy. During the Civil War, the white abolitionist Theodore Tilton described blacks as the “feminine race of the world.” In the early twentieth century, Robert Park, the white sociologist, similarly described the Negro as an “artist, loving life for its own sake… . He is, so to speak, the lady of the races.” — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 667

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to my earlier ‘immodesty’ article: this is another axis where dominant moral-racial symbolism was imposed on the oppressed group and repurposed. — connects to: Black racial idealization repurposed essentialist traits to negate white superiority — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 669; Du Bois celebrated a spiritual-psychical black uniqueness resembling feminine essence — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 669; Racist ideology is inseparable from sexist ideology (+3 more)
• FICTION: The white-abolitionist ‘feminine race of the world’ framing is a rich period detail for any historical fiction set in the Civil War era.

Broader Connections

• Racist ideology is inseparable from sexist ideology #corroborates (0.85)
• Race and gender are mutually defining relational concepts, not separate categories #expands (0.85)
• Sexism and racism jointly founded the American social order from colonization #corroborates (0.80)