Nineteenth-century whites viewed blacks as children needing protection and savages needing monitoring

Evidence

Takaki (1970) noted that, during the 19th century, whites in the North and the South regarded blacks as lacking the Protestant qualities of hard work, obedience, and restraint that they (the whites) possessed. Whites in the nineteenth century viewed blacks, he argued, as a peculiar mixture of children, who needed paternal protection and guidance, and savages, who required constant monitoring because they might engage in violence, crime, or sexual debauchery. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3407

Categorization

• XREF: The child/savage double image anticipates later paternalism concepts and the ‘ambivalent’ stereotype research in prejudice studies.
• DEFINE: Introduces the child/savage dyad as the recurring white imaginary of Black people in the 19th-century US.