Anticommunism and Racism: Forging African American Identity in a Binary Mirror
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published 19/06/2008
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SummaryCold War America was a world of binaries. In a quest for patriotism, white United States citizens defined themselves by mirroring against what they were not: they were Capitalist because they were not Communist, heterosexual not homosexual, coupled not single, Americans not Russians. Black Americans also adapted this mode of thinking, knowing perfectly well that they were black because they were not white. Additionally, African Americans viewed themselves through the lens of what W.E.B. Du Bois called a double consciousness—seeing themselves through their own eyes and the eyes of their white neighbors, thus simultaneously becoming both of these images and neither. Ann Petry’s characters reckon with a country whose self-perception has been collapsed into terms of good and evil, and a government that brands blacks—especially those concerned with attaining civil rights—as Reds.
Table of Contents
- In 'The New Mirror,' narrator uses her family's new plate-glass mirror to reflect her own blackness.
- Petry's narrator in 'The New Mirror' works similarly to Mine Okubo's illustrations in Citizen 13660.
- Elaine Tyler May's depiction of Cold War America shows disparity in yet another binary line.
- Written in 1945, Ann Petry's stories are a product of a conflicted world.
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