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The Burning House: Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America
A startling and gripping reexamination of the Jim Crow era, as seen through the eyes of some of the most important American writers
"Walker has opened up a fresh way of thinking about the intellectual history of the South during the civil-rights movement."—Robert Greene, The Nation
In this dramatic reexamination of the Jim Crow South, Anders Walker demonstrates that racial segregation fostered not simply terror and violence, but also diversity, one of our most celebrated ideals. He investigates how prominent intellectuals like Robert Penn Warren, James Baldwin, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Flannery O’Connor, and Zora Neale Hurston found pluralism in Jim Crow, a legal system that created two worlds, each with its own institutions, traditions, even cultures. The intellectuals discussed in this book all agreed that black culture was resilient, creative, and profound, brutally honest in its assessment of American history. By contrast, James Baldwin likened white culture to a “burning house,” a frightening place that endorsed racism and violence to maintain dominance. Why should black Americans exchange their experience for that? Southern whites, meanwhile, saw themselves preserving a rich cultural landscape against the onslaught of mass culture and federal power, a project carried to the highest levels of American law by Supreme Court justice and Virginia native Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
Anders Walker shows how a generation of scholars and judges has misinterpreted Powell’s definition of diversity in the landmark case Regents v. Bakke, forgetting its Southern origins and weakening it in the process. By resituating the decision in the context of Southern intellectual history, Walker places diversity on a new footing, independent of affirmative action but also free from the constraints currently placed on it by the Supreme Court. With great clarity and insight, he offers a new lens through which to understand the history of civil rights in the United States.
"Walker has opened up a fresh way of thinking about the intellectual history of the South during the civil-rights movement."—Robert Greene, The Nation
In this dramatic reexamination of the Jim Crow South, Anders Walker demonstrates that racial segregation fostered not simply terror and violence, but also diversity, one of our most celebrated ideals. He investigates how prominent intellectuals like Robert Penn Warren, James Baldwin, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Flannery O’Connor, and Zora Neale Hurston found pluralism in Jim Crow, a legal system that created two worlds, each with its own institutions, traditions, even cultures. The intellectuals discussed in this book all agreed that black culture was resilient, creative, and profound, brutally honest in its assessment of American history. By contrast, James Baldwin likened white culture to a “burning house,” a frightening place that endorsed racism and violence to maintain dominance. Why should black Americans exchange their experience for that? Southern whites, meanwhile, saw themselves preserving a rich cultural landscape against the onslaught of mass culture and federal power, a project carried to the highest levels of American law by Supreme Court justice and Virginia native Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
Anders Walker shows how a generation of scholars and judges has misinterpreted Powell’s definition of diversity in the landmark case Regents v. Bakke, forgetting its Southern origins and weakening it in the process. By resituating the decision in the context of Southern intellectual history, Walker places diversity on a new footing, independent of affirmative action but also free from the constraints currently placed on it by the Supreme Court. With great clarity and insight, he offers a new lens through which to understand the history of civil rights in the United States.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 10, 2020
I found this a terribly frustrating book to read, perhaps because it is so counterintuitive to everything I learned and understand about the Jim Crow-era south. It is a provocative, rigorous reexamination of the intellectual history of integration debates that challenges conventional understandings of diversity and identity.
March 23, 2020
Dense but wonderfully counterintuitive look at how Black and White Southern writers and intellectuals looked at the end of segregation and the civil rights movement. Lots of surprising revelations about how many leading Black intellectuals were hesitant about the absorption of Black America into a White America they saw as - in James Baldwin's phrase - a "burning house." Whatever they felt about the indignities of the Jim Crow South, many Black intellectuals also recognized that Black culture in the segregated South had value, an approach also articulated by Robert Penn Warren, who serves as Walker's "main character." Many echoes of debates about race in contemporary America.
April 11, 2018
What surprised me most about The Burning House was the way this book drew on examples from literature in its discussion of racial divides and history. The text works accessibly, but is clearly a scholarly work.
The Burning House is an important text, one I would gladly include on a syllabus reading list for a multicultural education course.
The Burning House is an important text, one I would gladly include on a syllabus reading list for a multicultural education course.
March 30, 2020
Gave it 5 stars out of pity. Made an account just to inform everyone that this is two dimensional dogshit. Also, I know a lot about the subject due to my dating history and it as inaccurate as Stevie Wonder playing golf. I am disgusted. If we are being honest, the guy who wrote this is a liberal who is just salty Trump is getting re-elected 😎 #MAGA
August 1, 2022
A fascinating analysis of the Jim Crow South and various well known authors' viewpoints with respect to "Brown" and other landmark decisions. Does integration necessarily imply assimilation?
As is so often the case, African - American history is truncated to almost entirely exclude African history and culture. Surely this is relevant !
On page 212 he raises the issue of "whether black culture came from Africa or the South" but never addresses the African component. There are a few scattered references to Africa but no real significance is attached to them. He references Ghana in one brief paragraph but includes not so much as a sentence on kwame Nkrumah's great vision of pan - Africanism as he led his country to independence in 1957 (the first in sub - Saharan Africa). Surely this would shape African - American thinking in the 50s and 60s. In an attempt to include African history the author references Dahomey but conflates the kingdom with Abomey. In fact Abomey is a city or cluster of cities where the rulers resided within the country of Dahomey ( within present day Benin).
Unfortunately his misuse of words is disconcerting. He confuses "sleight" with "slight" (in the opening sentence) and goes on to use "flaunt" when he means "flout". Expatriates can never be referred to as " ex-patriots" as he does. Despite the evolution of English over time, ex-patriots is not a word in any iteration of the language.
All in all this is an interesting investigation of alternative viewpoints on a controversial chapter in American history. It left me feeling distinctly uneasy to say the least. Is it only the presentation of an overlooked body of work or does it represent the author's bias with respect to the Jim Crow era?
As is so often the case, African - American history is truncated to almost entirely exclude African history and culture. Surely this is relevant !
On page 212 he raises the issue of "whether black culture came from Africa or the South" but never addresses the African component. There are a few scattered references to Africa but no real significance is attached to them. He references Ghana in one brief paragraph but includes not so much as a sentence on kwame Nkrumah's great vision of pan - Africanism as he led his country to independence in 1957 (the first in sub - Saharan Africa). Surely this would shape African - American thinking in the 50s and 60s. In an attempt to include African history the author references Dahomey but conflates the kingdom with Abomey. In fact Abomey is a city or cluster of cities where the rulers resided within the country of Dahomey ( within present day Benin).
Unfortunately his misuse of words is disconcerting. He confuses "sleight" with "slight" (in the opening sentence) and goes on to use "flaunt" when he means "flout". Expatriates can never be referred to as " ex-patriots" as he does. Despite the evolution of English over time, ex-patriots is not a word in any iteration of the language.
All in all this is an interesting investigation of alternative viewpoints on a controversial chapter in American history. It left me feeling distinctly uneasy to say the least. Is it only the presentation of an overlooked body of work or does it represent the author's bias with respect to the Jim Crow era?
June 8, 2024
This book is a little hard to write a review for. I read a library copy, and it took me a long time to get through it. It is essentially a big literature review and distillation. It is dense in parts, and took some persistence to make it through so I am not sure I could really recommend it to most people. It was eye opening in many ways though. It reminded me again and again that there are multiple valid perspectives on all sides of any issue, even on whether Jim Crow laws were ultimately positive or negative in their effects overall. I have spent the last few years reading and watching a lot of books/media by and about black issues as an attempt to be a better ally. And this book would partner well with The Devil You Know. Both really make you think about a different way to work through race relations in the US. I don't see any real change in this direction, but I think it is valid to listen to and consider black voices on these issues.
Content FYIs: Language, violence, deep dive into race.
Content FYIs: Language, violence, deep dive into race.
December 7, 2019
Brilliant work. Accessible and well-researched. Walker's use of southern lit as an example of the varying views on integration in the Jim Crowe South makes this a book that should be read and enjoyed by anyone with an interest in American history, Southern lit, race relations, etc. As someone who spends a lot of time with works from Southern writers, I adored this book and will return to it time and again.
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April 2, 2019No comment. 🤨
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews