White Fright: The Sexual Panic at the Heart of America's Racist History

by Jane Dailey

A major new history of the fight for racial equality in America, arguing that fear of black sexuality has undergirded white supremacy from the start.



In White Fright , historian Jane Dailey brilliantly reframes our understanding of the long struggle for African American rights. Those fighting against equality were not motivated only by a sense of innate superiority, as is often supposed, but also by an intense fear of black sexuality.

In this urgent investigation, Dailey examines how white anxiety about interracial sex and marriage found expression in some of the most contentious episodes of American history since in battles over lynching, in the policing of black troops' behavior overseas during World War II, in the violent outbursts following the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education , and in the tragic story of Emmett Till. The question was finally settled -- as a legal matter -- with the Court's definitive 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia , which declared interracial marriage a "fundamental freedom." Placing sex at the center of our civil rights history, White Fright offers a bold new take on one of the most confounding threads running through American history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Politics, American History, Social Justice, Sexuality

368 pages, Hardcover

First published November 17, 2020

Reviews

[Trisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book explains the sexual undertones of Jim Crow, and how the preservation of white racial purity through anti-miscegenation laws provided the cornerstone for white supremacy in the post-Reconstruction era and throughout the 20th century.

I requested this book from Netgalley in order to further my understanding of racial issues in the US. As a Canadian, sometimes the outsider-looking-in perspective can be helpful, while other times it means there's a lack of context. While I had been educated on American race issues in classes in university, how much interracial marriage was tied into Jim Crow was not something I was aware of.

This book went into much greater detail than simply describing the landmark case of Loving v Virginia. It provided context to many of the issues that were argued in the Reconstruction era, WWI and II, as well as the civil rights battles of the 1960s.

I'm cognizant of the fact that this book is written by white woman. She's an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago, and has written several other works on the post-Civil War and Jim Crow eras. Far from telling white people what to do about racism, this work seems to be more information, so as to give context.

This is less a review and more of a reflection. I do recommend it to those interested in the topic of anti-miscegenation laws in various eras. I also encourage my fellow readers to support black authors, and read books by own voices. Education is key.

[Ted · Rating 1 out of 5]

Against Dailey's determined attempts to pathologize white men, everything they warned about has come to pass. Activists claimed blacks were disinterested in mixing, which is clearly false. Society (both black and white) has been dumbed down with the worst cultural elements possible. Racial violence towards whites continues to manifest on the regular.

Writers like Dailey can only pull off their messaging by trying to cast doubt on any of the historical criminality associated with blacks, and also through heavy reliance on the group overrepresented in her acknowledgements section.

[the overstuffed bookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley, Perseus Books and Basic Books for this copy of White Fright by Jane Dailey.

White Fright will be the newest book to be assigned reading in Diversity Studies classes this Spring, for good reason. Well-researched and thorough, White Fright takes you through the history of the struggle for civil rights, focusing on the sexual panic at the center of most, if not all, arguements against equal rights. This is not easy reading, to be sure, but it's essential to read for a deeper understanding of why racial divides still exist in this country.

This book was extremely well-written but it was written by an academic and may be hard to read if you're unaccustomed to that level of detail. I am a current college student, reading this felt like reading an assigned text. That is not a complaint for me but I do think that some readers may have trouble reading this style of academic writing. As for me, I am about to recommend White Fright to the diversity studies program at Penn State, where I am a student and I won't be surprised to find it on a syllabus in the Spring.

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am always looking to educate myself about things and lives I know nothing about and that was the reason behind me requesting this book, and boy was I in for a real lesson in some of the deep-seated roots of where racism comes from, the sexual undertones of Jim Crow, the laws they created, and the lengths those who support white supremacy will go to obtain the white racial purity they are both looking and striving for, even today.

I will admit I was not prepared for this book. It overwhelmed me at time and I will be sitting on all this information for a long time - there is a LOT to unpack here and to just read it and dismiss it does the author a great disservice - this book needs to be unpacked and delved into and absorbed and then one, after getting every last drop out of it, needs to go out and do something about it. Those of us who preach and live and fight against white supremacy have an obligation to educate ourselves on topics such as these [I truly was wholly unaware such sexual undertones and anti-miscegenation laws even existed and am still quite in shock over what I have read in this book] and then go out and MAKE. A. CHANGE. We need to be the change to make this world safe for ALL peoples. And this book will help you learn about ways to do that, simply by giving you history. Knowledge is power. Always.

Thank you to NetGalley and Jane Dailey and Perseus Book/Basic Books for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Nuha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Perseus Books and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Indie Bookstore.

While intriguing as a concept, I found Jane Dailey's White Fright to be ultimately essentialistic. Through a series of historical analysis, Dailey serves to build the premise that the fear of black sexuality has been the main motivation for racial tension between Black and White communities. She particularly relies on examples of misconduct in the military, contrasting the treatment of hypersexualized Black males to their white counterparts.

The premise laid out in this book is nothing new - fear of sex is the basis of any Puritan society as Howard Bloom tried to prove back in the 1990s. There's no nuance, for example, in differentiating the different Christian communities, only that God fearing white Christians in the South fear black men. Where do non Black POC males like Asian Americans, Latinx or Indigenous folk fit into the conversation? Where do Black and non Black POC women fit into the conversation?

What if we reversed the conversation and discussed the vitality of Black power and Black love and Black community? That Black folk in the US have continued to thrive despite these constant "fears"? What if we talked about White Mediocrity as Ijeoma Oluo does, white insecurity? I felt like that would be a much more interesting conversation.

[UChicagoLaw]

"This is a bit awkward because this book was just published on November 17 by my wife, Jane Dailey, a professor in the University's History Department. But my enthusiasm for this book is quite real. It explores the white fear of interracial sex as a central cause of racial segregation and, of course, of laws banning interracial marriage. It is a truly fascinating and terrific read. To quote Drew Gilpin Faust, the former President of Harvard University: "This indispensable narrative powerfully illuminates how anxieties about 'miscegenation' and interracial marriage shaped and sustained white supremacy for four centuries. Every American should read this book." And, I might add, especially lawyers!"

—Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law

[Almas Shamim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am sorry, but, I had to DNF this. The writing is very academic and requires a prior level of understanding on the subject matter, which I lacked... My failing, but I just could not carry any longer. 😔

[Ashlen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Considering the number of inter-racial people in America, and the many inter-racial relationships throughout America's history, I don't think most white people are particularly afraid of "black sexuality" in relation to white people. On the contrary, black sexuality, particularly of black men, is highly idealized in this country. I therefore find the premise of this book, including the degrading title, to be racist, ill-founded, and insulting.
I wish the publishing industry would stop putting out these tiresome, anti-white books. I get that this particular brand of racism is very trendy right now, but books like this help no one and cause nothing but pain, self-loathing, hatred, spite, and division. It's unnecessary, racist, and disgusting.
I find the idea that my identity as a white woman is defined by "panic" and "fright" and "America's racist history" to be far too degrading and dehumanizing to take seriously. It's nonsense.
I reject this book, and the racist ideology behind it.

[Anson Cassel Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is an unusual person who will find this book enjoyable reading, both because it emphasizes the sorts of inhumanity we’d rather not dwell on and because the author has written the book while in academic mode. Dailey provides a clear thesis but not a strong narrative. Chapters are almost independent units. Furthermore, I wasn’t convinced that author’s thesis was sound, that sex indeed played a central role in the civil rights struggle, “even when its significance was left unspoken.” If it is true that sex underpinned racism, why then did the South explode after Brown v. Board (1954) but shrug following Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Supreme Court decision that ruled state anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional?

[Sara Broad · Rating 3 out of 5]

"White Fright" by Jane Dailey is a nonfiction work about how white Americans pursuit of continuing to uphold racism centered around their fear of interracial relationships. I learned that white people were often willing to break down racist systems as long as changes did not go so far as to legalize relationships with white women and non-white men. This book presents a unique analysis of racism in America, but I often found that the author had a hard time weaving the book's central topic into the overall work. Nevertheless, it was still an interesting read.

[Dan Cotter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent look at how sexual fears and concerns and miscegenation caused many of the ways in which the nation treated the black community .

[Mary Sisney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it obviously took decades for Dailey to complete her book (she says her son, who was seven when she started it, recently refinanced his mortgage), it’s very timely in this age of white supremacy and METOO, with black and Jewish men being imprisoned for (with the exception of R Kelly) touching white women while a self-proclaimed sexual assaulting white supremacist is still the Republicans’ favorite presidential candidate even after he sent a mob to overturn an election and kill his Vice President. Dailey’s not saying anything new about the motivations behind racism. Black National Anthem lyricist and early NAACP Secretary James Weldon Johnson made the “a black man will marry your daughter” point in his 1912 novel AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN, and Richard Wright made similar points in his late nineteen thirties essay, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” but several of her insights are especially interesting today. For instance, she points out that initially most whites were horrified by lynchings, but soon they became more acceptable. In other words, lynchings became normalized the way Republicans are trying to normalize voter suppression and attacks on democracy. I also enjoyed reading about Eleanor Roosevelt’s and Harry Truman’s contributions to civil rights. But the most interesting passages dealt with the Emmett Till case. I don’t remember reading about Emmett’s father in past accounts of his murder. I almost dropped the book when I read that Louis Till, who was eventually executed, was at one point handcuffed to very well-known poet Ezra Pound. I appreciate when white women contribute to the anti-racism discussion, but at one point Dailey’s race (and perhaps gender) undermined her argument. Partly because of her portrait of his father but more because of the way he’s portrayed, Till appears to be older and tougher than he actually was. Why would Dailey believe the two murderers’ account of how the fourteen-year-old responded when they were beating him? Perhaps he was full of bravado, perhaps he even had some of his father’s tough guy personality, but isn’t it more likely that he was a very scared child, and those racist murderers made him sound tough and bad because that’s how blacks are viewed, especially by bigots? I’m reminded of Gabrielle Union’s recent book where she pointed out that fans of the cheerleader movie she appeared in always thought her character talked and acted tougher than she actually did. Whites not only fear black sexuality, they also view us as violent and dangerous, despite overwhelming evidence that white people are more brutal and savage.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of familiar ground. Each chapter is itself the subject of at least one other book aimed at a non-academic audience.

Some stories that were new to me, mostly stories that reveal how delusional/hypocritical/both white liberals can be. One chapter was almost humorous--it's about a white southern editor of a publishing house who commissioned a book of essays by Black leaders. The editor assumed the essays would reassure white readers and was shocked to learn from the essays that the Black writers weren't interested in soothing (appeasing?) white people. Frantic efforts to avoid publishing the book followed, efforts that could translate into a good satirical movie someday.

I'm not convinced that racists were (are) motivated mostly by sexual panic. The book convinced me that this fear has long been very explicit. But it's still not clear to me which came first--the repression or the extremely asymmetric manipulation of sexual psychology.

The author asks, toward the end of the book, why the South didn't explode in rage after the Loving v. Virginia decision, when earlier so many white southerners had erupted in violence and self-sabotaging behavior after Brown v. Board of Education. If anti-miscegenation laws were the most sacred to the racist heart, why the whimper when those laws were held unconstitutional? No answer is offered in the book, and maybe there isn't one.

One depressing result of reading books like these: everything old is new again.
--Lawyers who build their reputations helping racists can themselves become justices on the US Supreme Court (Hugo Black).
--Racists in Congress block the admission of a state to the union because they know statehood would empower people of color and their allies (Hawaii).
--Words lose meaning as racists appropriate the language of victimhood for themselves (under attack, lynching, genocide) and disagree only on the method of oppressing people of color ("just" through economic & judicial means, as White Citizens' Councils chose to do, or also through terrorism, like the Klan and other paramilitaries).
--White Americans all across the political spectrum would rather believe we're being manipulated by foreign actors than accept that a distressingly large percentage of us embrace authoritarianism and will stop at nothing to maintain it, and that this is always who we've been.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's exploration of the history of segregation after the Civil War and the struggle for civil rights primarily through the lens of the argumentation regarding sexuality, primarily the fear of miscegenation.

The author does speak regarding the situation of interracial sex before the Civil War but spends most of the time investigating how the fear of miscegenation was ever-present in conversations about race relations and the primary fearmongering platform by which to deny any kind of change in the status of black people in America. She also shows how even more "enlightened liberals" who wanted to see the situation of black people made better maintained the delusion that black people did not really want full equality and all of that and were shocked to hear the opposite was the case. She also explores how black people would attempt to frame matters regarding civil rights in light of the fears of miscegenation.

She follows the narrative throughout until the Loving decision, pointing out how strange it was how accepted it would be when the ultimate thing the fearmongering had been agitating against had come to pass. It was as if the civil rights decisions which came beforehand had made the decision inevitable.

The narrative is not always about fears regarding miscegenation - the author is more expansive than just this one part of the narrative, and it was important to learn about how it was given to Christian ministers to attempt to create space for the civil rights movement within the mainstream of Christian thinking. It was also interesting to see the last desperate stand to try to suggest somehow that miscegenation was against the will of God all the way back in the...1950s.

This is not a fun book to read, but a very necessary one. The generation raised in and before the 1950s still will often express disapproval of interracial marriage; as usual, white American Christians remain the least receptive group to the idea, and far more find it uncomfortable. It is deeply lamentable to see how pervasive a lot of ungodly thinking was regarding these matters, and thus it is all the more important for us to recognize it, confess it, and give it no space in modern Christendom.

**--galley received as part of early review program

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did you know that interracial marriage was regulated in the U.S. for 300+ years? In her heady non-fiction book, “White Fright,” historian Jane Dailey investigates the white anxiety regarding interracial sex and marriage.

“For more than a century, between emancipation and 1967, African American rights were closely bound, both in law and in the white imagination, to the question of interracial sex and marriage. At every stage of the struggle for civil rights, sex played a central role, even when its significance was left unspoken. Overcoming the conflation of sexual and civil rights was a project of decades and arguably the greatest challenge champions of Black equality faced.”

Paralyzed by fear and anxiety, whites long upheld the Jim Crow segregation laws, and carried out unspeakable violence perpetrated upon African Americans. Even after the 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Blacks and whites were legally unable to marry in 16 southern states for another 13 years.

The fear and anxiety of mixing races was the driving force behind the long-overdue repeal, which affected the 14th Amendment which granted Americans equal protection of the laws.

Thankfully, in the 1967 legal case, Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that justifications for Virginia’s anti-miscegenation (interbreeding) laws were “obviously an endorsement of White Supremacy.” Loving denounced “invidious racial discrimination” generally. And Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that marriage was a “vital personal right,” a “fundamental freedom.”

“The overall disappearance of the endorsed anti-miscegenation as an acceptable public language is momentous; it represents the collapse of the most enduring color barrier in the United States.”


Overall, I enjoyed this book for the fact that it is necessary and well-researched, but it is very academic. Definitely not a vacation beach read. Instead, it keeps you thinking long after you finish the final chapter. I find that “White Fright” would be excellent assignment for a social justice collegiate syllabus or as a recommendation for your antiracism book club.

Thank you to Basic Books for providing me with an advanced reader copy, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 stars

[Andrea Wenger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book successfully argues that the prevention of sexual mixing of the races was at the heart of segregation in America. It's a factual account without a lot of storytelling involved, but the history itself is fascinating (also heartbreaking and infuriating).

The description calls this book, "A major new history of the fight for racial equality in America, arguing that fear of black sexuality has undergirded white supremacy from the start." That's not quite right. The book argues that white racial purity—defined as preventing sexual relationships between Black men and white women—underpins white supremacy. The concept of whiteness, and therefore white supremacy, can't exist if white women give birth to mixed race children. White men marrying nonwhite women, though equally prohibited by anti-miscegenation laws, was not nearly as threatening (as characterized here).

It took me a while to get into this book because there's no real narrative thrust. By the time I reached the end, though, I was a little disappointed that it was over. It ends at about the 73% point in the ebook, with the Loving decision. Which is a reasonable end point. I guess I was hoping there would be more about the impact of Loving. But that's a topic for another book.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received.

[Corinne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was curious about this topic because a couple of the central tenants of Fascism outlined in "How Fascism Works" by Jason Stanley were the sexual anxiety of men and a belief in biological superiority between one group of humans over another. I think this book did an excellent job of really covering public feeling and legislation on the topic of miscegenation from the Reconstruction era up to the present. This book is dense with court cases, federal legislation, quotes from political figures and activists and for the most part, I was really persuaded that a fear of race-mixing drove a lot of the discriminatory practices and terrible violence in America and the Jim Crow south.

[Michelle Jacobsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"White Fright" by Jane Dailey is a nonfiction book that details how white Americans have upheld their racism around their fear of interracial relationships. As someone who is in an interracial relationship, I found this book to be incredibly sad and terrifying, but also so important! So much has changed since Jim Crow and yet we still have so far to go. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Louise Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just wow! This insightful, often confronting, analysis of racism must be read. Drawing on different eras, cases and situations, the concepts of sex and race bring the analysis together to offer a compelling theory. If we are to understand each other and our behaviour, both individually and as a society, this is a must read.

[Danilo DiPietro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched analysis of the key role ‘miscegenation’ played in the informing of white supremacy from post civil war to the Loving decision. The repeated examples of barbaric behavior on the part of white Southerners to protect the purity white womanhood are jaw dropping. Very strong recommendation!

[Daniel Farabaugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book that should be read by anyone series about understanding racial history. It does a very good job of addressing how this was a default argument made on unrelated issues in order to stoke fears and shut down debate. It is a good primer to help recognize modern fear mongering as well.

[ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

a detailed exploration of the US’ legal history of segregation through the lens of white supremacy’s dependence on strict racial categories. dailey’s in depth look at the issue is greatly appreciated but feels missing from the concluding chapter of the book, which is poised to answer how over 2 centuries of white panic lost legal and social footing. otherwise, a fascinating read!

[Vallin · Rating 5 out of 5]

#MISCEGE_NATION NOW!
#MISCEGE_NATION TOMORROW!
#MISCEGE_NATION FOR-EV-ER!
Inna'-yo face!

[Scott Willems · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very well-researched history of the resistance to the expansion of civil rights in the U.S. The subtitle sort of overshadows this.

[Dajana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish much of what was in this book was taught in schools. Extremely frustratingly informative.