Bederman's Manliness & Civilization

History
Author`s Name
Institutional Affiliation
History
Gail Bederman examines the various ways race and manhood link and correlates to the conception of civilization. The book investigates the change of the century as it links manhood to race. From 1890 to 1917, the white men pressurized on reinforcing male power that led to the race to become a critical issue to their gender. Gail Bederman uses four candidates to support her idea by focusing on the different themes in her historical work. Bederman believes the factors above affected manly America`s view and how this concept formed the basis of the culture of people at that time.
Gail Bederman opened a new approach to the cultural history of Americans in the progressive era period. The study of race and gender in the United States offers a unique world with different conceptions on the cultural shift of civilizing manliness. The change that Bederman refers to is from manhood to masculinity of males in society. By use of the four candidates, she can show her drive in sustaining Anglo-Saxon social hierarchy due to the shift of manhood to various directions according to the Victorian age (Bederman, 1996). It is the era where culture considered essential characteristics as sexual restraint and strong character. An Anglo-Saxon social system is an elemental factor that Bederman account in the discourse of civilization towards the last of the nineteenth. The examples in the book present the historical figures that influenced the entire society. Therefore, the factors developed by Bederman justifies the community.
The book, “Manliness and Civilization,” depicts Ida B. Wells as an activist who opposed the lynching in the South. She was an example used by Bederman to portray the belief of black inferiority as well as white superiority to signify lynching in society. Besides, she explains how she was a genius in how she fought against the burden of the white man. Wells uses this concept as she twisted it to favor lynching. Wells created awareness to people as she demonstrates how lynching was an immoral, uncivilized, and primitive practice. Therefore, the white men had the same qualities as black men, for instance, being inferior or superior. She considered all men as equal regardless of either race or skin color. As she refers to Wells, Bederman states, “She used manipulation to discourse the act of civilization by playing on their fears because of the declining male authority. Wells raised stakes from middle-class Northern White men who accepted lynching of the Black men races.”
Bederman used Wells idea to empower the black as equal to the white race. It helps in avoiding race discrimination as all people, despite differences in skin color, had the same ability in the culture. In the nineteenth century, White men oppressed Black men as inferior group people (Heinemann, 2015). It led to the mistreatment of the blacks in the white men society, as blacks were people who performed all works such as farming and household duties of the white Americans. The whites violated the rights of the Black, which lead to a revolution.
G. Stanley Hall was an exclusive scholar who devoted his efforts to the advancement of the field of psychology and pedagogy. From the perspectives of Hall, Bederman narrows down to primitive masculinity, and she shows this using worries of Hall as the middle-class men had their concept of manliness. Hall's fear of the middle-class men was that they had lost the aspect of being sturdy and robust before the age of civilization that led to the upward movement of this population group in society. Bederman utilizes the ideas of Hall to define different stages of adolescence, depending on the race instead of the age of people. She showed the ideal picture of the whites the way they view nonwhites as inferior in the aspects of masculinity of a male body structure. It allowed racism, violence, and primitiveness as a tool to identify virile masculinity in the civilization of men. The aspects above cultivate hatred, conflicts, and inequity of power in people of various races.
Depiction of nonwhites as superior in the United States rooted social evils and unequal distribution of resources in the society. For instance, it concentrated resources to the hands of the white population leading uneven development of the economy in the country. The white had a more significant opportunity of securing jobs in the industries as compared to the black races (Karen & Washington, 2015). The concept of Hall was the driving force that enabled Bederman to write the book of Manliness and Civilization to expose the immoral and immortal values in the White men. Unequal allocation of material resources led to an increase in the gap between the poor and the affluent in society. Even though Black did all hard work duties, they earned little income as compared to the White male counterparts.
Furthermore, Bederman acknowledges the value of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was a female theorist. Gilman asserted the culture about the quality of a woman, as having a crucial role in enhancing a culture that is acceptable in an entire society. Bederman uses the concepts of Gilman to demonstrate the white supremacy efforts in promoting equality to the white women's race. Gilman claimed that a white woman had the same civilization as a white man; they were superior to other races of the nonwhites. Bederman pictured how white feminists had found the audacity to suppress the other races using white supremacy. However, the argument of Gilman did not support the idea of male dominance as dependable on the collective racial bonds. The idea underestimated the various aspects of the culture, such as sexual variation. The theory and approach of Gilman oppressed the black feminine race in the United States despite the country being multicultural. It led to a lack of unity in the female gender to fight for common goals and similar norms in different cultures of people.
White women's superiority led to in-gender conflicts of the female population in the United States. Not all women in the US had a common foundation to expose the discrimination they undergo in the families, education, employment, and sexual harassment (Roberts, 2016). It provided a platform that women cannot fight for their rights due to a lack of unity. White women disrespected the black feminine as of low status, and therefore, they cannot be of the same level. It has led to poor education and lousy payment in the...