Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s
by Kathleen M. Blee
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kathleen M. BleeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1992-08-04
ISBN: 0520078764
Number of pages: 236
Publisher: University of California Press
Book Reviews of Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s
Book Review: Then and Now
Summary: 5 Stars
According to author Kathleen Blee, "It is more helpful to understand the second Klan by considering it within - rather than as an aberration from - the ideas and values that shaped white Protestant life in the early twentieth century, fueling fundamentalism..." Sound provocative?
Dr. Blee also maintains that Klanswomen held the same fanatical views on race, religion, and nationalism as their menfolk - in other words, anti-negro, anti-semitic, anti-Catholic, and hyper-patriotic - but that their perspcetive on gender roles were often progressive.
In the 1920s, as many as half a million women joined the ladies' auxiliary of the KKK (the WKKK). Were they just aping their husbands or were there specific motivations that brought women to an organization notorious for rough-neck violence? Well, sexual fears may indeed have played a role. The fraudulent portrayal of ex-slaves assaulting white women in the vile racist movie, Birth of a Nation, is credited with stimulating the resurgence of the Klan. Women had received the vote nationally only in 1918, on a wave of optimism that their votes would naturally fall on the side of justice, decency, and pacifism. "Women in the Klan" reveals how fallacious (and sexist) that attitude was.
Racism of the vicious intensity of the Ku Klux Klan is not extinct in America or in the world at large. If you'd like to get a dose of pseudo-scientific anti-Semitism as putrid as any in the rhetoric of the Klan, take a look at "The Culture of Critique" by Kevin MacDonald, a professor at a major university in southern California. Be sure to read some of the many five-star reviews, including ugly diatribes and racial-purity fantasies by young Scandinavian men. Like a herpes zoster virus that lurks in nerve tissue for decades and then erupts as shingles, racism lingers in the scum of our educated populace.
Summary of Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s
Ignorant. Brutal. Male. One of these stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan offer a misleading picture. In Women of the Klan, sociologist Kathleen Blee unveils an accurate portrait of a racist movement that appealed to ordinary people throughout the country. In so doing, she dismantles the popular notion that politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism, equality, and justice."All the better people," a former Klanswoman assures us, were in the Klan. During the 1920s, perhaps half a million white native-born Protestant women joined the Women's Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Like their male counterparts, Klanswomen held reactionary views on race, nationality, and religion. But their perspectives on gender roles were often progressive. The Klan publicly asserted that a women's order could safeguard women's suffrage and expand their other legal rights. Privately the WKKK was working to preserve white Protestant supremacy.
Blee draws from extensive archival research and interviews with former Klan members and victims to underscore the complexity of extremist right-wing political movements. Issues of women's rights, she argues, do not fit comfortably into the standard dichotomies of "progressive" and "reactionary." These need to be replaced by a more complete understanding of how gender politics are related to the politics of race, religion, and class.
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