White metropolis, race, ethnicity, and religion in Dallas, 1841-2001, by Michael Phillips
Type
Label
White metropolis, race, ethnicity, and religion in Dallas, 1841-2001, by Michael Phillips
Language
eng
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-255) and index
resource.governmentPublication
government publication of a state province territory dependency etc
Illustrations
illustrations
Index
index present
Literary Form
non fiction
Main title
White metropolis
Nature of contents
bibliography
Oclc number
58791212
Responsibility statement
by Michael Phillips
Sub title
race, ethnicity, and religion in Dallas, 1841-2001
Summary
From the nineteenth century until today, the power brokers of Dallas have always portrayed their city as a progressive, pro-business, racially harmonious community that has avoided the racial, ethnic, and class strife that roiled other Southern cities. But does this image of Dallas match the historical reality? In this book, Michael Phillips delves deeply into Dallas's racial and religious past and uncovers a complicated history of resistance, collaboration, and assimilation between the city's African American, Mexican American, and Jewish communities and its white power elite. Exploring more than 150 years of Dallas history, Phillips reveals how white business leaders created both a white racial identity and a Southwestern regional identity that excluded African Americans from power and required Mexican Americans and Jews to adopt Anglo-Saxon norms to achieve what limited positions of power they held. He also demonstrates how the concept of whiteness kept these groups from allying with each other, and with working- and middle-class whites, to build a greater power base and end elite control of the city. Comparing the Dallas racial experience with that of Houston and Atlanta, Phillips identifies how Dallas fits into regional patterns of race relations and illuminates the unique forces that have kept its racial history hidden until the publication of this book
Table Of Contents
Through a glass darkly : memory, race, and region in Dallas, Texas -- The music of cracking necks : Dallas civilization and its discontents -- True to Dixie and to Moses : Yankees, White trash, Jews, and the lost cause -- The great White plague : whiteness, culture, and the unmaking of the Dallas working class -- Consequences of powerlessness : whiteness as class politics -- Water force : resisting White supremacy under Jim Crow -- White like me : Mexican Americans, Jews, and the elusive politics of identity -- A blight and a sin : segregation, the Kennedy assassination, and the wreckage of whiteness