The White Savage

"I am not a nigger, I am a man. And the question is WHY DO YOU NEED A NIGGER?" James Baldwin once demanded.

This question expresses the pivotal issue of American race relations, although most thistorians overlook the point. Lawrence J. Friedman is one of the few historians who has concentrated on discovering why whites, particularly Southern whites, have craved docile Negro behavior.

In THE WHITE SAVAGE: Racial Fantasies in the Postbellum South, Friedman explores the subjective world of white Southerners between the Civil War and World War I to disclose their racial fantasies and the social and psychological roots of those fantasies. He reveals how a complex set of anxieties and repression in Southern life led whites to need Negro "inferiority."

Today many whites still look for subservient behavior from blacks. Too many Americans are comfortable with "Uncle Toms" -- and hate and fear militant blacks. Deplorable though it may be, the racism evident in the postbellum South still permeates our society. In Lawrence J. Friendman's words, "white savagery reigns supreme."