George Webb Hardy's the Black Peril and the social meaning of ‘Black Peril’ in early twentieth-century South Africa
- Authors: Cornwell, Gareth D N
- Date: 1996
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:6116 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004240 , https://doi.org/10.1080/03057079608708504
- Description: preprint , The 'Black Peril' — the threatened rape of white women by black men — was an important factor in the moral economy underpinning colonial debate about the 'Native Question' in early twentieth-century South Africa. This essay gives sympathetic consideration to studies which have attempted to link the recurrence of Black Peril panics with specific disturbances in the economy or body politic, before offering symptomatic readings of two pieces of writing by George Webb Hardy, the article 'The Black Peril' (1904) and the novel The Black Peril (1912). These readings suggest that the rape threat was essentially a rationalization of white men's fear of sexual competition from black men. The imagery of purity and contagion, in terms of which the 'endogamous imperative' is typically represented in such texts, suggests that the idea of caste may usefully be invoked in attempts to explain the seemingly irrational public hysteria surrounding the Black Peril phenomenon.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1996
- Authors: Cornwell, Gareth D N
- Date: 1996
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:6116 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004240 , https://doi.org/10.1080/03057079608708504
- Description: preprint , The 'Black Peril' — the threatened rape of white women by black men — was an important factor in the moral economy underpinning colonial debate about the 'Native Question' in early twentieth-century South Africa. This essay gives sympathetic consideration to studies which have attempted to link the recurrence of Black Peril panics with specific disturbances in the economy or body politic, before offering symptomatic readings of two pieces of writing by George Webb Hardy, the article 'The Black Peril' (1904) and the novel The Black Peril (1912). These readings suggest that the rape threat was essentially a rationalization of white men's fear of sexual competition from black men. The imagery of purity and contagion, in terms of which the 'endogamous imperative' is typically represented in such texts, suggests that the idea of caste may usefully be invoked in attempts to explain the seemingly irrational public hysteria surrounding the Black Peril phenomenon.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1996
Nicknames as sex-role stereotypes
- De Klerk, Vivian A, Bosch, Agnes Barbara
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A , Bosch, Agnes Barbara
- Date: 1996
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6134 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011586
- Description: Nicknames are powerful indicators of attitudes towards gender categories and because of their transient and optional nature, it has been argued that they are more likely to show a closer relationship to ongoing trends in the culture and society than other more fixed parts of the language E. B. Phillips (1990) ["Nicknames and Sex Role Stereotypes," Sex Roles, Vol. 23, pp. 281-289]. This study reports on a survey of nickname usage among a group of South African adolescents from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds (approximately 25% other than white) in an attempt to explicate gender-linked trends in frequency of occurrence, usage and attitudes to such special names. It reveals that conventions regarding nickname coinage and usage are intimately connected to the gender of bearers and users, and that more males have nicknames and coin them than females; it also shows significant sex-linked differences in the linguistic sources and users of nicknames, and reveals a greater tendency for female nicknames to function as indicators of affection rather than for humorous or critical effect. It could be argued that these trends could be linked to the nurturing and nurtured role of females in society, and to the differences in social power generally between males and females.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1996
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A , Bosch, Agnes Barbara
- Date: 1996
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6134 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011586
- Description: Nicknames are powerful indicators of attitudes towards gender categories and because of their transient and optional nature, it has been argued that they are more likely to show a closer relationship to ongoing trends in the culture and society than other more fixed parts of the language E. B. Phillips (1990) ["Nicknames and Sex Role Stereotypes," Sex Roles, Vol. 23, pp. 281-289]. This study reports on a survey of nickname usage among a group of South African adolescents from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds (approximately 25% other than white) in an attempt to explicate gender-linked trends in frequency of occurrence, usage and attitudes to such special names. It reveals that conventions regarding nickname coinage and usage are intimately connected to the gender of bearers and users, and that more males have nicknames and coin them than females; it also shows significant sex-linked differences in the linguistic sources and users of nicknames, and reveals a greater tendency for female nicknames to function as indicators of affection rather than for humorous or critical effect. It could be argued that these trends could be linked to the nurturing and nurtured role of females in society, and to the differences in social power generally between males and females.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1996
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