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Journeying through Jim Crow: Spanish American Travelers in the United States during the Age of Segregation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Laurence E. Prescott
Laurence E. Prescott*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Abstract

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Postcolonial criticism and theory have been instrumental not only in showing how Western texts have constructed non-Western peoples and cultures, but also in analyzing discourse on the racialized Other in travel writings by members of formerly colonized societies and cultures who may reinscribe—consciously or unconsciously—the structural values of cultural domination. As privileged members of comparable societies that had assimilated and been assimilated into dominant ideologies of European cultural and biological superiority, Spanish American visitors to the United States during the segregation era uniquely exemplify such discourse and thus merit scholarly attention. Examining—within their respective cultural and historical contexts—selected texts by six Spanish American writers who visited or lived in the United States during the period 1880-1947, this paper analyzes their observations of, experiences with, and reactions to the realities of racial separation and the attendant violence against African Americans in order to determine the extent to which the writers resisted or participated in the “othering” process that represented African Americans as different and inferior.

Resumo

Resumo

La teoría y crítica postcoloniales han jugado un papel decisivo no sólo en mostrar cómo los textos de Occidente han construido culturas y pueblos no occidentales, sino también en analizar el discurso sobre el Otro racializado en obras de viaje escritas por miembros de sociedades y culturas anteriormente colonizadas, quienes pueden re-inscribir —deliberadamente o no— los valores estructurales de la dominación colonial. Como miembros privilegiados de sociedades comparables que habían asimilado y, al mismo tiempo, habían sido asimiladas por las ideologías dominantes sobre la superioridad biológica y cultural europea, los viajeros hispanoamericanos que visitaron Estados Unidos durante la era de la segregación racial ilustran de manera excepcional tal discurso y merecen atención académica. A partir del estudio de textos escritos por varios viajeros de los siglos diecinueve y veinte, este trabajo analiza sus observaciones, experiencias y reacciones al verse confrontados con las realidades de la separación racial y la violencia que ésta conllevaba contra los afroamericanos a fin de determinar hasta qué punto los escritores se resistieron a participar —o por el contrario, colaboraron— en el proceso de construcción del grupo afroamericano como un Otro diferente e inferior.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , February 2007 , pp. 3 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

The author thanks the College of the Liberal Arts of the Pennsylvania State University for released time to write the manuscript; his colleagues John Lipski, Djelal Kadir, and Rosalia Cornejo, respectively, for helpful suggestions and support, encouragement upon reading an earlier version of the manuscript, and constructive criticism and invaluable advice at different stages of the manuscript; and Tía Ruby, for timely moral and material aid.

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