| In the long drama of American race conflict, the twentieth century has been among the most emotionally charged and violent of times. Certainly, this has been reflected in a large number of literary works by both black and white writers. One of the continuing focal points of this American racial hostility has been the almost obsessive concern with the idea or image of intimate contact between a black man and a white woman. On this taboo liaison, myth and history have converged, creating a context of high semiotic import. Consequently, depictions of the black man-white woman construct "signify" as a cultural metaphor. My study is concerned with this metaphor and the various motif patterns and archetypal structures which make up the mythology of "that black man-white woman thing."; Through a "myth/symbol" approach to literary analysis, I explore how the black man-white woman theme has been widely used by writers such as Eugene O'Neill, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, William Styron, and others. I also apply the same analytic principles to popular culture materials and also political and social science discourse. In addition to the familiar stereotype of the "black beast rapist," I explore less familiar archetypal patterns such as the "falsely accused innocent," and the "militant rapist." I also look at depictions of the white woman within this configuration, juxtaposing the "sacred white womanhood" persona, often misperceived as the central core of this mythology, with the more prevalent and often overlooked "white bitch" archetype.; By delineating these and other mythic patterns, I demonstrate that the "black man-white woman thing" is not one monolithic motif as is often assumed, but rather a multilayered and complex mythology growing out of the intersection of race and gender issues in American culture. From this perspective, I "read" the cultural text inscribed by this mythology as a discourse, carried out primarily by men, about manhood. I conclude with the view that through the rhetoric of gender hierarchies embedded in the black man-white woman taboo, writers, white and black, negotiate the racial terms of American "manhood" identity. |
