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Book Review
The
Fair Sex: White Women and Racial Patriarchy in the Early American Republic. By Pauline Schloesser.
(New York: New York University Press, 2002. xii, 243 pp. $40.00, ISBN
0-8147-9763-6.)
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this provocative book, Pauline Schloesser relies on a theory of racial
patriarchy to explain the roots of white and male supremacy in the early
United States. This racial patriarchy established a pecking order of whites
and people of color as well as of men and women during the early national
period. Schloesser focuses her study on the position of white women and argues
that they held a unique place in this racial and gender hierarchy. She
describes the fair sex ideology that praised white women for their whiteness
at the same time that it subjugated them due to their sex. Her work examines
how institutions in early America, including schools, slavery, and churches,
helped to promote fair sex ideology as a means of reinforcing racial
patriarchy. |
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