Inequality in a Historical Context: Dancing and Carousing the Night Away
Dancer at a Juke Joint, photo achieved from http://porterbriggs.com/juke-joints/
Reading reflection on Dancing and Carousing the Night Away (Hunter, 1998)
Dancing and Carousing the Night Away by Hunter describes the racial, gender and social class inequality in the post-emancipation period in American history. According to Hunter, working class African Americans, men and women, were keen on going to public dance halls after work and danced “the night away”. Taking the dancing examples in Decatur and Atlanta, Hunter suggested that through the dancing activity, African Americans were able to forget the dreadfulness of their work for a moment, and regain “freedom of their body” for self-entertainment. However, the dominating society members, white people and the middle class African American, harshly criticized the public dancing activity. They described the dance as immoral and sexual in nature, argued that it would reduce working productivity the next day, and related it to crimes, drugs and illicit sex. Therefore, the public dance halls faced strict regulations and high amount of taxes, resulting in difficult business operations. However, the working class African American resisted in their day to day life by keeping on “dancing the night away”.
The paper gives me some insights on viewing “inequality” in the context of history and changing society norms. For example, although the end of Civil War is marked as the end of slavery in America, it was not the end of “inequality”. As shown in the article, the society was harsh on working class African Americans, especially the female ones. Although they were supposed to be “free individuals” at the time, it is shocking to me that the society critiques still tried to restrict and control their behaviors even in their free time. According to the article, Proctor warned employers that “household laborers would not perform well’, because “they use their leisure unproductively – dancing instead of preparation for the next day of work”. To me, in today’s society, this statement does not make sense. The modern society is more open and aware of individual’s freedom and wills; therefore, to me, the meaning of a “free individual” should be someone who is able to decide what he/she wants to do in his/her free time, and other people should not force to change that decision. However, it is not difficult to imagine that the society back then was far less open and tolerant, and inequality was a more evident; therefore, Proctor’s warning could make sense to the dominating society members back then.
Also, it is important to notice how the society norms and inequality interact with each other. For instance, nowadays, “dancing the night away” in night clubs is a very common entertainment practice for many people. However, back then, just the action itself was viewed as immoral. Especially, women committing such behaviors were viewed as dangerous and evil in the society. The social norm is a reflection on the inequality at the time. The society over sexualized women, putting women in an inferior position from men and expected obedience and traditional virtues from women. When gender inequality intertwined with racial inequality, as mentioned in the paper, people were anxious about the “sexual promiscuity among black women”, because they would then “taint the white households through their illicit activity”. This description reflects how the society back then viewed women as sexual objects that arouse men, and any actions (for example, raping) done by men are women’s fault because of their “illicit behaviors”. Moreover, it reveals how the society back then viewed black people as not “pure” compared to white people.
More interestingly, the inequality structure changes over time because of the interaction between the dominating power and the resisting power. For example, the day to day resistance of inequality by dancing helps cultivate a united culture among working class African Americans and cultivate a power that became stronger and stronger every day. Eventually, this power helped change the social norms about gender, working spirits and races. Nowadays, the society is able to identify a lot of phenomenon in gender inequality, and inter-racial relationship is legal and more common. I believe that the society today is therefore a result of continuous movements in history.
The paper gives me some insights on viewing inequality in the context of history. And as I relate these insights to the inequality that we observed in today’s society, it is interesting to see that we can find traces of today’s inequality from the past. For example, there are less management level women in the workplace than men, because women were expected to be obedient and caring for the household in the past, therefore, they are not encouraged to be “bossy” or “demanding” now. Another example is that there are still cases where inter-racial marriages were not successful, because of the disapproval based on races from the family. These phenomena that still exist today can be traced back in history. However, I am positive that as we are able to identify the problems, through arguments and discussions among different groups of people in the society, we will make progresses on inequality issues and the future will be better.
Reference
Hunter, Tera W. "Dancing and Carousing the Night Away." To 'joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1998. 168-86. Print.
