University of Virginia Library

Africanization

"Whites were very sensitive about being
Africanized," Mr. Cruse declared. "This
attitude led to denying the positive cultural
attributes" of the blacks and resulted in an
attempt to create a race of "black
Anglo-Saxons." This feeling, he stated, laid the
basis for the creation of a "peasant class,"
leading an agricultural way of life.

Mr. Cruse affirmed, however, that the black
presence had a subtle and unintentional cultural
effect on whites, particularly in the South,
where a closer relationship traditionally existed
between blacks and whites. Realization of this
effect, he contended, produced a "dual
attitude" in Southern white intellectuals
toward race relations, accompanying the
"peasant class" concept.

During the second half of the nineteenth
century, he said, whites became increasingly
attracted to the cultural contributions of blacks
made through the interpretive arts and music.
These contributions, providing a distinctly
American form of culture when white
Americans were trying to copy European music
and art, attained a prominent position in the
evolving national culture, Mr. Cruse declared.