New Books in Critical Theory Jason R. Young, "The Mask of Memory: White Racial Fantasy After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2026)
May 2, 2026
Jason R. Young, a historian at the University of Michigan who studies the memory of American slavery, discusses how early twentieth-century Charleston elites manufactured a sanitised plantation myth. He traces how literature, art, performance, and tourism exported and hardened those stereotypes. The conversation highlights archival surprises, preservation politics, and how cultural production shapes public memory and contemporary debates.
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Charleston Made History Stick To Me
- Young's research focus grew from a personal encounter with Charleston where "history is very sticky" and felt physically proximate.
- He then learned Charleston exported its curated past nationally, making local myths into dominant American racial myths.
White Elites Performing Black Spirituals
- The Society for the Preservation of Spirituals (SPS) were white descendants of plantation elites who performed Black spirituals claiming superior authenticity.
- SPS dressed as antebellum gentry and argued white caretakers could preserve Black culture better than Black people themselves.
Authenticity Used To Freeze Black Culture
- Authenticity became a politics: elite whites defined authenticity as deferential plantation-era Black culture and dismissed jazz and the Harlem Renaissance as inauthentic.
- That definition served to freeze Black culture as the version that affirmed white nostalgia and hierarchy.
