African American Migration and the Emerging Discourse of Northern Racial Liberalism
African American Migration and the Emerging Discourse of Northern Racial Liberalism
This chapter describes the formation of northern racial liberalism and of black responses to this new racial ideology. Northern racial liberalism emerged alongside the beginning of the First Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the urban North, and subsequently developed as migration reshaped the city's housing market and racial geography. This ideology also coincided with a significant change in the city's white leadership, and is characterized by the growing power and popularity of urban reform. Urban reformers provided a language for explaining stratification and developed institutions for managing urban populations that white leaders then used, both ideologically and practically, to handle the influx of black newcomers. Finally, northern racial liberalism emerged as a response to an increasingly vocal and politically organized African American minority that was actively debating the meanings of full racial justice and challenging the racial hierarchies of the North.
Keywords: northern racial liberalism, migration, urban reform, racial geography, urban North, white leadership, racial justice
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