Jessica K. answered • 03/10/21
Experienced Tutor Specializing in Writing and Literature
Critical Race Theory examines the idea that systemic racism is alive and well in modern America. To examine why racism has a foothold in the country, we must first journey back to its inception in the early 1600s. The Puritans left their home in England in search of religious freedom and the maintenance of their customs and traditions. During the colonial period, many Northern Europeans traveled to the New World but America also became home to many black Africans in the Atlantic Slave trade, where black Africans were often traded as a commodity for luxury goods to provide free labor to white-owned plantations.
After the civil war period the fledgling country saw a boom of immigrants from all over the world; Irish, Eastern European, Italian, Chinese, Indian -- the latter differing culturally and physically from the Puritans. This melting pot created a dilemma for America. The Anglo-Saxons viewed themselves the most civilized, educated, superior, and pure race in the world. They feared that their culture would die out affording to the melting of the races. How does a dominant group go about making sure they stay the dominant group? Enshrine into law that white people are superior; Slavery. Lynchings. The Tulsa Race Massacre. Jim Crow. Red Lining. I Can't Breathe. Americas unique brand of racism still lives on to modern times from these roots.
Individual Americans can and do often hold racist views, but it is American institutions where we find racism woven into the fabric of American life. By the time F. Scott Fitzgerald published his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, in 1925 racial tension was high. After all, The Chicago Race Riot has left 38 people dead only six years prior. Italians were blamed for "driving up the crime rate" and only the year before had President Hoover signed the restrictive Johnson- Reed act, a bill that stimied immigration from Asia and put quotas on migrants from outside the Western Hemisphere (Viala-Gaudefroy).
The Great Gatsby, is, on its face, a love story told from the perspective of narrator Nick Caraway, between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. The subtext reveals that Jay Gatsby made his fortune through bootlegging and gambling to reach the same status of his obsession; Daisy, a flighty socialite married to wealthy Tom Buchanan. In the Great Gatsby, Tom is overtly racist by todays standards;
“'Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we — “
“Well, these books are scientific,” insisted Tim, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun." -The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1
Daisy, seen here as a passive racist, has directly benefited from her white privilege as the "Dominant race." She may harbor views that Tom is uncouth or garish for his beliefs as she mildly pokes fun at them. However, Tom represents the institutions that keep her comfortable and cared for; benevolent sexism and racism intertwine in Daisy as they still do for many modern white women. Daisy is enshrined in a cocoon of wealth and privilege, the precious condescension historically afforded to white women in America.
“Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine…She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of the many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.” -The Great Gatsby, Chapter 8
Alberto Lena wrote “Deceitful Traces of Power: an Analysis of the Decadence of Tom Buchanan in the Great Gatsby”. and examines the overt distaste for the gentry that Fitzgerald captured in the old aristocratic character Tom Buchanan. Through this character, one can understand Fitzgerald’s disapproval with the upper classes, as Lena asserts it: “Fitzgerald had launched one of his sharpest and most devastating attacks on the upper classes, in the form of his character Tom Buchanan, in the Long Island’s millionaire in The Great Gatsby” (40).
“'…Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have marriage between black and white.’
Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.
‘We’re all white here,’ murmured Jordan.
“Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so complete.” -The Great Gatsby, Chapter 7
"We're all white here," would seem to infer that the protagonist is indeed white, but was every character? What about Jay Gatsby himself?
In the 1920s, American people were nestled into a world of growing prosperity. They were eager to hoard money in order to be assimilated into the upper class It was a time of decadence when the primary concern of Americans, besides the pursuit of wealth, was to exhibit their wealth in order to show that they were rich. The Great Gatsby was highly considered as a social document that examines mostly all aspects of the Jazz Age;
“‘Civilization’s going to pieces,’ [says Tom]. ‘I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?…Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved…This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or those other races will have control of things…The idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?’ "-The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1
Carlyle V. Thompson, an assistant professor in the department of literature, languages and philosophy at Medgar Evers College maintains that Gatsby was written as a "pale black individual passing as white." As evidence of this he cites that Gatsby wears his hair trimmed short, he has 40 acres and a mansion instead of 40 acres and a mule, changed his name from "Gatz" to "Gatsby" (like many black individuals who changed their names to make a new life) and he tells Nick that his family is "dead," alluding to having cut them off as he began a life of whiteness. Gatsby is "pale as death" when he sees Daisy for the first time in 5 years. (
"It's the literary equivalent of the Rorschach blots. People just want to read into classics something original and new and totally divorced from the authors' intentions," says Charles Scribner III of Thompson's idea. His family's firm, Charles Scribner's Sons, was Fitzgerald's publisher. "I mean, it's ridiculous. There's nothing in Fitzgerald's documentation, in the drafts, in his letters back and forth to the editor, Max Perkins, that would give any credence to such an interpretation of 'The Great Gatsby.'". (Manus) Most scholars agree that, while the book was written with racially charged undertones, this evaluation is "problematizing the text," or perceiving issues or messages that the author did not intend.
Bibliography
https://theconversation.com/divided-we-stand-looking-back-to-the-1920s-to-understand-the-united-states-today-108028, Jerome Viala-Gaudefroy, December 2018, accessed March 10, 2021
Lena , Alberto. “Deceitful Traces of Power: an Analysis of the Decadence of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby”. University of Toronto, 1998.
https://www.salon.com/2000/08/09/gatsby/, Elizabeth Manus, August 9th, 2000, accessed March 1st, 2021
