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Who wrote "Killers of the Dream"? - ✔✔Lillian Smith
Look Out For:
Discussion of being raised in the South / Southern ideology from white
perspective
The term "the white South"
Southern "values" condemn Blackness and sex
Story of Janie (adopted white-passing child who Smith's family returns
when they discover she is Black)
Author condemns racism of the South
First person / collective first person
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,Themes:
Reflection on childhood and the place where Smith grew up
Production and reproduction of ideology // imposition of ideology on
children
Contradiction between Christian principles and principles of segregation -
✔✔Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith
"It is a strange thing, this umbilical cord uncut. In times of ease, we do not
feel its pull, but when we are threatened with change, suddenly it draws
the whole white South together in a collective fear and fury that wipe our
minds clear of reason and we are blocked from sensible contact with the
world we live in" (26). - ✔✔Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith
-This is the first time we see the phrase "the white South"
-This phrase labels white supremaciest ideology and those embedded
in/participating in racist society
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,"We who were born in the South called this mesh of feeling and memory
'loyalty.' We thought of it some- times as 'love.' We identified with the
South's trouble as if we, individually, were responsible for all of it. We
defended the sins and the sorrows of three hundred years as if each sin had
been committed by us alone and each sorrow had cut across our heart. We
were as hurt at criticism of our region as if our own name had been called
aloud by the critic. We knew guilt without understanding it, and there is
no tie that binds men closer to the past and each other than that" (26). -
✔✔Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith
Explores the way that the identity of the white South is intertwined with
the past, making the white South resistant to change/progress
"And then I found it possible to say, 'Why is she leaving? She likes us, she
hardly knows them. She told me she had been with them only a month.'
'Because,' Mother said gently, 'Janie is a little colored girl.' 'But she's white!'
'We were mistaken. She is colored.'" (36). - ✔✔Killers of the Dream by
Lillian Smith
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, -Shows how the markers used to inscribe race are arbitrary
-If Janie is albino, a minor genetic difference makes her white
-Shows how racism is an unnatural imposition on children like Smith, but
is impossible to reverse once it becomes naturalized in people like her
mother
Interpolation - ✔✔Relevant Source: Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith
Definition:
-The insertion of something of a different nature into something else
-Ideology surrounds you and impacts you, whether you want it to and
realize it or not
-Whether you accept authority or not, you will respond to it (Ex: the police)
Important because:
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