Separate Pasts: Growing Up White In The Segregated South

Paternalism describes higher status groups or individuals helping or sponsoring lower status individuals. Paternalistic racism is a system by which white people claim to act in the service of people of color without granting them autonomy. For example, in the South, white people who supported slavery used paternalism as an argument against enfranchisement. Plantation owners saw themselves as caring for and civilizing slaves. They argued that slaves had better living conditions than free African American citizens in the North.

In Separate Pasts, we see how African Americans are forced to beg white people like McLaurin’s grandfather for aid. McLaurin reveals how paternalism shaped the social interactions within the store:

The role required that Jeanette project an image of childlike naiveté and innocence in order to deserve the beneficence of her superior. When she sought an extension of credit or time in which to pay her debt, Jeanette would ease into the store, head bent slightly forward, eyes downcast, her face a sorrowful study of helplessness, and with short, gliding steps she would move toward my grandfather. Standing across a wooden counter from him, she would pause and begin to shift her weight gently from foot to foot, her body swaying almost imperceptibly as in hushed tones she pled her case (29).

Paternalism may be a kinder face of racism, but it is rooted in the belief that African Americans need the support of kindly whites. Paternalism maintains structural inequality and violates the liberty and autonomy of individuals.