Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate MovementKathleen M. Blee's disturbing and provocative look at the hidden world of organized racism focuses on women, the newest recruiting targets of racist groups and crucial to their campaign for racial supremacy. Through personal interviews with women active in the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups, Christian Identity sects, and white power skinhead gangs across the United States, Blee dispels many misconceptions of organized racism. Women are seldom pushed into the racist movement by any compelling interest, belief, or need, she finds. Most are educated. Only the rare woman grew up poor. Most were not raised in abusive families. Most women did not follow men into the world of organized racism. Inside Organized Racism offers a fascinating examination of the submerged social relations and the variety of racist identities that lie behind the apparent homogeneity of the movement. Following up her highly praised study of the women in the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, Blee discovers that many of today's racist women combine dangerous racist and anti-Semitic agendas with otherwise mainstream lives. Few of the women she interviews had strong racist or anti-Semitic views before becoming associated with racist groups. Rather, they learned a virulent hatred of racial minorities and anti-Semitic conspiratorial beliefs by being in racist groups. The only national sample of a broad spectrum of racist activists and the only major work on women racists, this well-written and important book also sheds light on how gender relationships shape participation in the movement as a whole. |
Contents
Crossing a Boundary | 1 |
BECOMING A RACIST | 21 |
Whiteness | 54 |
Enemies | 73 |
The Place of Women | 111 |
A Culture of Violence | 156 |
Lessons | 187 |
Antiracist Organizations | 205 |
Bibliography | 247 |
Acknowledgments | 267 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
action African Americans agendas Anti-Defamation League anti-Semitism antiracist Aryan Nations Aryan supremacist Aryan Women’s League beliefs boyfriend Christian Identity claimed collective commitment cultural practices described emotional enemies extremist fascist Feminist flyer friends gangs gender girls Hank Johnston Holocaust ideas ideology Jewish Jews Klan groups Klan leader Klanswoman Klux Klan Ku Klux Klan lives mainstream male racist ment narrative Nazi neo-Nazi neo-Nazi groups newsletter nonwhite organized racism racial minorities racist activism racist activists racist culture racist groups racist identity racist leaders racist movement racist propaganda racist skinheads racist violence racist women recruits Research Right right-wing roles sense sexual skingirl Social Movements society Sociological supremacism talk There’s today’s told Tore Bjørgo University Press victims White Aryan White Aryan Resistance white power skinheads white race white supremacism white supremacist white women woman women I interviewed women racists York young