Bederman's Manliness & Civilization

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Gail Bederman examines the various ways race and manhood link and correlates to the conception of civilization. The book investigates the change of the century as it links manhood to race. From 1890 to 1917, the white men pressurized on reinforcing male power that led to the race to become a critical issue to their gender. Gail Bederman uses four candidates to support her idea by focusing on the different themes in her historical work. Bederman believes the factors above affected manly America`s view and how this concept formed the basis of the culture of people at that time.
Gail Bederman opened a new approach to the cultural history of Americans in the progressive era period. The study of race and gender in the United States offers a unique world with different conceptions on the cultural shift of civilizing manliness. The change that Bederman refers to is from manhood to masculinity of males in society. By use of the four candidates, she can show her drive in sustaining Anglo-Saxon social hierarchy due to the shift of manhood to various directions according to the Victorian age (Bederman, 1996). It is the era where culture considered essential characteristics as sexual restraint and strong character. An Anglo-Saxon social system is an elemental factor that Bederman account in the discourse of civilization towards the last of the nineteenth. The examples in the book present the historical figures that influenced the entire society. Therefore, the factors developed by Bederman justifies the community.
The book, “Manliness and Civilization,” depicts Ida B. Wells as an activist who opposed the lynching in the South. She was an example used by Bederman to portray the belief of black inferiority as well as white superiority to signify lynching in society. Besides, she explains how she was a genius in how she fought against the burden of the white man. Wells uses this concept as she twisted it to favor lynching. Wells created awareness to people as she demonstrates how lynching was an immoral, uncivilized, and primitive practice. Therefore, the white men had the same qualities as black men, for instance, being inferior or superior. She considered all men as equal regardless of either race or skin color. As she refers to Wells, Bederman states, “She used manipulation to discourse the act of civilization by playing on their fears because of the declining male authority. Wells raised stakes from middle-class Northern White men who accepted lynching of the Black men races.”
Bederman used Wells idea to empower the black as equal to the white race. It helps in avoiding race discrimination as all people, despite differences in skin color, had the same ability in the culture. In the nineteenth century, White men oppressed Black men as inferior group people (Heinemann, 2015). It led to the mistreatment of the blacks in the white men society, as blacks were people who performed all works such as farming and household duties of the white Americans. The whites violated the rights of the Black, which lead to a revolution.
G. Stanley Hall was an exclusive scholar who devoted his efforts to the advancement of the field of psychology and pedagogy. From t...