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4 Subverting the Silences Historicizing White Riot in Fiction and Film Statesboro, Georgia, I904; Springfield, Ohio, I904; Seaside, Delaware, I906; Atlanta, Georgia, I906; Greensburg, Indiana, I906; Springfield, Illinois, I908; East St. Louis, Illinois, I9I7; Charleston, South Carolina, I9I9; Longview, Texas, I9I9; Washington, D.C., I9I9; Chicago, Illinois, I9I9; Knoxville, Tennessee, I9I9; Longview, Texas, I9I9; Omaha, Nebraska, I9I9; Elaine, Arkansas, I9I9; Tulsa, Oklahoma, I92I; Rosewood, Florida, I923; Harlem, New York, I935; Los Angeles, California, I943; Detroit, Michigan, I943; Athens, Georgia, I946; Birmingham, Alabama, I963; Los Angeles, California, I965; Detroit, Michigan, I967; Nashville, Tennessee, I967; Kansas City, Kansas, I968; Baltimore, Maryland, I968; Orangeburg, South Carolina, I968; Chicago, Illinois, I968; Nashville, Tennessee, I968; Los Angeles, California, I992; St. Petersburg, Florida, I996 ... Witsieshoek, Orange Free State, I950; Cape Town, I95I; Kimberley, I952; Sophiatown, I955; Special Branch raids, I956; Sekhulhuneland, Transvaal, I958; Durban, I959; Campondown, I959; Escourt, I959; Harding, I959; Sharpeville, I96o; Langa, I96o; Pondoland, I96o; Cape Town, I962; Johannesburg, I962; Paarl, I962; Rivonia, I963; Cape Town, I972; Pietermaritzburg, I972; Carletonville, I973; Soweto, I976; Cape Town, I976; Langa, I976; Guguletu, I976; Cape Town, I98o; Durban, I98o; Johannesburg, I98o; Elsie's River, I98o; Langa, I985; Cape Town, I985; Soweto, I986; Bisho, Ciskei, I992; Mmabatho, Bophuthatswana, I994 ... The narrative structure of A Ride on the Whirlwind is textured by Sepamla 's use of news headlines that not only reveal important information about the rising action of the novel, but that also comment on how the majority press serves the prevailing social order. The news Sepamla 93 94 Subverting the Silences "reports" in the novel is always slanted toward the apartheid government, a government that considers the students' protest to be the problem with South Africa, rather than a reflection of apartheid South Africa's problem with race. And because the black press is always available for censure, it cannot counter the media's construction of the student protesters. Sepamla structures the novel around the ways in which the news destabilizes reality, ultimately allowing the prevailing system of privilege to reproduce itself. Each of the riot episodes remembered at the opening of this chapter marks moments in which this system of white social privilege made race riots out of white riots. The preceding epigraphs, therefore, chart an abbreviated history of white riots in South Africa and the United States. Each entry marks a moment when a white riot remained largely unacknowledged while the race riot it initiated filled the public's mind with rioting black bodies, underscoring the idea of race difference in both the United States and South Africa. Even so, the race riots that ensued came as a surprise to those who did not and still do not understand the way race works in these cultural spaces. In the contemporary era, most reporters who work for majority papers-those papers that are not slanted toward a readership primarily composed of people of color-have no primary connection to the areas in which these riots occur. Living in racially and radically different worlds from the riot sites, these reporters cannot understand the pretext to riot events. As Howard Kurtz notes, the inability to engage in a discussion about race means that riot acts will always seem unpredictable despite ample evidence to the contrary.! The reasons that the violence in Wilmington on 9 November 1898 and in Soweto on 16 June 1976 can clearly be read as white riots is because the violence was witnessed by riot survivors who were not connected with the majority press. What happened in Wilmington and in Soweto was ultimately revealed by members of the community who intimately experienced a white riot and lived to tell about it. It should by now be clear that journalistic reproductions of events are just that; they are just as influenced by the issue of race as are American and South African cultures. In short, the cultural power ofwhite riot is overtly determined by images of black bodies that are never challenged by the majority press. This is the impetus behind the move to revise the histories of these riot events through fiction. As Chinua Achebe suggests, fiction enables both the writer and the audience to experience culture "directly" and "vicariously."2 And given the ways that the genre of film allows viewers to vicariously experience a moment , both fiction and film have been used to portray riot events. My purpose in this chapter is to explore the ways in which fiction and film provide [18.220.160.216] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 16:03 GMT...

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