Rediscovering Nancy Drew

14. Nancy Drew and the Myth of White Supremacy

Nancy Drew and the Myth of White Supremacy Donnarae MacCann ri\ ;jJ y intention in this essay is to examine the Nancy Drew books ~~ within the historical context of the myth of white supremacy in the period leading up to the 1930 publication of the first books in the Nancy Drew series. As a prefatory note, I would add that since the subject here is literature we should be considering artistic form as a necessary part of our discussion. As a guiding principle, the white supremacy myth is never a necessity of form. In short, books do not have to be racist for any reason whatsoever and certainly not to achieve artistic form. The main subject is the social and political setting surrounding the first Nancy Drew publications. At the time when Nancy first appeared on the scene, a consensus about the character of African Americans had been established in mainstream America. In 1971 the historian George Fredrickson summarized the elements of that consensus as it existed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in his work The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914. Idus Newby, in Jim Crow's Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in America, 1900-1930, has also traced this consensus and has found that the elements had not changed substantially in 1930, the year that The Secret of the Old Clock and two other Nancy Drew mysteries were first published (Newby, xi). There are several ingredients in this consensus . These are not new ideas, but they are important. 129 130 READING NANCY DREW, READING STEREOTYPES First, the white population generally agreed that blacks were different from whites intellectually and temperamentally as well as physically. Second, they believed that blacks were inferior to whites in fundamental ways, especially with respect to intelligence. Third, they believed that the gap between blacks and whites was permanent or subject to change only after a very long evolutionary process. Fourth, they believed that intermarriage was to be condemned because to cross such so-called diverse types would be damaging to civilization-that is, white people believed that the qualities that produced progress would be weakened by racial mixing. Fifth, they believed that, given black inferiority, prejudice against blacks was natural whenever blacks aspired to legal, political, or economic equality. Therefore equal status was not possible in the foreseeable future. These various dimensions of the white supremacy myth had support from groups at various points on the political spectrum. White extremists joined in this consensus and the so-called moderates and reformers were also believers in the assumption that blacks were permanently inferior. They differed only on matters of policy (Newby, x). Reformers believed that the so-called inferior group would be less troublesome if people had better opportunities. The moderates believed that tolerance and forbearance was the proper response to so-called black limitations. The extremists believed that harsh forms of repression were sad but necessary. Some extremists recommended deportation; some, sterilization. And one congressman from Georgia, James Griggs, even suggested extermination. According to Congressman Griggs, "The utter extermination of a race of people is inexplicably sad, yet if its existence endangers the welfare of mankind it is fitting that it should be swept away" (Newby, 189). Griggs was referring to African Americans as the group that he would "sweep away." It is astonishing to hear a representative ofthe government suggesting genocide, but racism was being promoted in academic and artistic circles as well as in the government and the discourse was often extremist in nature. The much celebrated novelist William Faulkner, for example, stated in 1931: "Negroes would be better off under the conditions of slavery than they are today." "Negroes," he said, "would be better off because they would have someone to look after them" (Newby, 70). Faulkner does not say that he would be bet- NANCY DREW AND THE MYTH OF WHITE SUPREMACY 131 ter off if enslaved. His premise is that blacks require a unique social system because they cannot function as ordinary humans. One would think that religious leaders would take a different view. But they also attempted to explain that blacks were less than human. One excerpt shows how religionists sometimes argued the case. In a book called The Negro: What Is His Ethnological Status? the Reverend Buchner H. Payne had this to say: "As Adam was the Son of God, and as...