Neither Separate Nor Equal: Women, Race, and Class in the South (review)

Neither Separate Nor Equal is a fascinating collection of articles that explore the current and historical circumstances of many different groups of women in the South. Barbara Ellen Smith has put together thirteen important, riveting papers that each challenge and reconceptualize previous men-centered, war-centered versions of southern history. These articles are at once as personal as gossip between women and as comprehensive as the global political economy; Smith’s frame effectively captures the necessity of examining these in relationship to each other.

This collection brings to light many hidden facets of southern women, their race, their lives, their work, and their change-making activities. The chapters are pleasant and challenging reading that rely on some refreshingly unique methodological approaches. In four sections, these chapters cover the importance of gender in the history of the South; women, race, and labor; the work of keeping communities together while changing them at the same time; and the possibilities for social change. In bringing these papers together, Smith skillfully emphasizes how the dimensions of rural and urban, professional and industrial, gay and straight, and black and white, which have commonly been conceptualized as dichotomous, exist together—in relationship to one another—within the political, economic, and social context of race, class, and gender in the “global South.”

Smith’s introduction and opening chapter synthesize current approaches on women, race, and class in a perspective that is theoretically solid and delightfully succinct. Students in any course dealing with race, class, and gender will benefit from her presentation, and advanced scholars will appreciate the originality of her approach. Smith promises a lot in these initial chapters, initially making me wonder whether an edited volume could live up to the substantial goals she identifies. This one largely does.

A chapter by Darlene Wilson and Patricia D. Beaver on “The Ubiquitous Native Grandmother in America’s Cultural Memory” is an excellent exploration of the Melungeon in Appalachia. This sort of wonderfully complex analysis of race and gender complicates the stereotypical focus on the relationship between African Americans and whites in the South, bringing both nuance and solid facts to bear on the study of the social construction of race. Another chapter by Cynthia M. Duncan, Margaret M. Walsh, and Gemma Beckley focuses on black southern women who work as professionals and incorporate community activism into their careers. Like Wilson and Beaver’s piece, this essay reframes notions about southern women and demonstrates the importance of their work for creating social change. Most of the chapters in the volume provide this kind of refreshing take on women, race, and class in the South.

Other chapters are interesting and well-written but do not demonstrate the same standards of analysis. Mahnaz Kousha’s chapter on the relationship between African American women working as domestics and their white women employers, for instance, is a great read that is clearly the result of excellent data collection. Yet Kousha neither effectively demonstrates how her analysis differs from or augments other scholars’ focus on domestic workers, nor does she make apparent how her focus is uniquely southern.

Most of the findings presented in Smith’s book are both historically situated and theoretically grounded. Essays by Cynthia D. Anderson and Michael D. Schulman, and by Fran Ansley and Susan Williams, for instance, present workers’ stories by placing them within their local organizational contexts as well as the global political economy. These authors’ effective bridging of history and theory makes important contributions to the study of race, class, and gender; to the study of the South; and to the study of political economy generally.

The chapters in Neither Separate Nor Equal tell important stories and combine to substantiate Smith’s premise that differences exist only within relationships. As Smith eloquently puts it, “the central question for Southern feminists today is not how to be in relationship with those who are different from ourselves. The central question...