Race, Space, and Electric Power: Jim Crow and the 1934 North Carolina Rural Electrification Survey

Abstract

Some scholars have recently put forward the concept of energopower—the harnessing of electricity and fuel—as a way to rethink the energetic basis of biopower. In this article, I refine this idea by tracing the use of race in rural electrification planning in North Carolina during the New Deal 1930s. Drawing on archival fieldwork that examines and reconstructs the 1934 North Carolina Rural Electrification Survey, I chart the ways in which race was used to readjust and reshape projections of electricity consumption and the planning of electricity distribution line construction. This is particularly clear in the use of a metric called the correction factor that allowed electricity planners to negotiate the contradictions between the materiality of networked electricity service, based on connections, and the prevailing attitudes toward race, which were built around disconnection. Although the overall influence of the 1934 Survey on the location of electricity distribution in North Carolina remains an open question, this work highlights the ways an energopolitical project—rural electrification—intersects with a key biopolitical technology—state racism, thus providing a better understanding of the relationship between energy and social power.

晚近有若干学者提出能源权力的概念——亦即控制电力和燃煤——作为再思考生命权力的能源基础之方式。我们于本文中, 透过追溯1930年代新政时期, 北卡罗来纳州农村电气化计画中的种族之使用, 精鍊能源权力的概念。我运用检视并再结构1934年北卡罗来纳农村电气化调查的档案田野工作, 绘製种族用来再调整与再形塑电力消费推估和电力分配网的建构规划之方式。此一现象, 在一个名为矫正係数的指标使用中特别明显, 该矫正係数让电力规划师得以协商在根据连结的网络化电力服务之实现, 以及建立在分离之上的盛行种族态度之间的矛盾。儘管1934年的调查对北卡罗来纳的电力分佈区位之影响仍是个开放的问题, 但此一研究凸显出能源权力计画——农村电气化——与关键的生命政治技术「国家种族主义」相互交织的方式, 因而对能源和社会权力的关係提供了更佳的理解。

Recientemente algunos eruditos han lanzado el concepto de energía-poder [energopower]—la utilización de la electricidad y el combustible—como un modo de repensar las bases energéticas del biopoder. En este artículo refino esta idea trazando el uso de raza en la planificación rural de la electricidad en Carolina del Norte durante el New Deal [Nuevo Trato] de los años 1930. Con base en investigación de archivos para examinar y reconstruir el Estudio de la Electrificación Rural en Carolina del Norte de 1934, compilo las maneras como se usó la raza para reajustar y reconfigurar las proyecciones de consumo de electricidad y la planificación para construir las líneas de distribución de electricidad. Esto es particularmente claro en el uso de una medida denominada factor de corrección que facilitaba a los planificadores de la electricidad salvar la contradicción entre la materialidad del servicio de electricidad en redes, con base en conexiones, y las actitudes prevalentes en términos de raza, que estaban edificadas alrededor de la desconexión. Aunque la influencia general del Estudio de 1934 sobre localización de la distribución de electricidad en Carolina del Norte se mantiene como una cuestión abierta, este trabajo destaca las maneras como un proyecto de energía-poder—la electrificación rural—se intersecta con una tecnología biopolítica clave—racismo estatal—proveyendo así una mejor comprensión de la relación entre energía y poder social.

Key Words:

• American south
• biopower
• energopower
• infrastructure
• race

关键词：:

• 美国南方, 生命权力, 能源权力, 基础建设, 种族。

Palabras clave:

• el sur norteamericano, biopoder, energía-poder, infraestructura, raza

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Scott Kirsch, Jeff Popke, Gaby Valdivia, John Pickles, David Kneas, and Jessica Barnes, who read earlier drafts of this article. I am especially thankful to the reviewers for their close reading and helpful criticism, and Richard Wright for his editorial support and guidance. Any errors are solely my responsibility.

Notes

1 The 1930 U.S. Census identifies farms based on a variety of operator types—tenant, owner operated, or operated by a manager, for example. When providing statistics on farms, I identify the operator type. If none is provided, it is an aggregation of all operator types.

2 Although acknowledging the difference between sharecropping and tenant farming, I use the terms interchangeably in this section.

3 Most authors of the Federal Writers Project were attempting to capture local language and dialectics. As a result, many of the quotes are transcribed phonetically. I have left these quotes as they appear in the original documents.

4 What follows is derived from an unpublished and unpaginated manuscript donated by Sanders to the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina. Citation information is found at Sanders (1933).

5 Although the survey was originally intended to be included in the book, Sanders stated in a 11 June 1963 letter donating the materials that the findings were left out because the study directors felt they would cause “misunderstanding and controversy.”

6 Jim Crow, a name derived from a popular entertainment show involving a white actor performing in blackface, was the term used to describe the laws, codes, and norms that formally and informally governed the social interactions, housing, and movement of African Americans and whites in Southern cities.

7 Reid (2003) examined the role of agricultural policy, including extension services, in exacerbating racial discrimination of African American farmers in Texas.

8 The most common of these was the Delco Light Plant, essentially a small internal combustion generator connected to a battery. These were popular on farms not connected to grid electricity and were used for lighting and mechanical power.

9 The correction factor matrix did not convert A, B, C, and D to a 4, 3, 2, and 1 score. I do this to quantitatively compare the grades given to the various groups involved in the survey.

10 The clash between federal and private power interests occurred across the South and the United States more broadly (cf. Manganiello [2015] on private–public clashes in the South).

11 Thanks to Richard Wright for pointing out this similarity.

12 Thanks to one of the anonymous reviews for making this point.

13 Compare work on housing and redlining (Freund 2007; Pietila 2010) and labor (Sugrue 1996; Roediger 2006).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Conor Harrison

CONOR M. HARRISON is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment and Sustainability Program at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include questions around the interactions of energy, culture, and economy in the United States and the Caribbean.