“The Fabric of Our Lives”?: Cotton, Pesticides, and Agrarian Racial Regimes in the U.S. South

Abstract

This article examines the shifting ways in which the dispossessive and toxic effects of agricultural chemicals have been encoded as agrarian best practices. I develop the concept of agrarian racial regimes, based on the work of Cedric Robinson, to examine how constructed hierarchies of human worth are made central to the sale and usage of chemicals. A focus on the politics of pesticides in the Mississippi Delta, a plantation region of the U.S. South, elucidates the ways in which agrarian racial capitalism has been reproduced through shifting antiblack conceptions of racial difference and technological progress. Two key conjunctures serve to draw these dynamics into relief: the development of the application of pesticides by aircraft in the 1920s and 1930s and the shift toward nearly complete mechanization and chemicalization of cotton production in the 1950s and 1960s. Analyzing film and advertisements in this period in the context of the material relations of agriculture and race, I argue that dispossession and toxicity are encoded as best practices through antiblack representations of agrarian whiteness. In the first period, chemicals were positioned as the height of progress through racist depictions of Black workers in the fields. In the second period, in response to Black challenges to white supremacy, the notion of “clean cotton” was deployed to represent Black absence as the height of technological progress and possessive agrarian masculinity. In both instances, racial representation has served to justify unstable and toxic relations of unequal power and profit.

本文探讨了农业化学品的掠夺性和毒性如何以不同的方式成为最佳农耕形式。基于Cedric Robison的研究, 作者建立了农耕种族体系理论, 讨论了人类价值体系如何成为销售和使用化学品的核心。本文专注美国南方种植区密西西比三角洲的农药政治, 通过转换（反黑人的）种族差别和技术进步的概念, 阐明了农耕种族资本主义的重现方法。本文涉及两个关键时期：1920和1930年代的飞机喷洒农药, 1950和1960年代的棉花生产几乎完全机械化和化学化。在农业和种族的物质关系背景下, 通过分析该时期的电影和广告, 本文认为, 农业化学品的掠夺性和毒性, 是通过反黑人的农耕白化而成为最佳农耕形式。在第一个时期, 通过种族化地描述黑人农业劳工, 化学品成为进步的巅峰。在第二个时期, 为了回应黑人对白人特权的挑战, 通过“洁净棉花”的信念, 黑人的缺席成为技术进步和索取式农耕力量的巅峰。在这两个时期, 不平等权力和利益之间不稳定和毒性的关系, 是通过种族化描述来自我辩护的。

Este artículo examina las maneras cambiantes como los efectos arruinadores y tóxicos de los químicos agrícolas han pasado a caracterizarse como lo mejor de las prácticas agrícolas. Desarrollo el concepto de regímenes raciales agrarios, a partir del trabajo de Cedric Robinson, para explorar el modo como las jerarquías construidas del mérito humano son ubicadas en la posición nodal de la venta y uso de los químicos. El enfocarse en la política de pesticidas en el Delta del Mississippi, una región de plantación del sur de los Estados Unidos, ayuda a esclarecer el modo como el capitalismo racial agrario ha sido reproducido a través de cambiantes concepciones antinegras por diferencia racial y progreso tecnológico. Dos coyunturas clave sirven para poner en relieve esta dinámica: el desarrollo de la aplicación de pesticidas por medio de aviones en los años 1920 y 1930, y el cambio casi completo hacia una mecanización y sesgo químico en la producción de algodón en los años 1950 y 1960. Analizando las películas y anuncios publicitarios de ese período en el contexto de las relaciones materiales de agricultura y raza, sostengo que la desposesión y la toxicidad se asimilan como las mejores prácticas por medio de representaciones antinegras de la blancura agraria. En el primer período, los químicos fueron equiparados con la altura del progreso a través de representaciones racistas de trabajadores negros en los campos. En el segundo período, como respuesta a los desafíos negros a la supremacía blanca, se desplegó la noción de “algodón limpio” para representar la ausencia negra como lo máximo en el progreso tecnológico y la masculinidad agraria posesiva. En ambos casos, la representación racial ha servido para justificar relaciones inestables y tóxicas de poder y ganancia desiguales.

Key Words:

• agriculture
• commodities
• racial capitalism
• racism
• technology

关键词：:

• 农业
• 商品
• 种族资本主义
• 种族主义
• 技术

Palabras clave::

• agricultura
• capitalismo racial
• mercaderías
• racismo
• tecnología

Acknowledgments

I thank Editor James McCarthy for his guidance and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful, careful, and generous feedback. I am also grateful to the attendees of a Dartmouth College Geography Department paper workshop, who provided extensive and brilliant feedback on an early version of this article.

Notes

1 I am indebted to James Giesen for alerting me to the presence of this quote.

2 Robinson (2007) used the term “forgeries of memory and meaning” to point to the patchwork of ideological justifications and representations that present particular social relations of racial capitalism as immutable and timeless truths, at the same time obscuring the very historical contingency and instability of racial domination.

3 New, stronger way to sell in the South. 1974. Delta Farm Press 31 (30).

4 Dickson was known for his “Old Reliable” stories, racist caricatures told in the voice of a formerly enslaved man that were syndicated in the Saturday Evening Post and turned into a minstrel show (Drew 2015, 71–77).

5 Dickson’s “Acknowledgements” section reads like a who’s who of the plantation bloc and the cotton industry more broadly.

6 I am not reproducing this exchange in greater length, but it is thoroughly saturated with racist slurs and stereotypes.

7 Intertitles are the screens in silent films that present dialogue and other expository text.

8 Photo attributed to B. R. Coad & Haw Kirkpatrick. June 1921. United States Entomology Research Division Delta Research Laboratory, Mississippi State University Libraries, Special Collections.

9 Quitman Farmers Association advertisement in the Delta Farm Press, 15 June 1950.

10 Jackson Implement Company advertisement in the Delta Farm Press, 6 July 1950.

11 Geigy advertised their herbicide Caparol as “the chemical hoe.” The term hoes was as frequently used to refer to workers as it was to refer to the implements they used. Geigy advertisement, Delta Farm Press 23 (26), 30 June 1966.

12 Ansul Company Ansar advertisement. Delta Farm Press 24 (14), 6 April 1967. Mississippi State University Libraries Special Collections.

13 Negro Field Day Program. 1960. Clayton Lyle Archives, A96-12: Box 36. University Archives, Mississippi State University.

14 Budget for State Extension Work, 1953. Clayton Lyle Archives, A96-12: Box 1, Folder 23. University Archives, Mississippi State University.

15 Letter from B. F. Smith to Henry A. McCanna, 15 July 1964. The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Digitized Records. Mississippi Department of Archives and History Series 2515.

16 George Mullendore Papers, Mississippi State University Libraries Special Collections.

17 Memo from William Bost, 12 December 1965. George Mullendore Papers, Mississippi State University Libraries Special Collections.

18 Paul B. Johnson, 30 November 1965. Introduction to the 1.5 by ‘75 Program. George Mullendore Papers, Mississippi State University Libraries Special Collections.

19 Dow advertisement, Delta Farm Press, 13 July 1975. Mississippi State University Libraries Special Collections.

20 BASF advertisement, Delta Farm Press, 17 December 1976. Mississippi State Library Special Collections.

21 Butz was later forced to resign after Rolling Stone published racist statements he had made about Black men.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brian Williams

BRIAN WILLIAMS is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include the political ecology of cotton and chemicals in the U.S. South and Central America, food sovereignty, and the environmental dimensions of racial capitalism.