Jim Crow journey stories: African American driving as emotional labor

Abstract

Automobile-based tourism during the USA Jim Crow era, while providing a mechanism for African Americans to circumvent institutionalized discrimination and segregation, was nonetheless fraught with anti-black harassment and denied accommodations, and even violence. The emotional geographies that undergirded this Jim Crow travel have traditionally not attracted significant attention from tourism scholars despite the foundational role they play in shaping current travel patterns, preferences, and anxieties among African Americans. We interpret Jim Crow travel in the context of the atmospheric politics of White supremacy that negatively affected Black motorists on the road and the counter mobility-work of African Americans using the automobile to survive, negotiate, defy, and redefine these atmospheres of uncertainty, fear, and intimidation. In particular, our paper focuses on the emotional labor behind Jim Crow automobile travel, using oral histories collected through a partnership with the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, a Knoxville, Tennessee Black heritage site, to highlight the travel experiences of people of color. Results suggest that seemingly practical and mundane driving practices, decisions, and preparations were always deeply informed by the emotion-laden work of African Americans controlling the degree to which racism might affect them and their children, both physically and psychologically, as well as controlling the extent to which their presence on the road might affect and inflame a hostile White public.

摘要

在美国种族隔离时期, 汽车旅游虽然为非裔美国人提供了一种规避制度化歧视和种族隔离的机制, 但仍然充满了反黑人骚扰、拒绝住宿, 甚至暴力。尽管情绪地理学在塑造当前非裔美国人的旅游模式、偏好和焦虑方面发挥着基础性作用, 但传统上强化这种“种族歧视”旅游的情绪地理学并没有引起旅游学者的明显关注。我们在白人至上的政治氛围的背景下阐释了黑人旅行, 这种氛围对旅途中的黑人司机产生了负面影响, 也影响了非遗美国人的反移动动员, 这些非裔美国人利用汽车生存、谈判、反抗, 并重新定义了这些充满不确定性、恐惧和恐吓的氛围。我们的论文特别关注黑人汽车旅行背后的情绪劳动, 通过与田纳西州诺克斯维尔贝克黑人文化遗产文化交流中心(Beck Cultural Exchange Center)合作收集的口述历史, 突出有色人种的旅行体验。结果表明,看似实用和平凡的驾驶实践,驾驶决策和准备工作总是深深充满非裔美国人的感情劳动工作, 这种情绪劳动掌控着种族歧视从身体和心理上可能会影响他们和他们的孩子的程度,掌控着他们在路上旅行可能会影响和激怒一个充满敌意的白人公民的程度。

Keywords:

• African-American travel
• atmosphere
• automobility
• emotional labor
• Jim Crow
• racism
• white supremacy

关键词:

• 非裔美国人旅行
• 氛围
• 汽车旅行
• 情绪劳动
• 黑人
• 种族歧视
• 白人至上

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Derek H. Alderman is Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee. He is founder and co-coordinator of the RESET (Race, Ethnicity, and Social Equity in Tourism) Initiative. His interests are in the racial politics of geographic mobility and tourism in the context of the African American freedom struggle.

Kortney Williams is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Binghamton University. Previously, while attending the University of Tennessee, she held an internship at the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, where she led the collection of oral histories related to African American automobile travel.

Ethan Bottone is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee, where he studies intersections of race, disabilities, inequality, and critical tourism.