The Erotics of African American Endurance, Or: On the Right Side of History?
The Erotics of African American Endurance, Or: On the Right Side of History?
White (West)-German Public Sentiment between Pornotroping and Civil Rights Solidarity
This chapter examines the attitudes of the “progressive” segment of the German community, rather than the federal or local government, toward African Americans in Germany and in the United States, at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. It shows that the interaction between African Americans and Germans was characterized by white romantization and adoration of black endurance, moral power, suffering, and immersion in the style of black rhetoric. The chapter analyzes work such as Max Frisch’s 1954 essay “Begegnungen mit Negern” (“Encounters with Negroes”), which contained a “pro-civil rights sentiment” coupled with so-called “pornotroping.”
Keywords: civil rights movement, African Americans, Germans, endurance, moral power, suffering, Max Frisch, pornotroping, Germany, United States
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