Slumming

In Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in America, 1885-1940 (2009), American author and historian Chad Heap details a time-honored urban ritual in which respectable white city-dwellers are drawn to poorer, more racially diverse neighborhoods, primarily for entertainment purposes. By charting the practice of slumming from working-class immigrant neighborhoods in the 1880s through Harlem during Prohibition and finally the burgeoning growth of gay and lesbian bars in Chicago during the 1930s, the author unearths a tradition rooted in both voyeuristic exploitation and human desire. Moreover, Heap explores the ways in which buttoned-up revulsion and curiosity of racial and sexual "Others" helped define the scope of a culture war that persists in America today.

Going back to the nineteenth century, when the art of slumming was in its infancy, Heap characterizes American attitudes toward race and sexuality at that time as "externalist" in nature. By that, he means that one’s identity—particularly one’s sexual identity—was defined by one's public, outward-facing persona and appearance, as opposed to inner desires or behaviors practiced in secret. For example, a man who behaved in an effeminate manner that contradicted the norms of masculinity was clearly viewed as gay, or a "fairy," in the offensive parlance of 1880s America. But a man who projected traditional masculinity and fulfilled traditional male roles in society and the family was viewed as invariably straight, even if he was known or suspected to engage in homosexual acts in private.

Heap argues that a similar externalist paradigm surrounded race. Though outward skin color was clearly a determinant in various acts of discrimination and violence, there was a feeling, particularly in Northern urban centers, that a person's biological race was of far less importance than one's ability to project a kind of European high-class affluence and sophistication. For this reason, poor Irish immigrants were often treated with a disdain comparable to that of a poor black individual. Meanwhile, Americans associated Germany with high culture, thus considering German immigrants to be higher in the social stratum than both African Americans and the Irish. The upshot, according to Heap, is that in the late nineteenth century poor whites and poor blacks were not that much different in the eyes of middle- or upper-class Northern Americans and the institutions they controlled.



However, as the act of slumming grew and evolved, Heap asserts that this externalist mode of thinking gave way to a more "internalist" mode that persists today. By observing and often exploiting black culture or gay culture firsthand, white Americans began to view their own internal identity as one in stark contrast to that of the supposedly aberrant Other. Over time, the lines between black and white, gay and straight, were put into sharper relief thanks to the growth of slumming. Fascinatingly, this runs counter to the idea that by engaging with the culture of the Other, an individual might become more tolerant, not less.

Heap also examines slumming to explore the relationship between entertainment and racial or sexual divisions. Throughout the entire forty-five-year period the book covers, the chief and consistent motivator behind white urbanites' forays into the culture of the Other is entertainment. This began in earnest in the 1880s with cautious treks into red-light districts, particularly in New York. Working-class European or Chinese immigrants largely populated these neighborhoods, as this was before the Great Migration of African Americans from the South. Many of these visitors, particularly males, were drawn by illegal sporting events like boxing matches. Next was an embrace of neighborhoods populated by bohemians and artists who promoted free love and other ideals that ran counter to mainstream codes of conduct. In this way, the first two stages are highly related to prevailing moral attitudes, as white urbanites probed at the margins of what society deemed acceptable.

The next stage, during Prohibition, was more explicitly racial, as the affluent explored bars and clubs located in black districts such as Harlem. Some of these establishments, like the Cotton Club located in Midtown, were infused with black culture, featuring entertainers like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, but were specifically and unequivocally targeted toward white audiences. Owney Madden, the English gangster who ran the Cotton Club in its heyday, stated that he sought to provide "an authentic black entertainment to a wealthy, whites-only audience." One of the few African-Americans to visit the Cotton Club as a guest, Langston Hughes described the atmosphere as "a Jim Crow bar for gangsters and monied [sic] whites." The final stage discussed by Heap was the rise of gay and lesbian bars in 1930s Chicago that nevertheless attracted nominally straight visitors.



Despite the obvious ugly side of slumming, Heap admits that the mere existence of intermingling between races and between individuals of different sexual orientations at this time in history was, in the best cases, a kind of progress.