Segregation as desire to regression

Similar to the comment raised in the comment "Insecurity within ones 'Territory'," I interpreted the enforcement of segregation as a form of insecurity -- or more precisely, nostalgic insecurity, insecurity against irresistible progress of the history. One of the first forms of spatial segregation discussed in chapter 4 of Making Whiteness was segregation in trains and streetcars. The modern transportation marks the pinnacle of modernity. Train cars represented "anonymous yet intimate social relations" (129) that has become prevalent in the modern society -- modern means of transportation and communication reduced distance between individuals, yet (to borrow the expression from Durkheim) the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity made much of individual interaction unnecessary. Such environment created by the progress towards modernity, this "increasingly anonymous world … " brought racial disorder that "endangered the very meaning of white racial identity" (129).

Same goes with the rise of consumerism. As Hale explains, "African American southerners could not vote, but … they could spend" (193). The modernity presented irresistible challenge against racism, or in Marxist way of speaking, the capitalist mode of production threatened Southern agricultural mode of production. Capital replaced the privilege of "whiteness," and I interpreted the whole segregation measures as tactic to fight against the progress, the weapon to fight against transition from social structure molded around plantation agriculture to that built upon capitalism.