Nick Schultz

3-25-2015
UWRT 1102
Professor: Thomas

Deep South
This research novel is written about a study that was conducted in the
deep south in the mid 1930s. There were four participants a black
man, a black woman, a white man, and a white women. Their purpose
was to infiltrate the white/black communities and study how their
social classes worked and operated both as a whole and individually.
The first bit of information they were able to gather was that
there was a new social order called the class and cast system (5).
This is meant to mean that even though the whites were generally the
upper and middle class and the blacks were lower class that there were
classes or casts inside each races system. While the majority of both
races admitted being prejudice to the other they also recognized the
value in each other.
The casts systems are very tricky thing in the past to trifle with
because if a child was born of two separate casts (mixed) they would
be an outcast. If the child was born into a white family the father would

be hunted down and most likely killed while the mother would be run
out of the town and the child would be given to a black family to be
raised. If the father and mother were switched however there would be
no real repercussions for the parents the child would simply not be fully
accepted by the black community the majority of the time. (6)
This explains how the cast system could mix but the actual
definition of a cast is the theoretical arrangement of people of a given
group in an order in which the privileges, duties, obligations, and
opportunities are unequal distributed between the groups.
This illustrates to me that we arent really past the whole deep
south racism Jim crow laws completely yet. I am from the deep south
and even though the majority of my family isnt racist I can still see
hints of my familys past feelings toward blacks in some of my family
members today. It isnt much but its enough to be noticed and I
understand now that we never really got over the different caste
systems because even today mixed people are not always accepted
white woman are encouraged to avoid black men there is a plethora of
other ideologies that have stood the test of time so far that should
have gone out of practice long ago.

Deep South by: Allison Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R.

Gardner the University of Chicago press 37 copyright 194 The
University of Chicago Published 1941