Whiteness and Racial (Non)Knowing In a Historically Sundown Town

Sundown towns have been under-explored by sociologists as mechanisms of racial residential segregation, as have the ways that Whiteness is understood in communities marked by a high degree of White racial homogeneity. Looking at the formerly Sundown town of Appleton, Wisconsin, I use historical census and archival data to identify the effects of Sundown racial displacement and exclusion on Black residents during the Sundown era of 1880–1940, and then use qualitative interviews with current and former White Appleton residents to examine how this Sundown past is understood today. First, drawing on theories of racial ignorance, I examine how participants toggle between awareness of systemic racism and non-awareness of how they personally benefit from it, a practice that I deem (non)knowing, as participants summon rationalizations and explanatory stories that naturalize the absence of racial and ethnic minorities from the city. Second, I consider how Appleton’s history of White exclusivity has resulted in a city that is valued for its perceived safety, but I argue that this safety is little more than an absence of Black people that White residents are socialized to see as threatening or dangerous, a basis for “feeling” safe which is made very clear in participants’ comparisons between Appleton and the city of Milwaukee. Finally, I consider how Appleton’s Sundown history has influenced the reception of racial and ethnic minority groups into the city, starting with the resettlement of Hmong refugees in the 1970s. I discuss the ways that hegemonic standards of Whiteness shape both expectations of assimilation and the criteria under which refugees (and other newcomers) are evaluated as “deserving” or “belonging” in the city, and argue that these standards are ultimately racialized to uphold invisible White, middle-class norms. Overall, this dissertation calls for increased attention to Sundown-style racial segregation and its contemporary effects, and offers a novel theorization of White racial cognition that moves beyond colorblind race-neutrality to consider how White people see themselves simultaneously within and outside of hierarchical systems of racial oppression.