Search The Site
 
More options | Back issues
Home
News
Opinion & Forums
Careers
Multimedia
Chronicle/Gallup
Leadership Forum
Technology Forum
Resource Center
Campus Viewpoints
Services
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle Review
A weekly special section
Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind John L. Jackson Jr.

A Documentary on Slavery in the 'Deep North'

Has anyone gotten a chance to watch Katrina Browne’s documentary “Traces of the Trade” on PBS? I just caught it last night.

The film unfurls a nine-year story about the contemporary offspring of a wealthy slave-trading/slave-owning family (from 19th-century Rhode Island) that supposedly trafficked in more slaves than any other family in American history.

The descendants of those family members traveled from the United States to Cuba and Ghana (earlier this decade), revisiting important nodes of the trans-Atlantic circulations that organized “the peculiar institution.”

The documentary is also an attempt to examine what it might look like for whites to talk honestly with one another about racial history’s implications for contemporary American lives and life chances — as a precursor to more-sustained multi-racial conversations in the United States and abroad.

One poignant portion of the film revolves around those familial participants groping around for a language they might productively use to confide in one another (and in one of the film’s African-American producers) about their deepest fears and frustrations around issues of race. And this is one of the places where, as they say, the rubber hits the road. What kinds of dialogues are we usually having about race? Are they empowering or debilitating, sincere or hollow, real or canned? The film offers some answers.

It quickly moves on to a discussion of reparations and a decidedly religious (religiously-inflected) final sequence. The entire thing is worth watching and commenting upon. And it helps to demonstrate why many of the dialogues we have about race and racism in America are not robust enough, especially when the only forms of honest sharing vis-à-vis questions of race tend to happen under the feeble auspices of anonymous Internet comments or in exclusively private machinations/complaints aired only amongst friends.

What might it look like for us to really talk honestly about America’s racial history? Does anybody even want to do that?

Posted at 06:44:55 AM on June 25, 2008 | All postings by John L. Jackson Jr.

Comments

  1. I, for one, think it can be productive to discuss the details of racial history and the practices that made America what it was and is. I missed the documentary you mentioned, but I’ll look for it and watch it next time it comes on. For most of us whose ancestry in America traces back for 150 years or more, regardless of our current ethnic identity, those ancestors were touched and deeply affected by slavery—one way or another. Some of my ancestors were slaveholders. Others opposed the practice very early (one contingent ostensibly left Pennsylvania due to disagreement with the Penn family’s ownership of slaves—but were the Penns slaveholders?). My wife has ancestors who were slaveholding Congregational ministers in western Massachusetts (and early graduates of Harvard & Yale). There is much to be learned. I’m not sure our first stab at it, John, needs to be in a public blog, but maybe it can be. You are welcome to e-mail me to discuss options. I imagine you have access to my e-mail and only need my permission to use it.

    — Joe Erwin · Jun 25, 08:01 AM · #

  2. As the citizens of the English city of Manchester say about their role in slavery (and the shipping of slaves more specifically): no, we never were slave owners or supporting slavery, we only made money from it…

    — peter · Jun 25, 10:39 AM · #

  3. > What might it look like for us to really talk honestly about America’s racial history?

    That’s just too broad a question, John. It’s like asking “Can’t we have an honest talk about politics in America?” or “Can’t we have an honest talk about religion in America?” Questions like that are made for demagogues; they can only function to serve somebody’s power interest.

    The real history of race, like politics and religion, is so mind-bogglingly complex that it can make your head hurt. And thanks to the wanderings of the human heart, genealogy tends to (very happily) blur things together over the generations, much to the consternation of simple-minded people. Barack Obama is a descendant of 17th-century Puritan immigrants to Massachusetts (yes it’s true). Does that make him “really white” or “not really black” or “A Real American” or “an oppressor”? Those questions are not historical or scholarly questions. Perhaps the role for people in the academic world is just that: to tell people that any honest talk has to be intelligent, not simple-minded like so much talk about race (and politics and religion). Would that be worthwhile? Sure. Would it be effective? Only when it no longer is true that “to the Fool King belongs the world.”

    — reader · Jun 25, 10:58 AM · #

  4. Unlike “reader,” I do not see the “academic world” as distinct from the rest of the world. I think we can ask any questions we like. “Scholarly” questions may well not be the only questions worth asking, and just about anything that has occurred in time and space is fair game as “historical.” Of course, let’s go about this in a reasonably objective and systematic manner, but let’s do it. No one needs to be on a “power trip.” And if anyone is, who cares? Part of the task is to look at how individuals of European and African ancestry interacted at various points in time and place.

    One of the things that has interested me is how people (often, but not always, of African ancestry) were used as security for loans. They were assets. Part of the portfolio. So, various values were assigned. There are bank records. House slaves had different values than field slaves. Skin color, in some cases, played a role in assignment of value. Some female house slaves seem to have been used as “comfort” women to provide hospitality to visiting dignitaries. Imagine the consequences. Are there records assigning paternity to some of these dignitaries? Maybe. Isn’t it worth examining and discussing? What sorts of efforts were made at selective breeding of one kind or another. What parallels were there between the management of slaves and livestock? Who wrote about such things? Are there archival records of such information? There are clear indications that many slaveholders were concerned that their slaves not “go out of the family.” One can examine wills and mentions of slaves and what is to become of them when the patriarch dies. There was a lot of variability in the relationships of slaveholders and slaves, and in some cases, the concerns were clearly related to the fact that slaves were known to be blood relatives of those who held them. Who resisted slavery? Where and when? Etc.
    There is much to know, and we and our students would be better off knowing what really happened than just guessing about it.

    — Joe Erwin · Jun 25, 01:22 PM · #

  5. So, John, and others, I began looking into some aspects of the lives of my wife’s ancestors in colonial Massachusetts who I knew were slave holders. One of these people was the Reverend John Williams, a Harvard graduate, who was a minister stationed in Deerfield, Massachusetts, a frontier town far from other settlements. Rev Williams is known to have had at least three slaves, Robert Tigo, Parthenia, and Frank. Tigo died before 1700 and Parthenia was killed in an Indian raid on 29 FEB 1704. Frank was taken captive and was killed during the time he and other captives taken during the raid were in transit north. Historical details of the Leapday Deerfield Raid are known from the writings of Rev. Williams. A narrative that fills in the gaps in what is known with plausible details is available on a web site:

    www.1704.deerfield.history.museum

    It is pretty interesting stuff. I’d like to know what historians and anthropologists think of this sort of reconstruction. Is it authentic? Really plausible? Is it educational? Does it illuminate the lives led by African slaves during pre-revolutionary colonial times?

    — Joe Erwin · Jun 25, 09:55 PM · #

  6. Joe Erwin, I’ll take a look at the site later this week. More on that in a bit…

    Reader and Joe, you both do a good job getting us to think.

    — John Jackson · Jun 25, 10:19 PM · #

  7. Good, John. I hope it is helpful. One of the things I like about that site is that great effort was made to plausibly reconstruct the African origins of Frank and Parthena and the details of their capture and transportation to America. And, yes, it is all “mind-bogglingly complex,” as “Reader” suggested.

    Complexity, is with us at every turn. I have never found anything yet that turned out, on careful inspection, to be really simple. My mind is perpetually “boggled.” Long ago I decided to accept complexity as a fact of life, and to try to hold whatever understanding I could achieve very gently and tentatively. The thing we have going for us is that our brains and “minds” are about as bogglingly complex as anything else.

    — Joe Erwin · Jun 26, 04:45 AM · #

  8. Joe Erwin, a lot of your questions have already been asked, and while I believe many have been answered that does not mean that more investigations can be carried out. The academic world is surprisingly distinct from the real world, and while ideally that would not be the case, in daily practice it often is. If it was not then you would have already read the answers to the questions you posed, because they are out there in journals, books, and interviews.

    As for historical investigation, do you really suggest there is such a thing as knowing “what really happened”? History as it really happened? Perhaps if you were a positivist or von Ranke I could understand your line of questioning, but I strongly caution against making such a bold statement. The historians craft is two-fold: ask the right questions, and get whatever answers the sources will allow. While I personally believe that you can get to a close approximation of a past event, it should not be taken for granted that all history is an approximation, and completely contingent upon the sources. All too often people, even those mighty historians, talk of dead certainties and tailor the evidence to fit their theories, rather than looking at past events with the required nuance and complexity that ALL human activity consists of.

    Part of that also has to do with reexamining the “peculiar institution” itself. Many people still cling to an Old Dixie narrative, that now can modify itself to bringing in other regions if need be, but does not look at the differences of American slavery amongst place AND time. A slave in 1619 was not treated the same or legally held the same place as in 1850. Slavery in Virginia was different than in South Carolina. Furthermore, without looking at indentured servants and poor white laborers as a comparative base, a lot of discussions of slavery are still Essentialist Old Dixie narratives. These very narratives, while useful for constructing identity and society into “oppressor” or “oppressed”, as well as constructing identities around both those groups, make for discussions of race quite difficult. If all slaveholders were oppressors, then why the hell would anyone want to own up to being one? There should be no guilt by association, which, unfortunately for some, gives a lot of people an out. Furthermore, the discussion should also go back to the Old World. Roman Slavery, Greek Slavery, Ottoman Slavery, Akan Slavery, Dahomey Slavery, etc must all be discussed as well, which may end up pointing to New World Slavery being a unique evil… or not, which of course have their own consequences in the current discourse.

    Will a discussion on slavery end up leading to necessarily better discussions about race? Was Randall Robinson right? When most people point to this, it is usually under the auspices of discussing the kind of slavery that they feel is worth discussing: its most evil, degrading, and dehumanizing forms, which is understandable. What about discussions of slavery that move beyond that? Would that help or hinder moves towards racial understanding?

    — Winslow · Jun 26, 11:17 AM · #

  9. You know I was thinking about this only yesterday Winslow. (referring to your last paragraph) There is hardly ever any mention of the slave owners who treated their slaves well. For instance, (this is not for the squeamish, reader discretion is advised) slaves were bought for their strength their potential usefulness, they were work horses. When a slave was bought his muscles were felt, he had to have a strong back, be in good health, strong legs, etc., in other words this new acquisition was an investment for the plantation owner, to work on the land to increase production. Slaves were not born and bred to be killed off as little boys in Iraq and Iran are, they were bred for profit. It seems highly unlikely that slave drivers would routinely kill off or permanently damage their work force. They ruled with the whip and terrorized the workforce into submission. There is no doubt about the cruelty on some plantations, and women were bought for breeding, then their children were taken away from them it was horrible. But is it not possible that the troublemakers were treated the worst and used as a frightening example to the rest?

    I read a story (I am trying to remember where, it may have been by Mark Twain) about a little slave boy playing in the road outside the plantation on which he lived. He played with a little white boy who lived not far away. The little slave boy was better dressed, better fed and in better health than the poor little white boy who was free, lived in poverty and was practically starving.

    It is the very idea of slavery that is so very unpalatable and the fact that it was condoned and went on for so long! Once started of course how could it be stopped without a war? The economy of the South depended on it. If you were a plantation owner with several hundred slaves what was going to happen to your livelihood? I am sure I am saying nothing new and Winslow will chide me by telling me this has been discussed before, but perhaps it bears repeating. It is time the white population stopped feeling guilty for the sins of their fathers. As Mayo Angelo said “We did what we did then with what we knew then, now that we know better we do better.” Constantly raking over old coals is not the way to progress.

    — Job's Comforter · Jun 26, 12:27 PM · #

  10. Job’s Comforter, I am not going to chide you exactly, but the book that looks at the econometrics of American black plantation slavery (and deals with issues of foodways, clothing, etc) has already been written: Robert Fogel’s Time on the Cross. I have not read it myself, but many smarter people than me tell me its a quality book.

    — Winslow · Jun 26, 01:43 PM · #

  11. Winslow I was not aware of this book “Time on the Cross” the views I expressed were my own, but I have just been to the Amazon website and read the reviews. – Great minds think alike, eh?

    — Job's Comforter · Jun 26, 02:40 PM · #

  12. Job’s Comforter, perhaps they do. I am not a great mind so I would not know ;). Of course there may be more recent scholarship on this sort of stuff, but I have not done any serious research in the field. Keep in mind that there is a danger when reading Time on the Cross, because more than a few critics have charged Fogel with claiming that “slavery wasn’t all that bad”, amongst more general claims of racism, which was absurd but understandable amongst this climate of “racial paranoia”, to steal a term from Dr. Jackson. Just as absurd are people who claim that “slavery was swell” trying to use Fogel as support for their beliefs. The perils of scholarship are many I guess.

    — Winslow · Jun 26, 03:03 PM · #

  13. Winslow, I thank you for your comments, and I appreciate that you are far better informed than I am on the issues at hand. This is not my area of expertise, and it is not really very close to it. I suspect, however, that there are many more people, including many more intelligent and better informed than I am, who would also ask these questions without knowing that the answers already exist. But if, as you seem to be saying, “what really happened?” is not an answerable question, how is it that we already have the answers?

    I appreciate that even in the present, our search for truth inevitably falls short, and for ultimate truth usually falls far short. That we cannot pin everything down in other times and places is not surprising. Whatever answers we have to whatever questions, those answers are subject to revision, when more evidence is obtained and ever more refined questions are asked.

    So, with due respect, I am skeptical that even my simplistic questions have been adequately addressed. They certainly have not been addressed for all people and all relationships in all times and places. True, they will never ALL be addressed, but I think there is merit in accummulating more information and examining that evidence in fresh ways. Knowing and understanding is best viewed, I think, as a continuing process.

    — Joe Erwin · Jun 26, 04:31 PM · #

  14. I just want to address Joe Erwin here (I have a bit more spare time on my hands,)

    Please don’t think I am picking on you in a nasty way Joe, but I am picking on you. I think you are probably unaware of it, the condescension I mean. You seem to be just a bit too fascinated by the fact that your family and your wife’s family owned slaves. It puts you in a different category to say, the ancestors of the little white boy playing in the road with the black slave child I mentioned in a previous message. It has a sort of cachet to it; it shows that your ancestors were wealthy enough to own slaves. You see that kind of pride (because it is a kind of pride or you would never have mentioned it) is what makes Southerners so obnoxious. When I lived in Kentucky one of my neighbors had a black maid, “who had been in the family for years.” My neighbor told me with a degree of pride that her husband’s family had owned slaves and her mother-in-law still lived in the antebellum home with the slave quarters in the basement. Her mother-in-law, sister and sister-in-law “had” the black maid on the days she did not “have” her, she was in fact solely employed by their family. This family was living in a time warp and the black maid was part of the fantasy. It amazed me why the black maid put up with it. I saw her one day, she actually LOOKED as though she was in bondage, the family treated her like dirt.

    It is disturbing how much of the Old South is still preserved in moth balls. But so too in Birmingham Alabama and Selma are the tracks preserved of Civil Rights Marches, and riots, statues of police with big ferocious dogs, people being hosed down with fire hoses. White people visit the Civil Rights Institute and hang their heads in shame, they talk in whispered tones as if in church ,one wonders whether this was erected solely to punish them, (is it lest WE forget, or lest THEY forget) the punishment is actually lasting a lot longer than the hosing down! White guilt, white hot guilt, let’s talk about that. The whites can either refuse to acknowledge it and keep on hiring black menial workers at starvation wages but “looking after their families as well,” Y‘all y‘all. Or they can pay lip service to the atrocities but deep down feel superior. Or they can publicly flagellate themselves, but whatever they decide to do it will never be enough.

    What does either race have to gain by romanticizing the past? Has it become folklore? Personally I think it has and Oprah Winfrey is a lot to blame for it. Once something becomes folklore it will never change, too many people like Joe Erwin and my ex neighbor in Kentucky want to hang on to that romantic past. Mint juleps, singing minstrels, good hearted roly-poly mammies, wealthy plantation owners with lots of servants, and too many blacks want to keep playing the violin.

    Here are the burning questions.

    Is reparation the festering sore at the center of racial tension?

    If so what would it take to ameliorate it?

    Or

    Is it too late for racial harmony because we have all woven our own fantasies around slavery and the great divide?

    — Job's Comforter · Jun 26, 04:50 PM · #

  15. Joe, I appreciate your comments because your spirit of constant searching is something that I share. Strangely enough, even though I doubt that I can recover the past, that does not mean I do not want to keep trying to find it. You are right, because all answers to our questions will someday not be satisfactory, and rather than give up we should constantly strive to answer them as best we can. Call it a paradox of an idealistic skeptic.

    Job’s Comforter, I am a little uncomfortable with the accusatory tone you take with Mr. Erwin, because I feel that you two are looking at two seperate issues. He is looking at a recovery of the past as it happened, warts and all. You look at how some people try to romanticize the past. I do not think that is Mr. Erwins intention. But you are quite right in pointing out there ARE fantasies over the institution of slavery in the United States, and they all serve the group that formed them. Hopefully we can steer away from questions of reparations and racial harmony and instead look to how questions over slavery have an affect on race dialogues.

    — Winslow · Jun 26, 05:08 PM · #

  16. To#Joe Erwin, Thank you for giving the website and for sharing the information about your wife’s family. I immediately went to the website and read some of the information. Some of the information that I have about some of my slave ancestors came from a descendant of their owners.

    I have read actual accounts of slavery written by former slaves and those accounts did not indicate how well off they were in comparison to free white people of the time. In one account, the slave (Frederick Douglass autobiography, available online) did indicate that he took/stole bread from the kitchen to give to poor white boys so that they would teach him to read. The poor white boys felt sorry for him, because he was a slave. I haven’t found any accounts where slaves said that they wanted to remain as slaves, so that at least they would have more to eat than poor white people.

    Based on the accounts written by former slaves of their treatment, I find it hard to believe that there were poor whites who envied them and wanted to become slaves themselves. This “slavery was a good thing” viewpoint or variation thereof, (see #9) was/is not the viewpoint shared by my older relatives (who knew my slave ancestors personally). I believe the narratives of the slaves over those who were not slaves and who have never been slaves.

    — Ve · Jun 26, 05:54 PM · #

  17. Dear Colleagues, I wrote a much too lengthy comment, but when I tried to post it it would not post. I’ll try to boil it down a little and repost it later. I very much appreciate the conversation we are having. Thank you all.

    — Joe Erwin · Jun 26, 06:38 PM · #

  18. Now, I’ll try to keep this shorter than the previous verson, the one I lost because it would not post. Thank you Winslow and Ve for your comments, and I especially want to address the comments of “Job’s Comforter.” I found your comments very helpful, because you pointed out an appearance of condescension of which I was unaware and did not intend. Part of what we need to do is learn to communicate in ways that do not raise all sorts of emotional “red flags.” I’ll do my best to try to avoid that sort of thing, and I genuinely appreciate you pointing it out.

    I checked back to find out who that person was in my wife’s ancestry who was the holder of three household slaves in Deerfield. He was a well-educated puritan minister, and son of a deacon. My wife’s line goes back to that deacon through a brother of the minister who was at Deerfield. I don’t think I feel any special pride in those people. They are just actual people among thousands of my wife’s ancestors. Three of her four grandparents came from Europe, and only one line goes back farther into American history. I have found their various stories interesting. All those folks came to New England, most went west to upstate New York, and eventually went to Indiana, Illinois, and, finally, California. The only slave owners I found smong them were these puritan Congregational ministers. Since the topic of the thread started out about slavery in the “Deep North,” I thought this was relevant and sort of interesting. That’s about all I have to say about that, I guess.

    — Joe Erwin · Jun 26, 08:31 PM · #

  19. Part II, also to the attention of “Job’s….”

    Now, my ancestors in my paternal line, were Scots-Irish Presbyterians who settled first in Pennsylvania and soon moved to North Carolina. That line later merged with a line of Dutch Reformed colonists and English and Irish Quakers. Those Quakers ostensibly moved early from PA to NC because they disapproved of the Penn family holding slaves. Those Quakers settled in central NC and established th Cane Creek Monthly Meeting. They opposed slavery and later they provided a “station” on the “Underground Railroad.” The other part of my family clearly established a pattern of slaveholding, but my first direct ancestor in my father’s line who was actually born in NC (in 1770) married a woman whose identity we have been unable to establish. We know her first name and birth date, but nothing more. A romantic tale was published presenting her as “a Cherokee princess.” We simply do not know who she was. Yet. We do know that she and her husband died and left several orphaned children. The two oldest sons were ordered by the “Orphan’s Court” into a kind of indentured apprenticeship, after which, at a certain age, they were to be “freed.” The details are still sketchy, but it appears that one of these brothers became the patriarch of a white family and the other the patriarch of a black family. My ancestor, their younger brother, and his wife left NC at about the time of the forced relocation of native Americans from NC under Andrew Jackson (the “trail of tears”). We do know that one of their daughters officially joined the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and we have located her grave. The lore is that the family left NC because they opposed slavery. I’m wondering if they were actually attempting to avoid being enslaved due to either African or Cherokee ancestry (or both). I have much yet to learn about “who I am.” We now have tools we did not have just a few years ago. On the internet I located a woman who has a family Bible that includes detailed records on the immediate family of the couple who died leaving orphans, complete with birth and death dates—even hour of birth for the children. I have confirmed kinship through Y-DNA with the family, so I know I’m on the right track. And yes, I am probably just a little too fascinated with all this. What does it matter whether or not I have Chorokee and/or African ancestry in addition to European? I don’t know why it matters to me. I think I feel that the more genetically diverse I am the more grounded my dicussion can be. Or maybe it is just cachet and white guilt and all like that. All I know is that as I find more facts and evidence of who I am, the more I appreciate the historical context, and the better I can remember the dates and places of American history. And the more I bore people with tales of my ancestors….

    — Joe Erwin · Jun 26, 09:04 PM · #

  20. To Joe Erwin, Thank you for sharing your family history and I didn’t find it boring. I just want to emphasize that I certainly didn’t interpret any condescension on your part when you mentioned your ancestors who owned slaves. You were simply engaging in a candid conversation.

    — Ve · Jun 27, 06:18 AM · #

  21. Ve, Job’s Comforter was not saying was a good thing, he is simply pointing out that slavery, as an institution, was hardly the same system everywhere and in every form. Do not confuse his one example of a slave being “treated better” than one poor white as equivalent to him thinking slavery was ok. He was simply citing an example of the complexities of slavery, and it is not a good idea to parse such simple constructs as slave narratives versus anything else as having inherently more or less value to a historian. All sources must be critically examined, and all sources must be looked at together. Slave narratives are important, but so are narratives of free people, as well as art, oral sources, foodways, and econometrics. Nothing is better or worse.

    Mr. Erwin, if this look into your family past is important to you, and it somehow gives you a more complete picture of who you are, then that is fantastic.

    — Winslow · Jun 27, 09:43 AM · #

  22. to#21. I am not a historian. Perhaps you can look at this more coldly, because you have no personal pain attached to it. Job’s one example of a slave being treated better, was perhaps based on Mark Twain. So, when it comes to treatment of a slave, I WILL place more emphasis on how the slave felt about his/her treatment, as opposed to how the slave master thought the slave felt. If the slave master said, “My slave is happy” and the slave said, “I’m not happy,” I am not going to conclude that their reports are equal for purposes of determining the happiness of the slave. That was my point in #16.

    Dr. Jackson asked does anybody want to talk about our racial history. If talking about it consists of white people telling me that slavery was ok in ANY aspect, then no, I don’t want to talk about it. What you have to realize is that many black people, have actually spoken with their older relatives who knew our slave ancestors personally. Therefore, when you talk about how slavery wasn’t the same and the viewpoint of a non-slave about slavery is just as valid as the viewpoint of the slave, well we have the actual slave narratives of our family which conflicts with what you say. Therefore, even if your viewpoint is valid for some unknown black slaves, it IS NOT valid for what many of us know about our slave ancestors’ actual experiences. Your position would be strengthened if you could produce MANY narratives in which former slaves said, “I’m so glad that I wasn’t a poor white man during slavery. Then, I would have really had a hard time!”

    Allow me to share my viewpoint on something else you wrote: “If all slaveholders were oppressors, then why the hell would anyone want to own up to being one?” As you are well aware, slaves were regarded as property. For the slavemaster, owning slaves was a sign of wealth, not a sign of inhumanity. So, why not own up to being wealthy, owning lots of valuable property? Now if they were beating their slaves, they might not declare that publicly, but there was no problem for most of them in being slave owners and who was asking them on a regular basis if they were beating and raping their slaves anyway? It was socially acceptable in the South to be a slave owner. I’m not saying that all of them were beating and raping their slaves, but who (excluding the slaves and abolitionists) cared if they were beating them? Perhaps I should ask who cared enough to stop them from being cruel slavemasters?

    I say most of them, because it was a problem for some, such as the Grimke sisters, who not only rejected slavery, but embraced their brother’s slave children and helped to educate them. While in the North, they tried to improve conditions for their family’s slaves in the South, but if I remember correctly, they had difficulty in attaining meaningful results. Now actions like those of the Grimke’s, I would like to hear more about and stories like that might help to change the opinion that at least some blacks have of whites, as a whole.

    — Ve · Jun 27, 11:30 AM · #

  23. Ve, what you are saying is understandable, but this is exactly what I am talking about in terms of “discussions over slavery”. When people say they want to discuss slavery, they usually mean they want to discuss THEIR views on slavery, and any other view is not worth having. Nobody is saying slavery is ok. There is a difference between saying slavery is complex and slavery being morally acceptable because some slaves were treated well. Yet, unless we can come to terms with the complexities of slavery, then all discussions will turn into nasty debates. A debate is fine, if that is what people are looking for. Indeed, talking about slavery is an emotional issue for many, and there is nothing wrong with that per se. However, for the purposes of mutual understanding, a nasty debate is not the best way to go about it. I doubt that we could have a cool, rational exchange about slavery, but at minimum we should be able to make some common ground, no matter how high our voices get.

    Having said that, I would not assume that I have no personal pain attached to slave history. I try to make a concentrated effort to make sure my message is heard, instead of people putting more stock in the messenger. Perhaps my ancestors were slaves, perhaps my ancestors were slave-holders, but people should listen to each other based on the quality of their ideas. Furthermore, I am not arguing that a slave narrative and a master narrative are equal, but rather that they are both useful and valid for historical analysis. Nothing should be thrown away, in other words. In terms of the historiography of American black plantation slavery, for too long people put too much stock in master’s narratives. However, it would be just as equally disingenuous to think they have nothing worth saying. To wrongs do not make a right.

    You bring up many excellent points about slave narratives, and oral literature, and the dearth of sources that have slaves thinking it was fine being a slave. Keep in mind that no one on this board is arguing for that, but I can understand why some would think so. Everyone on this board would say that slavery was morally repugnant, in any form, but some, such as myself, argue that it was more than just white masters beating and rape black slaves. There was not a lot that could stop them from being unbelievably cruel, as you have pointed out, but this is also why talking about slavery is tricky, because different people have different perceptions and moral imperatives when dealing with the subject. Then, when people say, “we should talk about slavery” they mean that we should talk about MY perceptions of slavery and anyone else’s is completely wrong. That is more of a lecture rather than a talk. Although, considering how long whites have lectured blacks in this country, it is not hard to see the appeal in turning the tables. Indeed, it may not even be fair to ask for equal dialogue at this point. Having said that, if the eventual goal is having blacks and whites change opinions of each other, I am open to any and all possible solutions.

    — Winslow · Jun 27, 12:00 PM · #

  24. To 23, No where did I say to throw away any narrative, whether it is from the master or the slave.

    I don’t believe that all masters were equally cruel, but so what? One question of Dr. Jackson was does anyone want to talk honestly about our racial history. If the talk consists of cold analytical discussions about how it wasn’t all beating and raping, then, I don’t want to have that conversation. I agree it wasn’t all beating and raping for all slaves consistently, but so what in terms of having a conversation today with those other than white people? Tell that to yourselves, if it will make you feel better. Oh, and my great great grandmother’s (Mealey was her name) rape and beating at the hands of Jake Little in Georgia is not “my perception” of slavery.

    I think it is quite pleasant for white people (which I truly believe you are) to have these analytical cold-hearted scholarly discussions in which you talk about the “complexity” of slavery. So, go ahead and talk about how it wasn’t all raping and beating with other white people (as if you are giving some new information). When you put it in a public forum, however, where black people can see it, don’t think we will all be quiet when you in any way mitigate the suffering of slaves, whether they were beaten or not. Denial of freedom cannot be mitigated by saying, “Oh well, they weren’t all beaten and raped.”

    The good can come when White people discuss their perspective (as Joe Erwin did), without in any way, attempting to diminish the experiences of the slaves by pretending, on the basis of Mark Twain, that any meaningful number of slaves had it better than poor whites or that not beating and raping someone (believe me, most black people already know that beating and raping was not universal) is some significant fact to point out when talking to black people about our (U.S.A.) racial history.

    Oh, and as for as white guilt is concerned,(#14), the only thing I’m really interested in at this point is that my son, who doesn’t feel about white people quite the way I do (and who, thank goodness, has not had my experiences with white people), realizes his history and knows that at least some of those people and their children who committed henious acts against blacks in the 1960s are alive, well, and willing to do him harm. (Being stopped by the police for DWB, driving while black, is real.) So, I need him to have the museums so he can know exactly what he could be dealing with, even today. So, white people, I truly do not care if you feel guilty or not. Just don’t try to harm me, stop me from voting, or insult me by telling me that all slaves weren’t beaten, like that is going to mean something to me at this point. That talk is good for scholarly conversations among yourselves, but not helpful AT ALL for meaningful conversations with many other black people.

    — Ve · Jun 27, 01:34 PM · #

  25. To make progress we have to stop putting each other’s backs up.

    PERCEPTION is all! A lot more has been read into my message #14 than was intended. Ve is very angry and has already formed an opinion, so anything I say will not alter his perception of what was BEHIND my words. It is distorted perception that has put Michelle Obama on the front page. It makes no difference now how many times she tries to explain that she didn’t mean it that way, the seed is sown.

    The plight of the slaves and the plight of any African Americans who have suffered abuse gives me grief. I KNOW it happened, I can read as well as you. You have to bear in mind though that drama is what counts in literature and on television and in films. CNN is not interested in uncomplaining or stoical people, the more drama (viz. The Rodney King beatings, being shown over and over again) the better. Tales of horror as you have recounted are lapped up by the media and probably embellished as well for even better effect. Decent white people (and there are some) watch these programs with popping eyes. How can they convince their black neighbors that they are not like that? Similarly tales of black gang murders have negative repercussions on decent black people.

    It is sad that you do not want to discuss all aspects of slavery objectively, but then how can you when you have been marinated all your life in stories of horror passed down each generation from knee to knee. Bear in mind though as in the whispering game stories are apt to change with every telling.

    — Job's Comforter · Jun 27, 02:37 PM · #

  26. To# 25, Please go back and read your #14 post to Joe Erwin, and now you’re talking to me about putting someone’s back up?? I thought your post to him was quite unfair, although he handled it very well.

    And just what is your problem with Oprah? I really don’t understand that.

    — Ve · Jun 27, 04:00 PM · #

  27. And Joe Erwin is white and Oprah is black! Yes I can tell you are confused, but it’s all very complex Ve…..

    By the way you made a comment about Mark Twain that makes me think you do not know that he was a supporter of abolition and emancipation?

    — Job's Comforter · Jun 27, 04:50 PM · #

  28. To # 27, I am aware of Mark Twain’s positions and have always admired people like him (the Grimkes, Elijah Lovejoy, Viola Liuzzo, etc.). If he said what you said he said (which I doubt because you weren’t sure), however, then it probably was “just” a story.

    — Ve · Jun 27, 05:10 PM · #

  29. Ve, if you insist on knowing, I am not white either. But I think you misinterpret what I am saying. The onus is on me to explain myself better: I do not want to mitigate the suffering of blacks, and I have said quite similar statements to roomfulls of black people, and I hope that nobody just quietly listens to my statements, I hope that we all challenge one another. I like it when people challenge me, I am not asking for you to not speak or anything. If that is what you perceive my words to mean then I am sorry. I would recommend that you do not categorize whites between good guys (such as Mr. Erwin) and bad guys, because the same person can be good or bad in equal measure. Yet if that is your style, that is your style, but we are all human after all.

    — Winslow · Jun 27, 07:00 PM · #

  30. The original question posed to us here was “What might it look like for us to really talk honestly about America’s racial history?” And the responses have been almost wholly about slavery. On its face, that makes immediate sense; our complex racial quandaries are born from it in large part. And yet, there’s a way in which that focus can be of odd comfort, because “that was then and this is now.” There’s a 143-year-gulf between the end of the Civil War and now, and that’s where so much of the complexity of our history lies. We could have done much as individuals and as a nation to welcome the emancipated slaves… but we mostly didn’t. We could have stayed in our cities when Blacks migrated northward during the industrial 1940s-60s… but we fled to the suburbs. We could invest in public education now that in many areas, Black and Latino/a and Southeast Asian kids far outnumber white kids… but we pass “property-tax relief bills” when asked to pool our money across a state rather than support our most local (and homogeneous) school districts.

    It’s less than productive to hold our focus entirely on what our great-great-great ancestors did. I’m more interested in what my parents did, in the ways that responses to race destroyed my small Michigan city in the 1960s through 80s, in the ways in which Chinatowns continue to hold their role as immigrant footholds even though the immigrants are now more often Cambodian and Korean than Chinese.

    My point is that for us to talk honestly about our racial history, we have to look at our actions on both sides of that bright, emancipatory line.

    — Herb · Jun 28, 06:52 AM · #

  31. To 29, No where in the post did I say that I categorized white people as good and bad. No where in the post did I insist on knowing whether you are white or not. I notice that you didn’t say that you’re black.

    Let me express myself another way. If I were having a conversation with Holocaust survivors and their children, I wouldn’t try to discuss the good aspects of Hitler. (For that matter, if I were talking only with black people, I wouldn’t discuss any good attributes either.) If I tried to say to Holocaust survivors, “Well, you know, Hitler built the autobahn and that is such an important contribution” (I don’t know whether he did or not), I wouldn’t be surprised if the survivors said, “So what??? I really don’t want to hear what you think Hitler did that was good!” Now perhaps there was “complexity” to the Holocaust, but again, I’m not sure survivors want to hear the good points about Hitler. It might make for interesting conversation among history professors, but not for general conversation. Even if some survivors wanted to hear about all that was good about Hitler, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if many survivors didn’t want to hear it.

    I hope that clarifies my point regarding a discussion of our racial history. I’m not sure such a conversation would be useful.

    — Ve · Jun 28, 07:27 AM · #

  32. I just think that clinging to the past and constantly throwing it up in the faces of white people is what is at the basis of racial hatred. The whites can do nothing about what their ancestors did. It builds so much resentment CONSTANTLY being reminded how bad they were. We Americans are very good at this we never let anything drop. (On the news last night they even marked the thirteenth anniversary of Hugh Grant being picked up by police for having sex with a prostitute!!)

    I am not saying we should forget, we have not forgotten the holocaust, but we should move on. It could start with black parents NOT brain washing their children about evil white people. There is evil in all races, but no race is evil. The fear in Ve is very real, he feels it is his duty to prepare his children for the worst, to go back to my previous message, perception is all. And so it goes on….

    What currency does it give the blacks to hold the past over the heads of the whites? It is not achieving anything. Today is the day we live in, right now. Today is where we should start. That is why I mentioned reparation, what would it take to make it go away?

    But lets be honest, who wants it to go away? Neither the blacks nor the whites. This is our heritage, this is our story; and like Joe Erwin, (sorry Joe but I have to use you as an example again) who is fascinated by the fact that his family owned slaves,(I mean would he be so fascinated if he had found his ancestors were the equivalent of white trash?) there is a certain glamorous cachet to the fact that his family was once part of the ruling class, even if it was only over three slaves!

    Incidentally Ve, my father fought in the Second World War and I remember him talking about the autobahn when I was a small child and how clever Hitler was. He also mentioned that Hitler was a clever artist. Recently as a matter of interest I compared his paintings to the paintings of Winston Churchill. The likeness was astonishing, some were practically interchangeable, the colors, the form, the subject etc. VERY interesting!

    Your reaction Ve is your own personal reaction as Winslow mentioned, not everyone thinks the same way.

    — Job's Comforter · Jun 28, 08:27 AM · #

  33. to#32, Please read your first sentence of your last post again. I don’t believe you meant it, quite the way you wrote it. Hmmm, James Byrd, Jr., was dragged to his death behind a pick-up truck in Texas, because Black people keep reminding White people of racism in the past. That’s an interesting theory.

    I don’t want to distort or forget history and pretend that the holocaust, slavery, and Jim Crow never happened. I also don’t want to pretend that all Black people have no racist feelings towards White people and others. I assure you, however, that I’m for the elimination/reduction of racism on all sides, because I don’t want my son (or any White, Latino, Asian child/adult, etc.) to meet the same fate as Byrd.

    I’m signing off on this topic. Have a nice day.

    — Ve · Jun 28, 10:50 AM · #

  34. I feel a little strange about writing anything more here. I think some of the discussion has been interesting and constructive. Other parts? Not so much….

    There is a kind of wierd fascination with finding out who the various ancestors were. I’m sure some of them would be identified by some people as “white trash.” Some of my white ancestors certainly were dirt poor. I do not yet know enough about the “non-white” ancestors to know their origins or stories. Ruling class? Out of thousands of ancestors, I have run across a few who were influential. Many more were just struggling people who worked hard. And have not really found very many who were slaveholders. Not that that excuses those who were. Neither of my parents graduated from high school. My brother didn’t. My grandparents didn’t. So now it sounds like I’m bragging about what po’ white trash my family was. I don’t really mean that or feel that, but I’m pretty sure some of those who comment here would call us poor white trash. Part of the fascination I have with looking at my ancestors is seeing how diverse they were, and in many ways they were diverse, in terms of wealth, status, influence, accomplishments, religion, etc. But when one looks at his/her ancestors one is sort of forced to acknowledge that they were real people who were faced with complex problems. As for being “good” or “bad,” I’m not comfortable with being labeled as either. I think Ve is right. Let’s start over.

    — Joe Erwin · Jun 28, 08:19 PM · #

  35. Since we are speaking to each other courtesy of Mr. Jackson I would like to refer Ve to the last paragraph page 95 of his new book, “Racial Paranoia” (in the kindest possible way of course)

    — Job's Comforter · Jun 29, 07:45 AM · #

  36. Colleagues,

    If any of you wish to contact me my address is:

    agingapes at gmail dot com

    Wishing you well,

    Joe

    — Joe Erwin · Jun 29, 05:43 PM · #

Commenting is closed for this article.
Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education | Contact us
User agreement | Privacy policy | About The Chronicle | Site map | Help
Subscribe | Advertise with us | Press inquiries | RSS | Today's most e-mailed
Home | Chronicle Careers | The Chronicle Review