Where we stand

I have been something of a Black partisan for most of my life. My understanding of things comes from many years of independent study and I find myself explaining my political positions because my observations are rather standard but what I see as the repercussions of those observations differ greatly from what I hear day to day. It's difficult to explain a couple of decades of thought in a single conversation, and extended conversations aren't always possible so I have a few books I recommend that hew closely to my understanding of things.
A book I regularly recommend is The Shaping of Black America by Lerone Bennett, Jr. It's the story of the United States of America…as opposed to a history…told from the perspective of the Africans in America and the African Americans they became.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine was asked in a Black history course she was teaching how the construct of race came into existence. In response I suggested chapter three of The Shaping of Black America, titled "The Road Not Taken." It documents the reasoning behind enslaving Africans as opposed to Amerinds or European indentured servants, and the steps taken to make it legally and socially acceptable. Recently I added the chapter as a permanent piece of my web site for discussion and documentation purposes. It's an important chapter because it documents how legitimizing slavery damaged both Africans and Europeans in ways that survive to this day.

The reasoning behind the institution of slavery tends to be ignored or misrepresented by historians. From The Shaping of Black America:

Most historians avoid the subject by positing a natural or cultural bias in the European psyche. But this maneuver fails to explain why this natural or cultural bias manifested itself in one way in 1619 and another way in 1819 or why it developed in one way in Maryland, another way in Massachusetts, and a third way in Brazil. Nor is it possible, from the traditional standpoint, to explain why the laws against blacks became progressively worse and differed significantly in different demographic and economic situations. From time to time, some historians admit, in so many words, that the traditional view is untenable. Stanley Elkins, for example, who has advanced a fanciful theory of slavery, said that "the interests of white servants and blacks were systematically driven apart." After reading the same evidence, the Handlins said that "the emerging difference in treatment [of blacks and whites] was calculated to create a real division of interest between Negroes on the one hand and whites on the other." [My emphasis]

To say there is a natural or cultural bias toward domination in all Europeans is an ugly thing. Especially since there is proof that Europeans at the time (they weren't "White people" yet any more than Africans were "Black people") worked together, intermarried to some degree, escaped bondage together and on the whole held common cause against an oppressive land-owning class.

Until the advent of African slavery. At that point a society was built that automatically enforced and invisibly rewarded differences which, up until that time, were seen as purely cosmetic. Even religion was turned to this purpose. So now we are the recipients of over 350 years of programming. Again, from The Shaping of Black America (emphasis added):

What we are concerned to emphasize here is that the laws were the heart and center of a massive public education campaign. The best evidence in favor of this point is the extraordinary letter Governor William Ceech wrote to the English government, which had demanded explanation of a Virginia law denying the suffrage to free blacks. Governor Ceech wrote:

[The] Assembly thought it necessary, not only to make the Meetings of Slaves very penal, but to fix a perpetual Brand upon Free Negroes and Mulattos by excluding them from the great Privilege of a Freeman, well knowing they always did, and ever will, adhere to and favour the Slaves. And, likewise said to have been done with design, which I must think a good one, to make the free Negroes sensible that a distinction ought to be made between their offspring and the Descendants of an Englishman, with whom they never were to be Accounted Equal. This, I confess, may Seem to carry an Air of Severity to such as are unacquainted with the Nature of Negroes, and Pride of a manumitted Slave, who looks on himself immediately On his Acquiring his freedom to be as good a Man as the best of his Neighbours, but especially if he is descended of a white Father or Mother, lett them be of what mean Condition soever; and as most of them are the Bastards of some of the worst of our imported Servants and Convicts, it seems no ways Impolitic, as well for discouraging that kind of Copulation, as to preserve a decent Distinction between them and their Betters, to leave this mark on them, until time and Education has changed the Indication of their spurious Extraction and made some Alteration in their morals.
This is a significant document that has been too often ignored by historians. We don't have to speculate on the motives of the men who created the American race problem. They tell us clearly what they were doing and why they were doing it.

They were passing laws to preserve a decent Distinction between blacks and whites.

They were passing laws to fix a perpetual Brand upon blacks.

They were passing laws with design to make free blacks sensible that a distinction should be made between their children and the children of Englishmen.

They were passing laws to break the Pride of blacks.

They were passing laws to leave this mark on them.

And it can be said, by inverting this language, that the laws were also passed to leave a mark on whites, who were instructed, under pain of punishment, how to act in relation to blacks. Under these laws whites of all classes were penalized for expressing human impulses. It therefore became very expensive for a white person to like black people or to love them. This was not, it should be emphasized, a matter of hints and vague threats. The laws were quite explicit. Symptomatic of this were the laws passed to punish whites who befriended blacks or ran away with them.

Masters were also disciplined. The right of the master to free his slave was curbed and finally eliminated. The master was also forbidden to teach his slaves or to permit them to gather in large assemblies.


Black people had to be broken to be slaves, and White people had to be broken to be masters. How else can you explain slave owners who allowed slaves to buy their own freedom when by law anything the slave owned already belonged to his master?

It is critical for Black people and White people to recognize this, that it is not natural for us to be divided. It is not natural for us to consider our differences to be more than cosmetic. A society was built that trained us to see these differences as significant. The result of that training is ugly.

Now Black people aspire to become all that White people are…never understanding that White people are no more what they should have been than Black people are.

Black people have only been free for two generations. White people have only had free people of other races around them for two generations. Neither group has mastered their situation yet, and who can blame either? Because this society still gives racialized feedback so clearly and strongly that the honorable efforts made by many on both sides of the veil are simply overwhelmed. Consider this (posted at Crooked Timber by Kieran Healy):

Devah Pager has won this year�s Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association. (I wrote about her work last year. It�s worth mentioning again.) Devah studies the effect of incarceration on labor market outcomes. Her approach was to conduct an audit study of employers, sending in applications for real jobs using vitas for matched pairs of black and white men. The abstract of a working paper from the study says, in part:

With over 2 million individuals currently incarcerated, and over half a million prisoners released each year, the large and growing numbers of men being processed through the [U.S.] criminal justice system raises important questions about the consequences of this massive institutional intervention. This paper focuses on the consequences of incarceration for the employment outcomes of black and white job seekers. � By using matched pairs of individuals to apply for real entry- level jobs, it becomes possible to directly measure the extent to which a criminal record in the absence of other disqualifying characteristics serves as a barrier to employment among equally qualified applicants. I find that a criminal record is associated with a 50 percent reduction in employment opportunities for whites and a 64 percent reduction for blacks.

Pager found that blacks "are less than half as likely to receive consideration by employers relative to their white counterparts, and black non-offenders fall behind even whites with prior felony convictions.� In other words, even though being black and having served time both negatively affect one�s employment opportunities, controlling for education and skills you are better off being a white male with a felony conviction than a black male with no criminal record.

How can a Black person not feel anger, be filled with distrust in such a society?

And there are many, many White people who consciously attempt to bridge the gap. But because they believe the problem is one of individual belief their efforts are flawed. Seeing Black people are still angry and wondering why their openness has no effect, they naturally take the rejection of their personal gestures as a personal rejection…it's almost impossible for a person not to.

So this is where we stand, Black and White folks. At the dawn of an age neither has been prepared for, believing in a society geared to change people into exactly that which we all declare we don't want to be.

I don't have the final answer. I don't think anyone does. But I do know this much—both sides must remember that we were all broken by this. Though the normal assumption is that Black folks alone were the ones that were broken, in fact White people in general were just as programmed as Black people. We were broken in different ways though, and therefore need different messages…we all need to understand that trying to get Black folks to where White folks are isn't going to work any more than getting White folks to where Black folks are will. We all need to get to a new place.

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Posted by Prometheus 6 on September 25, 2003 - 6:28pm :: Race and Identity
 
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