Increasingly I'm seeing Slavery in the US discussed more and more. In order to combat the memes that serve to ignore and obfuscate the true nature of the horror and brutality of slavery, I've started a group to explore Slavery without the whitewashing.
If you are interested in submitting a diary, please PM. There are many topics to cover, some known and some unknown. But the view of slavery as a benign institution and slaves as families members of their owners has had long consequences for African Americans still to this day. I also want to discuss Slavery outside of the US and the enslavement of Native Americans in this series.
There is so much to explore and discuss.
Learn more about the Slavery in the US Group Here
There is so much to cover and so much to combat. Join me in helping to right the historical record.
“It is slavery, when the tax is based on your labor output.”
Is it just me or has there been an uptick in the usage of metaphors, analogies and claims regarding Slavery as it relates to present day people? I can’t help but to notice the prevalence of the topic recently. Maybe it is just because I’ve been doing more research related to Slavery and thus I’m noticing it. My take – it is a dog whistle, pure and simple. I’ve always found the invoking of Slavery to be distasteful to say the least, unless of course, you were referring to the actual Enslaved. You know, that (what should we call them as they weren’t considered persons) chattel that was auctioned, recorded as assets and gifted or willed to others when their “owners” died. And no I’m not talking only to Republicans. I’m talking to the Left, too. We can’t be incensed when Republicans seek to exploit Slavery but ignore when the Left does it, too. I’ve long seen it posted here and I find it repulsive because Slavery in the US was unique and singular. Did Slavery exist before and after? Yes and yes. But continue reading and I will point out why any comparison to any present day condition is absurd as well as offensive.
Slavery as practiced in the US suffers from a lack of visibility that only leads to some egregious errors about the nature of it and disrespectful and maddening analogies. For years, it was The Institution That Shall Not Be Named, at least not in polite society (you know among white folks and especially in mixed company). It has been The Institution That Shall Be Ignored, especially among the descendants of slave-owners. It is the Institution That Shall Be Considered Benign, especially as it relates to the descendants of the Enslaved and the impact of that centuries-long Institution here in the US. But sadly, it is The Institution that Shall Be Invoked Erroneously And Appropriated by far too many.
All of this is by design. The inappropriate use of The Institution That Shall Be Invoked Erroneously and Appropriated leads to the muting of the real experiences and lives of the Enslaved. It minimizes the most traumatic event, which as a group, African Americans have experienced in modern history, if not back through the beginning of time.
I want you to sit with that for a second. Understand the enormity and cataclysmic consequences of Slavery for the Enslaved. It was our global warming, 9/11 and assassinations of beloved politicians and entertainers combined then multiplied by 100,000. And yet the blurring of the experience, the lies, the minimizing serves to have us now believe that anyone who is having a bad damn day is a slave to something or another. That paying taxes is slavery, that incarceration is slavery, that WAGE labor is slavery. On and on and on with the historical ignorance and dehumanizing comparisons.
Certainly many of these comparisons coincide in some part to the election of the first black president, memes of white slavery and a cynical view that if blacks are given an inch towards equality, they will in turn enslave white people. I see it as giving voice to the subconscious fear based on hundreds of years of brainwashing. And every time, we as Progressives minimize Slavery in the US, we are no better or no different than the Right. We are sounding the dog whistle, consciously or not. It does not serve our purpose or our agenda to be so callous and ahistorical to right a serious Injustice.
We have Michele Bachmann signing onto a pledge that states Black families were better off under Slavery than in the present day. Certainly this is horrible and demonstrably false, but I want to discuss what I find a highly exploitative and false usage of slavery as a metaphor or an analogy.
I can scan and find the invoking of Slavery to describe present day wage labor and/or incarceration. These memes are floated with scant recognition of the actual harm done to the Enslaved and The Brutality of the entire system. There is no way that I can ever discuss this in as great of detail, covering all areas that are muted to make these comparisons, but there are a few issues that get lost when such comparisons are made. I’ve come to the conclusion that these comparisons are drawn out of ignorance about the enslaved, patriarchal frames and the continued acceptance of the dehumanization of African (and Native American)-descended people.
Now, I want to make it clear that I’m a prison abolitionist. I hold firm to that position. I do not want to minimize the conditions of the Incarcerated. They are warehoused in horrific settings under Inhumane conditions. But I do firmly hold that a case against incarceration can be argued strenuously without exploiting the Enslaved because when these comparisons are made, given the evidence and the facts about the “peculiar institution” and incarceration, it is clear that it is exploitation to invoke the condition of the Enslaved: man, woman and child. Yes, incarceration grew out of slavery. However there are some fundamental differences between being incarcerated and being deemed a Slave for life and all of your progeny as well.
Read the information in the quote boxes below. After reading each, if you can, I want you to imagine that it is you referenced, discussed, telling the story…your family, a loved one or friend. Contemplate the experience in its totality for a second. Tell me how any of these examples relate to your own life. Can you? I highly doubt it. Because as a descendant of a slave and as a family member of someone currently incarcerated, I can tell you with an unqualified affirmative statement that my blues come nothing close to that of my Enslaved ancestors. Not by a long shot and not in a million years. But then it becomes essential to minimize and mute the true nature and condition of Slavery in the US.
Fogel argues that the material conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers. They were not good by modern standards, but he emphasized the hard lot of all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the 19th century. Fogel contended that over the course of his lifetime, the typical slave field hand received about 90% of the income he produced. In a survey, 58% of historians and 42% of economists disagreed with Fogel's proposition that the material condition of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers.
Fogel
Sound familiar? It and other passages, rationalizations and justifications like it serve as the common wisdom and minimizing strategy in regards to Slavery in the US. It is the victors (white and male supremacists) writing or re-writing history for an agenda. The agenda – to deny the inhumanity perpetrated against African (and Native American)-descended peoples in the US. It attempts to portray slavery as benign and beneficial to the Enslaved. You see, it is positing and implying that the Enslaved were better off or IN A COMPARABLE position to wage laborers, or European Immigrants. That this meme has lasted centuries in the US is disheartening. That it is the corner piece of comparing any current condition to Slavery in the US should be rejected as absurd. But it isn’t and has the direct consequence of making space to create false analogies and comparisons to our current condition.
Two Senators argued on the floor of Congress that black slaves were materially better off that white free northerners and with their childlike nature, they needed slavery for their own good. Stop there.
Ponder that…this is at the root of any contemporary comparisons made to any state or condition, whether it be incarceration or the “dysfunctional” black family. Because the benign view holds that the majority of the Enslaved were well cared for and even had a “retirement” of sorts in old age. It ignores the deprivation of most of the Enslaved. It ignores the routine nature in which the Enslaved died and were replaced as a cost of doing business, every year, year after year, in some regions of the US. The minimizing in the common wisdom is the direct tie to the Institution That Shall Be Invoked Erroneously and Appropriated.
While both white and black communities in the South faced illness, some of the diseases experienced within the slave community resulted from the racially oppressive system of slavery. Because southern society considered slaves to be chattel, slaves often lived and labored in unhealthy environments. …
In his case study of Virginia, historian Todd Savitt estimates that waste removal occurred only once a year on average. Decaying food scraps and human waste were breeding grounds for mosquitoes and flies. Mosquitoes transmitted yellow fever or malarial parasites to humans. It is quite possible that many of Carmichaels’ patients complaining of the “ague & fever” were really suffering from malaria.
The frequent presence of human excrement in the drinking water also led to epidemics of cholera, dysentery, diarrhea, typhoid, and hepatitis. Additionally, sewage caused the proliferation of parasitic worms that could be found in the lungs, liver, blood vessels, gall bladder, and intestines. Savitt writes that slave children were particularly susceptible to worms. He explains, “children playing in the dirt inevitably picked up worm larvae as they put fingers in their mouths. Failure to use, or lack of, privy facilities only served to spread worm disease to other residents of the quarters and to visiting slaves, who then carried these parasites to their own plantation quarters.” Worms are frequently mentioned in the Carmichael letters, particularly in regards to illness in slave children. For example, George Banks desired a prescription from the Carmichaels for an eighteen-month-old slave child. He wrote, “it has a disentry[sic] for 3 or 4 weeks proceding[sic], we think from worms—in this time it has discarded more than 20 worms principally from the stomach…”.
Source
It ignores plenty of other things that are muted to make the comparison that wage labor AND/OR present day incarceration is the same as Slavery in the US. Well, I beg to differ…wait, no I’m not begging to differ because this is not debatable at all. There are some similarities, many with the Incarcerated and Enslaved. None with the Enslaved and Wage Labor. Our prison industrial complex IS a direct outgrowth from Slavery. The connection is clear and well-documented. Similar and the same, do I really need to go into an exposition of etymology to discuss that similar does not mean the same? Among literate people, unlike the Enslaved? Really? I won’t spend time doing that because I would rather focus on the actual conditions of the Enslaved.
But the muting (deliberate IMO) doesn't just encompass the expendability of the Enslaved and the horrible ailments and care received. One of the key areas of muting relates to the lived experience of Enslaved Women and illustrates the patriarchal framing.
Despite the references to the female slave experience in abolitionist literature, Congressional debates, and the work of historians on slave breeding and reproductive and sexual abuse of female slaves, the experience of female slaves remains largely invisible in many structural remedial or protective frameworks.
Source
I’ll stop there with a plea. Can we begin to apply a Godwin-esque rule to Slavery in the US? I witness the righteous and just indignation when The Holocaust is erroneously appropriated. It is righteous and it is justified. Can we ever elevate the humanity of the Enslaved to stop the Exploitation of their history and their legacy? Can we humanize them enough to resist the impulse to minimize and appropriate their lived experienced? I don’t ask these questions in vain. I truly believe that using the Enslaved to score any type of political point is dehumanizing, erroneous and cheap. Stop, Resist and Desist!
In the next entry, I'll explore the Breeding of the Enslaved.