Now, We Will Definitely Talk About Slavery and Colonization, and More!
Why the Florida Conservatives Should Have Left Well Enough Alone.
If conservative Floridian politicians thought removing uncomfortable US history in the classroom was going to silence the public conversation about the history of conquest, colonization, and black slavery, they made the wrong move. Instead, now every black commentator (no matter their political proclivity) is coming out of the woodwork to fact check and, yeah, talk about slavery in all its dimensions. And we’re not the only ones. Anybody who has read slave narratives (there’s plenty written by themselves and corroborated by white people), or actually spends time with more than one black person in their whole life, knows any benefit black folks received from being enslaved is just part of a paltry reparations for this institution’s long lasting effects on black life, a debt as yet unpaid. A check uncashed. Baby, this conversation is not over, it’s just gettin’ started.
Florida’s mess made slavery a hot topic
Now, we will definitely talk openly in public life about one of the most problematic foundations of our nation and, better yet, we can all fact check some of the twisted up mess that Florida’s Board of Education (and other apologists for slavery) wants to insert into the minds of certain young people so they won’t feel uncomfortable about our history. We have so much documentation about slavery because the system was ingrained deeply into the development of the US.
Slave holders weren’t ashamed of what they were doing! Hell no! They documented sales, whippings, medical experiments, and runaways who sometimes lost limbs–just like the Nazis joyfully documented the holocaust. You can’t go back and change the narrative now that knowing about slavery makes white kids (not to mention everyone else!) uncomfortable. Guess what? No country feels 100% great about their history. Some of them just deal with it. Thanks, Germany! Thanks South Africa! Thanks, Rawanda! Thanks, Ghana! (This country offers African Americans reparations of citizenship for Ghana’s part in the trans-Atlantic slave trade). Hell, even Belgium is tryna get it together over the mess their ancestors made in the Congo. Now is our time. Thanks, Florida!!!
We gots a lot to talk about
First of all, black and indigenous slavery in the US has so many dimensions we could all stand to learn about. Most of this history is far more uncomfortable for black people who were finally beginning to feel like human beings after 250 years of enslavement and 100+ years of Jim Crow. I have learned over the years that most white people, and a whole lot of other people know diddly squat about the nuances or day to day of enslavement in America’s forced labor camps.
Slave holders weren’t ashamed of what they were doing! Hell no! They documented sales, whippings, medical experiments, and runaways who sometimes lost limbs–just like the Nazis joyfully documented the holocaust.
So, let’s talk about it! Why not? Tell all the truth. Not just what serves a side. I don’t flinch from any dimension of slavery at this point. Why? Because I have read about it, performed it, thought about it, and talked about it from a variety of perspectives from Muhammad Ali to Uncle Ruckus! (no relation). And I am glad I didn’t have to live through it. Who wouldn’t be? It was horrible.
Money made slavery, not racism. Racism came later because the money was soooo good.
Slavery is problematic and as people like to point out, it’s as old as empire. But we’re not going to talk about slavery as some abstract concept here. We’re going to talk about the trans-Atlantic trade which brutally kidnapped skilled and intelligent Africans, the “peculiar institution” that lasted from 1453–1888 in the Americas and parts of Europe. Yes, Europe. Technically, all the Russian peasants were slaves til the Czar’s rule came abruptly to an end. They could not even leave their villages without official permission.
Yes, y’all! Slavery in the US and throughout the Caribbean is well documented. Brazil was the last country to emancipate descendants of enslaved Africans in the Americas, right after Cuba. Of course, Brazil tried to destroy their slavery records. Shame perhaps? Please! Brazil had slavery for so long they had freaking photographs of it. Again, you can Google the photography exhibit that traveled around the US a couple decades ago. It’s deep to have pictures of slavery, but they exist. Black slavery was so profitable and served so many agendas on so many continents.
Early on, African royalty sold people they had acquired in war or criminals they wanted to get rid of — at first. This is basically what Europe did throughout the 17–19th centuries when criminals were sent freely to the US and Australia. Early on, the royalty of West Africa had more control over the European slave trade. But once white folks (and some African royalty) began to mega profit, the trans-Atlantic slave trade from West Africa grew into a multi million dollar bidniss that kidnapped (regardless of what the chiefs wanted) already hardworking and skilled black people and worked them to death in the Caribbean, and in New York and even Rhode Island, apparently. That’s right. Black folks were regularly worked to death in forced labor camps throughout the Americas where slaveholders created (by rape!!!) and then sold their own damn children.
Guess what? No country feels 100% great about their history. Some of them just deal with it. Thanks, Germany! Thanks South Africa! Thanks, Rawanda! Thanks, Ghana!
New rules about birthrights turn babies into profit
To keep people from running away, a variety of strategies were employed, the first being the identification of the children born to black women as slaves for life, something never done before in human enslavement history, especially since European laws said the children of men were their responsibility, even if they were illegitimate! Money made slavery. Not racism. Racism came later because the money was so good. I mean…soooo good.
Black slavery (not so much Indigenous slavery) was so profitable and the one financial game guaranteed to make money in the 18–19th centuries. Well, til opium came along, that is. Another article for another time. It’s also true that some Indigenous and black folks also profited from slavery — rare but true. In fact, it turns out that most of the black folks reported to have owned slaves owned them because they bought them from former masters! They didn’t actually buy them to work them to death, and if you can find any substantial records of black people buying enslaved people and then working them to death, I want to know about it. It happened in the Caribbean where whites were few, and rarely women, so sometimes, black women could marry their masters and inherit their property.
Black folks were regularly worked to death in forced labor camps throughout the Americas where slaveholders created (by rape!!!) and then sold their own damn children.
Who got reparations for their losses? Not the slaves.
See Skip Gates’ wonderful article about this issue of blacks owning slaves and the problematic issue of how to repair the damage done by 256 years of US American slavery. By the way, when reparations were made after slavery ended throughout the Americas, guess who generally got reparated? Not the slaves. Not the slaves. Not the slaves. The former white slave owners received reparations (see Haiti!!). In the case of Haiti, following an embargo against the newly freed nation, France was paid reparations for their property in an arrangement that stretched from the early 1800s into the mid 1900s.
Why some ex-slaves didn’t want to leave the plantation
As for formerly enslaved people not wanting to leave the plantations they had built from the ground up and kept running sometimes for generations, yeah, I’m sure some of them wanted to stay. But what were their other options? Let’s see. The Ku Klux Klan was created during reconstruction to lynch black men with impunity, to prevent black people from accumulating any political power or too much wealth, and to protect white women from black male rape — never mind that white men raped black and Indigenous women without consequence, enslaved or not right up to now.
During reconstruction, a penal system was created to arrest black folks for either not working, loitering, being poor, or refusing to sign work contracts with former owners or other landowners. Sometimes Exodusters, blacks who went west to start fresh, were attacked to prevent them from leaving the south or from making it all the way west. So, yeah, I’m sure some traumatized ex-slaves loved without restraint their former masters who maybe had beat them only once a week at most and maybe didn’t sell their kids at Christmas (which was often when slaves were sold — Merry Christmas!). “Thanks, Massa! I sho luvs you fuh not sellin’ mah chillun this year! But there’s always next year. Maybe the missus needs a new diamond necklace or new furniture. I undastands fuh yuh, Massa!” I’m not afraid or ashamed of these black people. Nobody should be. Their feelings do not change what slavery was or how it has continued to haunt our country and black life. I’m sure they did what most enslaved people did. They made the best of a bad situation during and after slavery.
I’m sure some traumatized ex-slaves loved without restraint their former masters who maybe had beat them only once a week at most and maybe didn’t sell their kids at Christmas (which was often when slaves were sold — Merry Christmas!)
You don’t have to believe me. It’s well documented.
And slavery was bad. You don’t have to believe me. You can read about it in the words of formerly enslaved people who gave their stories to the WPA in the 1930s. This, too, is documented. During the centuries of enslavement, Black people were routinely beaten (with a leather whip or cat o nine tails). They were restrained with steel chains, ropes, and with something called a “bit” which was a steel mask that prevented them from eating and left its wearer permanently mentally damaged.
Black people were forced to work and then called lazy when they slowed down, got sick, or refused to. And who had the honor of making sure they kept working? For a while it was other black people. Yes indeed! Watch Sankofa! Black people have known about black overseers long time. This isn’t news to us. But soon they were replaced by white overseers who usually were poor whites. This is what we mean when we say even poor white people have race privilege that’s not associated with any wealth privilege. Another consequence of the slave system in the US.
And, as Tim Wise reminds us, we cannot trust southern white people to be honest about the treatment of black people who were making them money or providing a sense of racial supremacy, no matter how slight. And we certainly cannot expect honesty from those tasked to kick (or kill) formerly enslaved people to maintain the race and class power structure. For poor whites, this was especially important since race privilege over any class of black person, was often the only privilege they had. This is literally what white privilege means. It doesn’t assume wealth. It’s skin color privilege and the preferred color in the US is white.
Keeping poor whites and black people apart is a strategy of white elites for hoarding wealth.
Looky here. Poor whites were kept from befriending black people early on. And enslaved people were beaten for helping poor whites who often starved to death right under the noses of white elites. Because these alliances happened in the early days of America more than we are taught, we don’t learn about how it is that European, North African, Jewish, Asiatic Turks, and other light skinned people became white in the US. And we don’t learn that Racism isn’t about hatred. We don’t learn how white became the supreme race in order to keep us apart. White elites did this. Not black people, because black systems (in America anyway) do not oppress white people — not even hip-hop, which is owned/distributed mostly still by white people to white people. Read about Bacon’s rebellion. This moment in history created a problematic alliance among free blacks, whites and indigenous folks against white elites in the early 1700s who were taxing them beyond belief and interceding in a dispute among First Nations folks.
Degrading the education system is another elite strategy
I said it was problematic. To prevent further alliances like these with “Negroes and Indians”, whites were given land if, for example, they joined the American Revolution which was a tough sell. Later Black Codes were created to prevent black folks from prospering in ways that white folks could not stand — which happened so often, black people’s towns and properties were routinely burned. Race riots used to just mean white folks attacking POC. White settlers were illegally given Indigenous people’s land when they immigrated (also illegally since nobody asked Indigenous people if they were welcome) and then allowed to massacre Indigenous people for trying to get it back.
We can talk some other time about how not one of the treaties with First Nations was honored by the US government. Not one. On top of this, Indigenous people were forcibly educated to get them off their land. While black enslaved people weren’t allowed to read so that they could be robbed of their labor. Opposite strategy. Same outcome. Systemic oppression. So Race was created to keep us fighting while a few wealthy, mostly white people and their families, sit back and laugh all the way to the bank. Guess what, this is where we are right now with the white power structure trying to prevent the learning of any problematic history.
This mess in Florida, and elsewhere we are expected to believe that slavery was good for black people, has provided us a perfect storm for the much needed open, public, discussion of American history, which has much more richness and nuance than most K-12 teachers can relate even to the most comfortable white student.
Race was created to keep us fighting while a few wealthy, mostly white people and their families, sit back and laugh all the way to the bank.
It’s about time we talked about it!
So, let’s talk about it. Let’s argue about it. Let’s include all the stories of conquest, slavery, union busting, and multinational immigration that made our country what it is today. Then we can move on. But I guarantee you that black people will not move on now that things have gotten ridiculous and we have social media. Our country cannot heal either until this conversation plays itself out. We have the opportunity to let it play out and talk about the history that Hollywood missed, my favorite being that all the cowboys were white, when they were mostly Mexican, Indigenous or Black. Hollywood is responsible for so much wrong-ass history (including Gone With the Wind) Americans believe in; any attempt to correct the Hollywood version of history is called revisionist.
We have an opportunity to learn about our history, especially the part that makes Americans uncomfortable. If you think not learning about slavery makes black people comfortable, you have a lot to learn about America. I say you get to it! The Library of Congress has more information than any living person can process about slavery. Not all of it makes enslaved people “good” just because they were enslaved or all white people evil. Goodness or evil of enslaved people, nor how they might have benefitted, are not necessary to understand the atrocity of the institution itself. They were human beings after all, despite all historical attempts (and some current ones) to prove otherwise. (See the term “Drapetomania”).
I guarantee you that black people will not move on now that things have gotten ridiculous and we have social media
Read some American history directly from the sources, from Thomas Jefferson’s book, Notes on the State of Virginia or Abraham Lincoln ‘s reply to an abolitionist’s taking him to task for why he took so long to emancipate enslaved people. Slavery has always been problematic for the US, even for its leaders, many of whom believed in freedom for all human beings (See the Enlightenment!) but couldn’t get around the wealth or the hypocrisy that slavery created. This wealth is why we had enslavement as labor for so long and why the myth of blackness being not human still walks with black people (and not just Americans!) all over the world.
So, thank Florida for giving us a reason now, and for a long while, never to stop talking about slavery. We must never forget. We’re nearly at the moment in history where the nation will be the same age as American slavery, the era that lasted longer than our country has been free.
It’s about time we talked about it. Now we definitely will.
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