#in the same way that whiteness is created in order to distinguish oppressors from the nonwhite oppressed

[shirkers2018dirsanditan]

when you have the chance, could you explain what you mean by the post about young people being increasingly hostile to feminism and also seeing pedophilia and sexual deviancy as the root of all evil? sorry if you’ve already spoken about it and I haven’t seen it. it seems like an interesting topic that I don’t understand fully but would like to. thank you :)

sure! i dont have links on hand but increasingly over past, five or so, maybe more, years there has been escalating hostility and dismissiveness towards feminism and the oppression of women as a class. part of that is the seemingly deliberate misinterpretation of black feminist theory like identity politics and intersectionality, where the former is demonized similarly by conservatives and leftists alike, and the latter is weaponized in order to dissolve the idea of women as a coherent class. you’ve also seen the invocation of terms specific to feminism to describe bigotry or sometimes, any random situation that has absolutely nothing to do with feminism at all, like when the actress evangeline lilly said she wouldn’t quarantine or whatever, and people called it white feminism, or that time i saw some nonbinary lesbian get called a terf for saying “my vagina likes other vaginas.” neither of these situations had anything to do with feminism, nor did either person identify themselves as feminists, and yet these incidents were explicitly associated with feminism, which helps to cultivate a negative connotation. you can also see this in that one time someone on here called donald trump a terf (????????) or when someone calls ann coulter or whatever random conservative woman a “white feminist.” its insanity.

you have also seen people levy criticism against feminism that are exclusively complaining about feminism centering women, like the discourse on here that chastised women for lamenting that yet again, a woman was not awarded (or even nominated!) for best director and was passed over again for best screenplay. a number of people complained that this was “white feminism” because it ignored the men of color who had won and been nominated, even though that is quite literally irrelevant to women’s rights because being minorities does not negate being a man. and it of course ignored that no woman of color has ever been nominated for best director, despite the nomination of several men of color, dating back to the late 1960s. i even saw someone say that women of color actually have to wait for men of color to achieve something before being able to achieve it themselves, which is fucking disgusting. there is a variety of discourses online that merely exist to object to speaking about women as a class at all, as evidenced when alabama issued their abortion ban and people clamored to argue that it wasn’t about attacking women as a class at all, but it was about classism or racism or yadda yadda yadda. issues that have been understood as overarching issues for all women are now not treated as women’s issues at all.

which brings me to the absolutely regressive and depressing way in which largely younger people have sought to erase the idea of gendered violence and instead promote the idea of “pedophile culture.” i would say the dismissal of gendered violence as gendered first emerged out of a desire to point out the ways in which intimate partner violence and sexual assault can happen to anyone in a variety of contexts (same sex partnerships, for example, are not immune from ipv and i do believe the goal was so that young ssa people would not mistakenly believe they could not be victimized). however, what ended up happening was that a lot of people would then decide that gendered violence wasn’t actually gendered, since men could be raped too and women could be rapists, and it didn’t matter how stark the actual statistics were. this coincided with a rise in the normalization of violence against women in the bedroom, where gendered violence like strangulation became sexy and sex positive and everything was fine if it was consensual. this also coincides with a disturbingly pro-porn culture that was obsessed with romanticizing sex work under the guise of supporting sex workers. both of these phenomena deny the larger social contexts for the sex industry and so-called “rough sex” and essentially, intentionally or not, proclaim that there is no significant power imbalance between men and women, and that women are not an oppressed class who are subjugated through interpersonal violence and the commodification of our bodies (and then the subsequent further marginalization of sex workers that ensures that they cannot stop doing sex work and that makes them even more disposable to men than other women).

enter pedophile culture. all of the contexts in which we could understand something as being apart of the violence used to entrench male supremacy became about pedophilia. young girls are sexualized and preyed upon because of pedophilia. women are subjected to forced body hair removal and dieting and all the perils of female beauty norms because of pedophilia. sexual harassment in hollywood revealed by #metoo was not merely one example of how women are victimized by misogynistic violence in all industries, but was proof of a culture of pedophilia in hollywood. sex trafficking of women only matters when it’s done by pedophiles and is the result of “pedophile culture.” and all discourse about pedophile culture attributes it to a shadowy cabal of elites that control our media and our banks and our minds, apparently. instead of gendered violence, instead of violence against women as a class being used to entrench the male supremacy inherent in every facet of our lives, all evils could be attributed to the sexual deviancy of pedophilia, and all of these pedophiles was a single group of gender neutral elites. there is no coherent oppressed class, no coherent oppressor.

and i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge how the term “toxic masculinity” has been nothing but destructive to feminism, not only by positing that men are somehow also oppressed under male supremacy, but also that there is such a thing as a positive or neutral masculinity, as though masculinity is some innate and natural concept and not a tool to create a cohesive oppressor class, and to provide further distinction from the oppressed

#in the same way that whiteness is created in order to distinguish oppressors from the nonwhite oppressed #hope this makes sense lmao #i typed it out pretty quickly im sure there are typos but oh well #anon

[diariesofthehermit]

The Political and Economic Origins of Systemic Racism

“In Barbados, as in Virginia, the historical foundations of race and slavery can be traced back to the struggle between the planter elite and a labor force of bound servants and African slaves who resisted oppression.” - Edward B. Rugemer, from “The Development of Mastery and Race in the Comprehensive Slave Codes of the Greater Caribbean during the Seventeenth Century”

A couple weeks ago I attempted to provide a unifying solution to the question of “why are things so fucked in 2020?” and I provided what is, I suppose at least on the surface, an economic answer: capitalism. I then briefly attempted to show how the blind pursuit of profit, engendered by our own economic system, is in fact the very heart of many of our contemporary crises, from climate change to racism. 

This week I want to focus on racism. I’ve been doing some research with my favorite search engine (JStor) in order to clarify, for myself, the vague memories of what I learned in college in regards to race and American history. So, if you’ll forgive my arrogance, I would like to propose what I would posit to be the formula for modern racial oppression: a social elite’s desire for profit + human ignorance + vulnerable populations = systemic racism.

It may seem like an obvious statement, but I think a lot of people would like to chalk up White Supremacy to white ignorance alone, which is dangerous. If you think racism comes solely from the masses of white people just not knowing any better, then the solution is simple and obvious: educate the racists, make them see the error of their ways and thus eradicate racism with a single, equitable blow- oppression be gone!  We tend to see racism as a disease. I would not deny that racism is, in some cases, comparable to a sickness. However, you could just as easily look at it as a tool. This shift in perception, in turn, alters how you analyze the whole situation. If someone has a sickness you ask if there is a cure. If someone is using a tool, you ask yourself why they’re using it, how they’re using it and what the effect of that use is. The problem with our conceptualization of racism is that we look at it as an inevitable aspect of nature (like a disease) and not as something consciously produced (like a machine). Racists then universally become victims (since they’re sick) who need to be healed because they are hurting, instead of oppressors who need to be stopped from hurting others. 

Certainly, there are racists (particularly the poorer ones) who are victims of their own ignorance- but this cannot be said for all of them. White Supremacy is profitable and we can never forget it. Everyone cheers when a disease is cured, but try to take a valuable tool from the hand wielding it and you can expect a fight. So, in the interest of preparation, let it be said: modern racism is not simply the result of human nature run amok, it was created and improved over time by amplifying and codifying our tendencies to tribalism in a manner that primarily benefited a small, economic elite. In short, racism was and is the tool of the bourgeoisie. 

With that being said, I would like to illustrate this by briefly providing a few notes on the origins of racism in the United States of America. In order to do so, however, I must speak about places outside of the U.S. as well. The United States started out as an English colony, and learned how to successfully oppress and exploit African human beings from the other English colonies who paved the way before them: Barbados and Jamaica. Jamaica largely borrowed its laws concerning slavery from the English colony of Barbados, and South Carolina borrowed her slave laws from the colony of Jamaica. Human exploitation has always been a global business.

So with no further ado, I present a brief account of the origins of modern racism (I will provide a bibliography for all this information at the end of my post): 

The English settled in Barbados in 1627. By 1640 they had cleared much of its forests and began cultivating indigo and cotton. Later they would expand into producing sugar. 

At first, most of this labor was done by white indentured, landless servants in the service of wealthier landowners. This labor source was occasionally supplemented by people of African or indigenous American descent, but they did not yet supply a majority of the labor.

Indentured servants were treated poorly, especially after sugar production began in earnest. They were given inadequate food and lodging and routinely beaten. In fact, conditions were hard enough that in 1634 they attempted to organize a rebellion. 

In 1636 the Barbados Council resolved that “Negroes and Indians, that came here to be sold, should serve for Life, unless a Contract was before made to the contrary.” From the start, we can see that there was some form of racialization at work here. However, it was still vague and incomplete: not all Africans or “Indians” would theoretically be bound for life, and the primary division in society was largely between the “free” and the unfree, the latter including both white and Black laborers. 

Whenever a colony began to seriously invest in a profitable crop (like cotton or tobacco), they usually ended up requiring more labor than what the flow of European immigrants could provide. As demand increased relative to supply, the cost of indentured servants grew as well. This led many planters to turn to slavery in order to solve their labor issues. 

Meanwhile, in 1649, “rebellious servants formed a conspiracy to ‘cut the throats of their masters’ and ‘make themselves not only freemen, but Masters of the Island.’ According to one contemporary source, this rebellion involved the whole island and most of the servants; 18 people were executed.

In the 1650s increasing numbers of Africans and “undesirables”, such as the Irish, were being sent to the colonies. According to one of the servants' accounts, they could be bought and sold to planters, beaten at pleasure, slept in styes and ate nothing but potatoes and drank nothing but water. The enslaved Africans were treated, of course, no better.

By 1655 many enslaved Africans and Irish servants were out in rebellion.

There were definitely distinctions in the ways servants and slaves were treated, but many of the laws passed by the Barbados Assembly did not actually distinguish between the two groups and “treated indentured servants and African slaves in the same act.” (Rugemer)

The legal term for the economic elite was “masters”. Regardless of their ethnic origin, no one who served another was “worthy of a master’s civility.” (Rugemer) Both servants and slaves were treated by the law as property that could be seized to satisfy debts, thus being placed in the same category as cattle and horses. 

The inhumanity with which their laborers were treated, however, caused the masters problems- not the least of which was rebellion. In order to better order their society, in 1661 the Barbados assembly set down two methodical and exhaustive pieces of legislation. They were titled: 

“An act for the good governing of Servants, and ordaining the Rights between Masters and Servants.” and

“An act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes”

As you can see, both servants and slaves needed to be “governed” by their masters (I wonder who watched the watchmen?), but under these laws only servants were recognized as having rights. Also, the word “Negro” was codified into being interchangeable with “slave.”

The acts went further in describing the distinctions between the two groups. Both slaves and servants were, naturally, labelled as criminals. Rebellion against oppression, as opposed to oppression itself, has always carried the stigma of criminality. Africans, however, were further described as “heathenish, brutish and an uncertain dangerous pride of people” who required harsher laws “for the benefit and good of the colony”.

“The law defined Africans by pointing out their dark complexions, by asserting offensive cultural characteristics, and by animalizing them as dangerous, exotic lions who needed to be caged.” (Rugemer)

Presumably, “the barbarism of Africans precluded them from the possession of rights as the English understood them.” (Rugemer) The 1661 Slave Act did not attribute any rights to slaves whatsoever.

White “informers”, including indentured servants, were expected to alert the authorities to any unauthorized movements of the enslaved off of their plantations. Slaveholders or overseers who failed to capture and whip a runaway slave were fined; this was not the case for servants. 

“The law aimed to compel Europeans to control the movements of Africans through the threat of a hefty fine. And with the use of informers, a group that included indentured servants, the law created an incentive structure for all Europeans, free and bound, to monitor their neighbor’s management of enslaved Africans.” (Rugemer)

The 1661 act provided a financial incentive for whites to capture a runaway slave by offering a bounty of a hundred pounds of sugar.

Thus, the laws passed by the Barbados assembly in 1661 raised the status of (soon to be known as “white”) indentured servants and codified their rights even as it lowered the status of African slaves (the two acts were passed within three days of one another).

It’s important to note, however, that at the time the Barbados assembly divided their laborers into “Christians” and “Negroes”, a distinction which worked because they believed Africans did not have the capacity to become Christian. “Whiteness” had yet to fully evolve into its present meaning.

Meanwhile, the colony of Jamaica was experimenting with slavery as well. In 1681 they passed their own versions of the Barbados servant and slave acts, with only a few differences between them. 

Around the same time, Quakers (members of a fairly radical Christian denomination) began inviting Africans to their religious meetings and initiating the process of conversion in earnest. As could be expected, this upset the slave masters, who tried unsuccessfully to stop this from happening.

The slave masters reasoning should be clear: if Africans were to become Christians, the cultural differences that necessitated those “harsher laws” and differential treatment would begin to fade. The problem with the earlier distinction was therefore exposed: it was unsustainable to differentiate on the basis of culture and religion because “Negroes” could convert.

A moral solution, of course, would have been to emancipate converted slaves...this was not done for obvious reasons.

By 1684, Jamaican law had begun to use “white” instead of “Christian” to identify their European laborers. Religious conversion would not compromise their labor source.

A byproduct of this change is that Black subjugation was no longer justified on the basis of cultural differences but on the innate racial, and not the religious superiority, of “white” people.

In 1691, the South Carolina Assembly adopted Jamaica’s revised 1684 Slave Act as their own, with only a few slight differences.

South Carolina’s assemblymen were, nevertheless, innovators as well. Under South Carolina law, for example, a runaway would be branded for a first offense. A second offense, however, would require a woman to lose an ear and for a man to be castrated. The inspiration for castration was the cattle-rearing practices of slave-owners and implicitly identified African laborers as simple beasts of burden.

“Severe whippings, the slitting of noses, the slicing off of ears, and ultimately gelding [or castration]—all of these punishments had the same aim, the bestialization of black people and the consolidation of racial slavery.” (Rugemer)

In the continental United States, as in the Carribean, “White servants had rights, and after freedom, options. Blacks enjoyed neither.” (Main)

The inhumanity of African laborers was maintained even when they bore the children of their masters: “Like other British colonies in the New World, Maryland reversed the usual English custom in which the condition of children normally followed that of the father. Many white men, therefore, came to treat their own [mixed race] children as property, denying them all claims on themselves as a parent. Illegitimate white children could press no claims under English law, either, but they were born free. The zealous protection of property rights so characteristic of English society, with its rigorous insistence on the sanctity of contracts and patrilineal priority, here seems to have gone awry. Racism and greed combined to override English justice.” (Main)

In the earliest years of slavery on the American continent, indentured servants and slaves dealt with similar overlords and encountered similar material conditions. They were divided, however, by differences in status within an ideological system that privileged whiteness and condemned Blackness. Indentured servants, despite their oppressions, generally chose their lot and could find freedom after a set period of service. African laborers, being reduced to the status of chattel, had neither consolation. 

“The most burdensome legacy of enslavement, surely, was its hopelessness.” (Main)

There are few general observations that should be made about the developments that I have outlined here. The first is that the only real agency within this story is held by a small economic elite. The legal and ideological tenets of systemic racism were adopted by the common masses of white people, but they were engineered primarily by and for the benefit of wealthy landowners. Actually, in the early days of the continental American colonies, it was only a small portion of landowners who could afford slaves in the first place. The second observation that one should make is that systemic racism was not a spontaneous event. Rather, it came about only after colonial elites passed legislation that increasingly dehumanized their African laborers and justified that dehumanization by highlighting and exaggerating their “otherness.” 

The development of racism then allowed for three very important things. The first and most obvious result is that the total dehumanization of people of African descent allowed for their unlimited economic exploitation without any regard to their existence as human beings. Of course this benefited the “Masters”, or the only ones actually able to afford slaves, more than anyone else in colonial society. The second result was the pacification of a once rebellious white labor force. Surely, indentured servants and landless whites still lacked political will or agency after the codification of racial hierarchies and they still suffered at the hands of their overlords. Despite this, their newfound “whiteness” offered them some sense of dignity, if not some social mobility, and ideologically connected them to the “master” class. The final effect was the weaponization of the white working or servant class, as they were financially and legally incentivized to assist the master class in the oppression of their African laborers. 

These three effects of early systemic racism can still be seen today. Whether it is through Black prison labor, Mexican field labor or the government revenue generated by the court fees of people of color- one can see how vulnerable populations are still economically exploited to fill the bank accounts of twenty-first century economic elites (sometimes referred to as the “1%,” though that numerical value may be too small). One can also see how appeals to patriotism and ethnocentrism ideologically binds the “white” working class to those who in actuality oppress and exploit them, and how they are made to feel closer to billionaire CEOs than to struggling African and Latino Americans. Finally, it is apparent how conservative rhetoric, and even the “colorblind racism” of white liberals, mobilizes and incentivizes whites to silence minority led movements for equality and equity. 

It is not the billionaire, or the millionaire class that attacks and suppresses protesters or holds “counter-rallies” at BLM protests. The super wealthy do not don police uniforms and enforce an inequitable form of order in communities of color. The foot-work of oppression is done by the white working and middle class. The political legitimacy of racist politicians, and in extension their policies, is supported by working and middle class whites who would actually gain more by aligning themselves with the causes of their non-white neighbors than by those who wouldn’t even dare to live in the same neighborhood as them. In short, the white working and middle classes are very often still weaponized against people of color. The functions that racism fulfills today are largely the same as the functions it fulfilled centuries ago. Racism may not be profitable to society as a whole, but it is certainly useful and profitable for powerful elements within our society. Is racism a sickness? Perhaps, and perhaps we should seek to cure those afflicted. Racism, however, is also a tool, and we must seek to disarm those using it and heal those who have been struck with it. It is my belief that this will not happen without a significant fight, but it’s a fight that is well worth it. The same elites who manufactured racism manufactured capitalism, our modern class divisions and the destruction of our environment. The fight to end their hegemony is a battle to undo their ideological programming and to gain political agency. It is a battle to cure the disease and disarm the oppressor. I can think of no other battle more worth fighting. Bibliography: 

Rugemer, Edward B. “The Development of Mastery and Race in the Comprehensive Slave Codes of the Greater Caribbean during the Seventeenth Century.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 3 (July 2013), pp. 429-458. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.70.3.0429

Main, Gloria L. Tobacco Colony, Life in Early Maryland, 1650-1720. Princeton University Press, 1982. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zvk1d

Galenson, David W. “White Servitude and the Growth of Black Slavery in Colonial America.” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 41, No. 1, The Tasks of Economic History(Mar., 1981), pp. 39-47. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2120891

#racism #BLM #systemic racism #white supremacy #white privilege #slavery #socialism #capitalism #politics #history #black history #America #American history #Black diaspora #carribbean #carribbean history #black power #revolution

[suburbanidiocies]

A Brief Note on the Sarah Jeong Affair

Brownshirts delight in finding real or perceived double standards in others that rationalize their own fundamentally inconsistent political-ethical projects. Liberal hypocrisy (“Why a British empire and not an Italian Mediterranean Lake?”) justifies their own callousness and lust for blood. That is why it is not suprise at all that the usual far right suspects have come out of the wood work in response to the Sarah Jeong controversy. An Asian American’s ability to mock white people is being challenged by those who have no problem with their own “ironic”/unapologetic bigotry. The threadbare bugbear of “reverse racism” is being raised to rally those whose own program against people of color is not just a matter of mean words

At the same time, one can remain unsatisfied with certain defenders of Jeong which presume that everything is justified as long as one is punching up. The figure of the Asian Klansman is an oyxmoran. Anti-white sentiments do no carry the same institutional weight and consequences as, say, anti-black ideas. One should expect people to feel hurt and vindictive in a society that was not founded with them in mind, and those of Europeon background should accompany others through these emotiona instead of demonizing them as monsterous threats to the social order. But that still does not mean that there is nothing pathological in fantasizing about “canceling” an entire people, in stereotyping others as being without culture, in constantly coming again and again back to the same ethnic group as a rhetorical punching bag. Things do not need to be just as pernicious as the alt-right in order to be stumbling blocks to human solidarity. In a colonized world, subaltern hatred for what is alien to oneself may often be the beginning of freedom, but it certainly is not its end. A serene cosmopolitanism should be the aim of all human nations and cultures, not a white man’s burden.

A thousand Sarah Jeongs is preferable to one Nazi. It is better that there be people who admit that prejudice in general is wrong than that there be open and unabashed racial chauvinists that will tolerate no rivals. But one should not give one’s blessing to a “progressive” wokeness which normalizes irrational vitriol and treats itself as the vanguard of political discourse by flattering the bourgeois pretensions to worthiness of a rising generation of ideologues and entrepreneurs.

Part of the problem in discussing these matters is that there is a verbal ambiguity when it comes to discussing whiteness. According to critical theory, whitenesss is the name of a social technology that is used to elevate a herrenvolk over others, not the name of an essence that any human being actually has. No one is ontologically white (or black for that matter). At the same, being white is commonly treated as an objective state that one can inhabit and which pervades one’s life. And according to the not entirely unreasonable. doxa of the day, an attack on an identity is the same as an attack on the person bearing it. Hence the endless cycles of rage and chest thumping on the part of Europeans and white settler population when anti-racism is put on the table. In order to break this chain of reaction, attacks on Caucasian privilege need to be careful to focus on the institutions of white supremacy (chauvenistic educational systems, unjust property relationships, etc). Our war is, primarily, against the unclean spirits in the high places, not flesh and blood persons who can be disentangled from their social position. “Whiteness” is demonic, but “white” people are themselves not devils. A similar approach can be used to deal with the much talked debates over “Western Civilization.” The achievements of Goethe, Galileo, and Rembrandt belong to global humanity, not an exclusionary European Geist. One can break the white mythology that surrounds these figures without excising them from the historic patrimony that all are rightful heirs to.

There are precedents for such an attitude towards whiteness. The antifascist fight of the 30s and 40s was against Nazism and Fascism, not "the Germans" or "the Italians." And in contemporary times, the more reflective, and politically astute, wing of the anti-Zionist movement has been careful to distinguish between Zionism and the Jewish people. What is being proposed is certainly tricker because the population in question uses the same term as the ideology in the need of deconstruction. But holding these distinctions simutenously in mind is certainly not impossible.

Another problem is that racism in the living language of daily life has become more narrowly defined to cover the realities of life under white supremacy. This meets a real need. The 500 year old planetary regime that has placed Western Europeans on a pedestal is unique in its global swag and the depth of its reach. But we need language that can describe other form of hatreds, some of which are older than white supremacy and many of which will undoubtably survive the death of the current world system. Hence why it may be useful to treat xenophobia (“the fear and distrust of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange”) as a distinct evil from racism in need of being named and combatted. Such a category will cover the feelings of ethnic/communal/cultural animus that those on top of the ladder, those in the middle, and those at the bottom can feel. It would include the mutual games of stereotyping that unequal societies generate as human beings find themselves confronting each other not as persons but as memebers of rival castes. Finially, it would cover the sorts of prejudice that exist in non-whites cultures against other non-whites which will only become more and more relevant as the United States and Europe decline in global importance. The result of such a change in focus could be a changing of discussion from an often Pharisaical debate about how to avoid being a racist while still on the lookout for acceptable targets of aggression towards a inquiry on how to lead a well-rounded human life that is capable of finding a home in the alien gaze of the other.

Again and again we must come to the need for cultivating a type of humanity that is not reducible to any ethnic fate as an oppressor or a victim and which can nevertheless contain multitudes. There is nothing better than to become like the sky which remain unchanged while clouds, winds, and rains pass through it, while the life of the earth springs forth and dies beneath the gaze of heaven. It is easy, when taking such a state as one’s end goal, to be dismissive towards the games people play about race, sex, gender, and nationality. But one must remember that while there is one Way there are many roads that enter into it. That the sky creates a wide space for a plurality of living things to work themselves out. That there is a sense that an emancipated spirit can return from universality to the particular in such a manner that you can wear your haecceity lightly like a festive garment, in a spirt of serious play.

We can not leap into a “post-racial” future with mere good intentions. Nor would we want, in any case, to have our various individual destines abolished in the name of a sanitized utopia. Rather, we must work concretely in our words and praxis to center the array of human differences around activities which belong to everyone and no one: Labor, Thought, and Love

#sarah jeong #racism #xenophobia #politics #history #world politics

[howardstudent]

Second College Essay

A little preface is that this was my second ever college essay. I received a 19.5/20 on it. There are some grammatical and citation errors that maybe I will fix if I ever have the time, and/or feel it is worth it. I could post the prompt but I don’t want my prof to copyright me or anything. Essentially, in this class we are studying prominent African American Literature until 1940, and this, the first essay of the course, listed three prompts from which were to choose one. I chose a prompt about how literacy was utilized by black authors and how the deprivation of literacy was weaponized by white supremacists. My professor did criticize my underutilization of Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, but besides that I mainly received positive feedback.

English 054/African American Literature 1

7 October 2020

Literacy: Through the Eyes of the Oppressed and the Oppressor

In this, the twenty-first century, it can be argued that everyone understands the importance of written tradition. Within and beyond the 400 years of African American bondage, literacy can be observed as being a gift to the oppressed that grants agency, education, and expression while simultaneously, access to said literacy is intentionally denied by the oppressor to maintain a status quo. Early African American authors and their collective works exemplify the power but perceived threat of permitting literacy among oppressed people. Namely, that African Americans, like Phyllis Wheatley, are able to compete with white people when it comes to intelligence and crafting beautiful works of art. The other primary flaw is that an educated black man, like Frederick Douglass, will develop a thirst for knowledge and justice which knows no bounds. To the oppressor, black literacy destroys their white supremacist ideologies about black people, while also encouraging the oppressed to think critically and fight back against their oppressors. Furthermore, this narrative exceeds physical subjugation; the education of the Negro is still the most powerful and threatening instrument to white supremacy in this modern age.

White supremacy relies on the basis that white people are superior to all other races, and it entices people to subscribe to this thought through demonstrable measures. In the eighteenth century, literacy was one of the primary measures used to perpetuate white supremacy. It is interesting to note how the goalpost of “superiority” shifted as black people would surpass these arbitrarily placed expectations. It seems that literacy was chosen because Europeans did not know of any black Africans who were distinguished in written literacy (Gates 137). This is not by coincidence though, as “Europeans ignored the fact that African literatures tended to be oral rather than written (Gates 137).” Initially, the concept was that black people are incapable of reading and writing, then it was black people cannot read and write in the languages the white man values, and then it was well, even if black people can learn, that doesn’t mean they can possess the same finesse and mastery of literature as white people. This belief was shattered when Poem on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phyllis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley of Boston, in New England was published. The work was “stunning news to whites” in London in 1773, because Wheatley was an African-born slave woman who was able to write in English (Gates 137). Wheatley was purchased from Africa to be a slave when she was between the ages of seven and eight, and after a mere four years of being exposed to the English language, she began to write poetry (Gates 138). She was no more than twelve years old when she first published her poem, and by twenty she had achieved international recognition (Gates 138). Even to the educated white elites, the beliefs that black people were incapable of feats such poetic expression and mathematics, which were considered to be “the highest forms of civilization,” were held in great esteem (Gates 137). Wheatley challenged these notions and she alone proved “the capacity of the African's intellect for improvement (Gates 139).” White supremacy served to rationalize the enslavement of a race of people. If black people were dehumanized, by falsely claiming that they were unable to reason and think critically, and furthermore were unable to be compete with Europeans, then their enslavement was justified.

Literacy was withheld from slaves to not only prevent the dismantling of white supremacist ideologies, but also to keep the oppressed disenfranchised. Outlawing the education of black people was done intentionally, but not exclusively, to further dehumanize the Negro. When the access to literacy is restricted, it is much easier to convince the general white population that black people cannot possibly be literate, before ever given the opportunity to prove otherwise.  The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself references white men’s uninhibited thoughts on these subjects. For example, in defense of slaughtering a disobedient slave, Mr. Austin Gore said:

Demby had become unmanageable. He was setting a dangerous example to the other slaves,—one which, if suffered to pass without some such demonstration on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion of all rule and order upon the plantation. He argued that if one slave refused to be corrected, and escaped with his life, the other slaves would soon copy the example; the result of which would be, the freedom of the slaves, and the enslavement of the whites. (Douglass 20)

He uses two primary white supremacist tropes. Mr. Gore plays off the idea that treating slaves, and furthermore any oppressed class, as if they possess human dignity, will humanize them and lead them to seek rebellion.  He also utilized the fear tactic that oppressed people will surpass the desire for equality, and will seek the same dominant position the oppressor currently holds.  These ideas are also echoed by Mr. Auld’s words to his wife after discovering she had been teaching Frederick Douglass the alphabet:

To use his own words, further, he said, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger

(speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.” (Douglass 29)

As Douglass became more educated, he began to agree with Mr. Auld. The white man understands that, to keep the Negro ignorant, is to keep him subdued. Literacy exposed slaves to the rights they were denied, to the treatment they were denied, and to the lives they deserved to have. It was this access to literacy that allowed Douglass to see how utterly abhorrently slaves were treated, it motivated him to write, it is what granted him the agency to voice his thoughts, and it gave him the platform to discuss the matter of abolition with Abraham Lincoln.  

When the oppressed is kept denied enlightenment, they know not what they don’t know. This is why the United States has continued to suppress black literacy.  “The Role of Parent Education and Parenting Knowledge in Children’s Language and Literacy Skills among White, Black, and Latino Families” found that “one way to eliminate socioeconomic status achievement gaps in children’s early language and literacy skills may be to focus on parents’ knowledge of child development (Rowe 1).”  One way to improve minority literacy would be to implement programs that educate parents on child development.  However, Jeffrey Shulman argues that:

What slave masters knew firsthand—that, in Douglass’s phrase, “knowledge makes a [person] unfit to be a slave”—was no secret to their nineteenth- and twentieth-century successors: They fought the efforts of the Freedmen’s Bureau to establish public schools during Reconstruction; they closed their own public schools after Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), prohibited de jure public school segregation. Having denied access to literacy on racial grounds, they then made literacy a prerequisite to full participation in the political life of our nation. (A Right)  

He points out that basing school funding on property taxes intentionally creates educational disparities, and is de facto segregation (Shulman). Thus, another approach to bridging the literacy gap would be to increase funding to black schools. However, this serves to uphold white standards of literacy.

Black literacy can be understood in two ways: literacy as utilized by black people and as black people’s ability to conform to “white literacy.” The history of black literacy is rooted in oral traditions. Black literacy involves Negro Spirituals and Hip-hop, primarily genres that are not held in high regard by white people. Navigating white literacy is an important skill to possess in America; it signals to the majority white population that one is intelligent, educated, and worthy of being listened to.

Works Cited

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Written by Himself. Newcastle Group, 2014.

Gates, Henry Louis, and Valerie Smith. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 3rd ed., vol. 1 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.

Rowe, Meredith L., et al. “The Role of Parent Education and Parenting Knowledge in Childrens Language and Literacy Skills among White, Black, and Latino Families.” Infant and Child Development, vol. 25, no. 2, 2015, pp. 198–220., doi:10.1002/icd.1924.

Shulman , Jeffrey. “A Right to Literacy as the ‘Pathway from Slavery to Freedom’?” National Constitution Center – Constitutioncenter.org, 3 Aug. 2018, constitutioncenter.org/blog/a-right-to-literacy-as-the-pathway-from-slavery-to-freedom.

#frederick douglass #phillis wheatley