What We Talk About When We Talk About Slavery
Dr. Prince Brown, Jr.
Directory, Institute for Freedom Studies
A little over four months ago at a full meeting of the membership of the Institute for Freedom Studies (IFS) it was agreed that we should focus this and the spring issue of The Freedom Chronicle on the subject of slavery. The intent is to frame the context of slavery to better understand, interpret and explain the complexity of the social milieu that spawned and gave rise to what became known as the Underground Railroad (UGRR) movement. As discussion and dialogue around this decision progressed, we realized that the question of slavery and its impact needed more extensive treatment then would be achieved in three or four short articles. We intend, therefore, to treat the subject on an ongoing basis in subsequent issues of the Chronicle. In short, in this and subsequent issues we'll address the following questions: What is slavery? How did its practice permeate and become so integral to American culture? And what is its legacy for present- day American society?
Recently, an intense interest has developed about the UGRR in the public, lay, and academic arena that is much welcomed and long overdue. There is, however, a tendency to romanticize it as another sterling example of the American love of freedom without an equal emphasis on its root causes. This interest arises despite the fact that scholars have still not produced an explanation and interpretation of the institution of slavery that leads to collective agreement of what it was and is – and, to the resolution of problems that were inherent in its practice (legal subordination) and which constitute its legacy (racism, unequal education, poverty, urban strife). The new- found interest in the UGRR provides an opportunity to address the nation’s historically conscious exclusion of almost any treatment of slavery from popular and academic accounts of its history. For example, at every place and every time where slavery arose, it found its antithesis in that very same society. The fact that it came to be the core institution shaping the social landscape of so many modern societies is testimony to its appeal on the minds of the social elite who could have chosen an alternative form of economic organization.
What are we to understand given that the subjugation of the less powerful emerged as the primary form of social organization, even as the world’s best known thinkers developed and offered the philosophy of the equality of all people? Further, the institutionalization of inequality based on race evolved in their most virulent forms in those same societies (i.e., the American colonies) that professed themselves to be in the forefront of the pursuit of freedom. Ambiguity arises when and only because our principles/ideals serve more of an esthetic than they do a practical function. The history of race relations in the United States renders this observation beyond debate. It is what sociologists call a social fact. Consequently, if a society collectively is not committed to its stated ideals – then, whatever might develop can be rationalized and embraced (i.e., slavery). How is one to explain the fact that the document that champions freedom and serves as the foundation of American political society, the Constitution, made special concessions to the slaveholding class of society? One hundred and forty-seven years after the Constitution, a privately commissioned study, An American Dilemma, was widely ignored (even within the academic community), with its conclusion that Americans praised the ideals (freedom, equality, fraternity) of its governing documents, while ignoring what was being practiced (state- sanctioned inequity). Despite the fact that the work was based on the most rigorous scientific analysis of data available at the time, there was no significant effort to move its findings to the larger society from the research arena.
The earliest known document that attempts to lay out the boundaries and conditions of slavery is the Seite Partidas. Its origin is traced to the Iberian Peninsula around AD 1260, which predates the European penetration of Africa south of the Sahara. The document attempts to define “the status of the slave and his master’s obligations to him.” It defines servitude as:
an agreement and regulation which people established in ancient times, by which men who were originally free became slaves and were subjected to the authority of others "contrary to natural reason." The institution of slavery was seen as “the most evil and the most despicable thing which can be found among men." Recognizing that "all creatures in the world love and desire liberty," the Siete Partidas held that "all of the laws of the world should lead towards freedom."
It should be noted that this statement contradicts Aristotle's assertions that there are natural slaves. Aristotle is often the authority cited by some researchers when suggesting that we should appreciate the intellectual power of arguments made by proslavery advocates/owners even (it is supposed) if we do not agree with its practice. Such views add to the confusion and misunderstanding about slavery by the lay and professional communities.
In a work often cited on the subject of slavery, Orlando Patterson implies that somehow because the Romans were great jurists, slavery is rendered more understandable. According to Patterson, because we do not understand what he terms the logic of contradiction (a philosophically intriguing phrase which, however, does not carry the weight of science), we do not understand how someone committed to the ideal of freedom could simultaneous embrace the practice of slavery. Ergo, we have Thomas Jefferson and his increasingly problematic persona as the embodiment of freedom and the collective American consciousness. Jefferson's racist views and his unflattering opinions of free and enslaved Africans are clearly evident through his own writings and behavior. He is, as someone has paraphrased, the country's most widely admired slaveholding philosopher of freedom. The effort in popular renditions of American history to portray Jefferson as an icon of freedom and democracy increasingly leaves readers confused and unsure about how they should view slavery’s impact in shaping American culture. Slavery, after all, is not a generic state of being; it is a socially imposed condition.
Another idea in Patterson is that slavery was a necessary stage in the evolution of forms of economic organization and that we could not know freedom without having experienced slavery. Here, again, a conclusion is drawn from a careful consideration of the historical record that may not be accurate. What is missing from the historical record is a systematic study of those small societies that practiced cooperative economics and avoided the horrors of slavery as the world has known it. Slavery’s association with militarism and the quest for empire is also well documented. Further, the suggestion that slavery has a beneficial and benign aspect is philosophically appealing but analytically insupportable. The key word from Patterson is economics. It draws attention to the inescapable connection between slavery (privilege, wealth, and power) and free (social parity) modes of production. Colonization and slavery had but one aim: to create surplus wealth for the social elite at the expense of those who performed the labor. People in power make conscious decisions, as reflected in law and custom, as to how they will relate to the less fortunate. It is not fate but choice that determines the structure of relations in society. Slavery, contrary to what is sometimes suggested, did not just emerge as an unintended outcome of the individual and group interaction. Rather, it emerged in that most conscious and deliberative of all gatherings: courts of law. To be sure, it was practiced before it was deliberated -- but its conscious, formal institutionalization removes it from the realm of blameless developments.
It remains to be determined whether some forms of subjugation are to be labeled as slavery. That this issue has been left unresolved provides another avenue down which those who try to rationalize slavery's impact in the Americas often retreat. We often read that Africans were enslaving their own long before Europeans arrived in sub-Sahara Africa. That subjugation was a feature of African societies should not have been surprising. It is practiced in all known societies. European interaction with Africans resulted in two outcomes not previously associated with human subjugation. It made subjugation (slavery) the business of the world for the next 500 years and added the stigma of race (that is, possessing African features became equated with being a slave). A strong argument can be made that European writers and researchers confused African kinship systems with the concept of human property central to ancient Greek, Roman and Middle Age European societies. There were several important cultural distinctions, which marked subjugation in Africa and that followed in the age of European exploration and colonization of the peoples they encountered. The denial of all legal rights was a uniquely European invention, which applied particularly to protestant countries. In African societies subjugated persons shared the same household as those who controlled them; could marry into the family; had personal freedom of movement; had children who did not automatically inherit their status; had rights that had to be respected; and could and did, become highly respected members of their communities. Their humanity was never questioned, and they did not generally conclude that running away was a necessary or appropriate response to their differential status.
Subordination in African societies was an integral aspect of native kinship systems with duties and obligations extending down as well as up. It would seem that there is something to be understood between those societies in which subjugation rested on the direct and unsupervised use of physical force (involuntary), and those in which persons functioned within the culture (voluntary) based on socialized norms, beliefs, and values. Property-based chattel slavery in the Americas reduced human beings to just another class of livestock -- subject totally to the whims of their private owners.
In the so-called New World, and in particularly the colonies that became the United States, slavery's institutionalization took on a particularly odious cast. Here, it developed as the pseudoscience of race and was offered as a biological fact readily accepted by society's privileged sector. The long-held popular view of enslaved persons as happy and accepting of their lowly status is refuted by any objective review of the historical record. The first settlement involving slaves within what was to become the United States ended with a successful revolt with the enslaved persons being assisted by Native Americans. Thus, it might be argued that the UGRR movement started with this first settlement with Native Americans as the first Abolitionists. The UGRR refers to the effort by enslaved Africans to liberate themselves from bondage, sometimes with assistance, by running away to a free state or to another country.
The institution of slavery in the Americas was established and maintained by violence. The overwhelming evidence of this truth is to be found in slavery-era newspaper advertisements written by slave owners attempting to re-enslave their runaway "property." The use of violence in this manner could well be labeled "civil militarism." It was carried out primarily by civilians not legally authorized to use force, but who did so without consequences. Civil militarism was backed up by elected/appointed law enforcement officials, state militias and the national military. Violence was the first and most frequent response to any attempt by Africans to behave in a manner that they would choose rather than as whites would have them do. Africans were only to act and speak within socially assigned roles and places, the essence of which was to be a Negro: the imaginary embodiment that whites created and used to judge free and enslaved persons of African descent. Alex Bontemps argues that in order to survive enslavement, Africans had to act like a Negro without actually becoming one. That is, act in ways that avoided physical harm (defer to whites) without internalizing the mind set (self inferiority) that the behavior implied. On the other hand, slavery produced in whites a form of self- deception which had the effect of justifying enslaving the other (Africans and Native Americans). Europeans viewed themselves as innately superior human beings and, therefore, their social privilege was/is the logical outcome of this claim.
Privilege in society (regardless of effort) continues to reflect the color hierarchy, and the beliefs, and values nurtured in the crucible of a culture with slavery at its foundation. Slavery's legacy and the aftermath of the UGRR movement, legal segregation--is the racial violence that mars the American landscape on a daily basis. This legacy shapes and molds the collective psyche of Americans in ways that preclude the resolution of long-standing issues of race. To continue to deny slavery's impact is to continue to embrace a racially fragmented society. Democracy for all will remain an elusive goal rather than becoming the reality that all Americans are taught to proclaim. Most recently, UNESCO has issued a called for educational institutions to require including the study of slavery in the curriculum at all levels. This call gives greater urgency and legitimacy to the effort being proposed here.
1 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Volumes I and II, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1944.
2 See Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White Gods: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976, p. 86.
3 See Eugene D. Genovese, The Slaveholders' Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820-1860, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C., 1992.
4 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: a Comparative Study, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982, p.ix.
5 See John C. Miller, The Wolf By the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 1991, pp. 38-59.
6 Orlando Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, Basic Books, New York, NY, 1991.
7 The reference here is to indigenous African cultural practices and is intended to exclude the influence of external forces such as Islam.
8 John Grace, Domestic Slavery in West Africa, Frederick Muller Limited, London, 1975. See in particular pages 1-17. Note that these are largely accounts offered by outsiders unfamiliar with the cultures they were trying to characterize. They do provide a sense of the complexity of the societies,however.
9 See Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, International Publishers, CO., INC., New York, 1963, p. 163. For a poignant description of the use of this mode of survival behavior by African descendants years after the end of slavery in the era of legal segregation, see "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow" in Richard Wright's Uncle Tom's Children, Harper Perennial, New York, 1993, pp. 1-16.
10 Alex Bontemps, The Punished Self: Surviving Slavery in the Colonial South, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2001, pp. 137-153.
11 See the program brochure, Slavery and Freedom in the New England, The 1st National Meeting of the U.S. Partnership UNESCO Transatlantic slave Trade Education Project. The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, July 25-28, 2002.
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