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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36586 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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A simple explanation is that it's just hard to pull off, especially without external help.

A much simpler explanation, that applies to both the Romans and the Americas, is that slavery really isn't that bad. Like, don't get me wrong here, it's worse than anything most people experience in their entire lives, it's clearly a net negative and a moral wrong, but it's rarely constant brutality. It wasn't typically Auschwitz, and Primo Levi tells us that even in Auschwitz there were good days and there were bad days.

Selections from WPA Writer's Project collection of Slave Narratives from surviving former slaves

[All SIC, the writers at the time transcribed to the best of their ability the Negro dialect of the time, which was an interesting choice. I'm not sure if it were me I wouldn't write "Hongry" as "Hungry" even if "Hongry" is how she said it. I feel like the choice reflects some degree of condescension, but was looked on as preserving an American folkway. Swings and roundabouts.]

Yes sir, I was ‘bout fourteen years old when President Lincoln set us all free in 1863. The war was still goin’ on and I’m tellin’ you right when I say that my folks and friends round me did not regard freedom as a unmixed blessin’. We didn’t know where to go or what to do, and so we stayed right where we was, and there wasn’t much difference to our livin’, ‘cause we had always had a plenty to eat and wear. I ‘member my mammy tellin’ me that food was gittin’ scarce, and any black folks beginnin’ to scratch for themselves would suffer, if they take their foot in their hand and ramble ‘bout the land lak a wolf. -- Daniel Waring, emancipated in South Carolina

You ain’t gwine to believe dat de slaves on our plantation didn’t stop workin’ for old marster, even when they was told dat they was free. Us didn’t want no more freedom than us was gittin’ on our plantation already. Us knowed too well dat us was well took care of, wid a plenty of vittles to eat and tight log and board houses to live in. De slaves, where I lived, knowed after de war dat they had abundance of dat somethin’ called freedom, what they could not eat, wear, and sleep in. Yes, sir, they soon found out dat freedom ain’t nothin’, ‘less you is got somethin’ to live on and a place to call home. Dis livin’ on liberty is lak young folks livin’ on love after they gits married. It just don’t work. No, sir, it las’ so long and not a bit longer. Don’t tell me! It sho’ don’t hold good when you has to work, or when you gits hongry. You knows dat poor white folks and niggers has got to work to live, regardless of liberty, love, and all them things. --- Ezra Adams, emancipated in South Carolina

I ‘lieve they ought to have gived us somethin’ when we was freed, but they turned us out to graze or starve. Most of the white people turned the Negroes slam loose. We stayed a year with missis and then she married and her husband had his own workers and told us to git out. We worked for twenty and thirty cents a day then, and I fin’ly got a place with Dr. L. J. Conroe. But after the war the Negro had a hard struggle, ‘cause he was turned loose jus’ like he came into the world and no education or ‘sperience. -- Tom Holland, 97, emancipated in Texas

Or consider one of my personal American heroes: Frederick Douglass. From his autobiography Keeping in mind that Douglass was an extraordinary man, look at the slack he was able to find in the slave system:

Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.

The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return. I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge...

I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. I would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men. “You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?” These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be free.

Now compare Marx in Kapital, describing industrial conditions in England (the wealthiest nation in the world contemporary to Douglass' narrative):

“A clause,” says Mr. Otley, manager of a wall-paper factory in the Borough, “which allowed work between, say 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. would suit us (!) very well, but the factory hours, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., are not suitable. Our machine is always stopped for dinner. (What generosity!) ...

The report of the Commission opines with naïveté that the fear of some “leading firms” of losing time, i.e., the time for appropriating the labour of others, and thence losing profit is not a sufficient reason for allowing children under 13, and young persons under 18, working 12 to 16 hours per day, to lose their dinner, nor for giving it to them as coal and water are supplied to the steam-engine, soap to wool, oil to the wheel – as merely auxiliary material to the instruments of labour, during the process of production itself.

Douglass tells us clearly that there existed white children who were jealous of his material condition (bread available!). Certainly the slack available in his workday would have been enviable to thousands of children in Birmingham or London factories, tied to machines 12 hours a day. What hope did the average slave have upon escape? Odds are they wouldn't even be able to achieve the station of those laborers who worked 16 hour days in a factory!

Douglass tells us further:

A slave who would work during the holidays was considered by our masters as scarcely deserving them. He was regarded as one who rejected the favor of his master. It was deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas; and he was regarded as lazy indeed, who had not provided himself with the necessary means, during the year, to get whisky enough to last him through Christmas. From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the slaveholders at once to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest doubt it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves. These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for these, the slave would be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe betide the slaveholder, the day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation of those conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a spirit will go forth in their midst, more to be dreaded than the most appalling earthquake. The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the benevolence of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon the down-trodden slave. They do not give the slaves this time because they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it.

Slavery was not a perpetual torture, it was a mode of life, sometimes good and sometimes bad, with sufficient slack in it that a person could "get ahead" to a certain extent. There were happy slaves and sad slaves, lucky slaves and unlucky slaves, hard working slaves and improvident slaves. They had goals, piddling goals but goals nonetheless, they had families and connections, they had food and shelter and clothing.

But there was a ceiling over it all. Mental slavery was the use of goals like "obtain master's favor for lighter work and more bread" and "get enough money put by here and there to get drunk at Christmas" to substitute for goals like "obtain freedom and independence of means" (many slaves did put by enough to purchase their own freedom) and "protect my family."

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