Our History

Recently the President traveled to Virginia to commemorate the Jamestown settlement and the first legislative meeting held there in 1619. He was celebrating 400 years of democracy on this continent, that 400 years earlier the first legislative meeting was held in the Jamestown colony.

The first English settlers had reached Jamestown about 10 years earlier. Most of them had been gentlemen unused to working the land or doing much of anything else for themselves. They were accustomed to having others – laborers and servants – do the work of maintaining them. One part of the workforce in the new colony consisted of what were known as "indentured servants." These were impoverished English people, some of them petty criminals, who were offered a choice between going to prison or shipping out to the colonies in the New World. Indentured servants served without getting paid from 7 to 10 or more years to pay for their passage and their food and clothing. After serving that time they would be free and be given a piece of land to farm for themselves.

The other part of the workforce consisted of black Africans who were bound for Bermuda on a slave ship that pirates captured and unloaded in Jamestown.

For the first 50 years the White indentured English and Black Africans lived and worked side-by-side (and sometimes married) pretty much under the same conditions as indentured servants. By 1660 legislation passed by the new legislative assembly-- so recently celebrated by our current president-- imposed on the Africans the status of slaves, a lifetime condition. Once a slave always a slave. The children of slaves were similarly enslaved for their lifetime. This legislation created a body of workers who labored year in year out without getting any reward for their work. Their work served to enrich the gentlemen in the Jamestown colony as well as the wealthy investors back in England who had financed the ships and equipment to found the colony in the expectation of rich rewards.

Barely hanging on for the first 10 or 15 years, the colony began to thrive when tobacco was first planted in Virginia. The soil and climate turned out to be favorable and the indentured servants, black and white, could be made to do the hard work in the tobacco fields.

The land needed to raise all this tobacco was taken – stolen – from the Native Americans who lived in the area. Many different tribes, organized into a powerful coalition, lived where the English colonists chose to settle. Initially welcomed by the native inhabitants, relations between the English and the local inhabitants soon soured and more than once erupted into bloody warfare. The colonists received instructions from England to convert the native peoples to Anglicanism and to civilize them in the ways of the English. The authors of these instructions did not see the irony of stealing people's land and then ordering the thieves to civilize the victims who had been robbed by teaching them the ways of the thieves.

This irony has been with us ever since. White Americans have ravaged the lives of the descendants of Black Africans and the descendants of the Native Americans and taken their own inhumanity as a sign of White superiority. Appropriating the land of the one and the ability to work of the other, White Americans have become very rich at the expense of people who are not White. They have shamelessly interpreted their success in exploiting other human beings as a sign of moral and even spiritual superiority.

The Jamestown assembly, the precursor of the US Congress and of the varied institutions of the United States government, in passing the first Black Codes defining slavery as a lifetime condition of utter deprivation set the precedent for later American legislatures that to this day, for instance by demanding picture IDs for voting, deny the humanity and the citizenship rights of Black and Native Americans. Successor legislatures to the Jamestown assembly have only managed to expand the range of peoples insulted and exploited and treated as less than human than White Americans.

That Donald Trump, arch racist, should celebrate that institution is not surprising. We, on the contrary should mourn it. In Jamestown, North America got off to a really bad start. We have never recovered from that. The efforts of many people to overcome this terrible heritage have only had very limited success so far.

                           Slavery and the Holocaust

 
Twenty-four states in the US have Holocaust museums. In many of these 24 states there is more than one Holocaust Memorial. A Museum of American slavery is just about to open in Louisiana. It is the first one.

It is tempting to respond to this fact by comparing the suffering of slaves and the death toll of slavery to the suffering and deaths of the victims of Nazi genocide. But it is inhumane to enter into a debate as to which  group has suffered more.

Instead we need to recognize why memorials to slavery are so rare and of recent origin even though the parallels between slavery, between genocide of Native Americans and the Holocaust have been a familiar trope for quite a while. Book titles such as  American Holocaust are familiar.

But Americans are understandably reluctant to explore the terrific suffering imposed on slaves because white Americans imposed those sufferings. Whites alive today often refuse to have anything to do with slavery. They complain about affirmative action programs by saying that they, after all, did not own slaves. Slavery has nothing to do with them and, by implication, the aftermath of slavery, which is still very much with us, has nothing to do with them either.

Others, a large majority, simply do not pay any attention to slavery and to the centuries-old struggle of African-Americans for recognition of their humanity--a struggle that is still very much ongoing.

Liberals often acknowledge that slavery did exist for 300 years (if we include, as we should, the regime of Jim Crow between the end of the Civil War and the 1960s, 100 years later.) and propose some wildly inappropriate remedy. Harvard University has placed a plaque on one of its buildings with the names of four slaves owned by a previous president of the University. Names or images referring to slavery and oppression are being changed.

But such acts have more to do with public relations than anything else. The incredible suffering imposed on slaves when they were sold away from their families, from wives,  from husbands and children, from fathers and mothers, the blatant brutality of enforcing quotas of pounds of cotton picked per day, the merciless flogging of those who did not meet their quotas, the rape of slave women by their owners or their families, the shame of being examined naked in the slave market, the denigration as savage when law prohibited teaching slaves to read and write--none of those are addressed by plaques and changed logos. Such public relation moves only trivialize the suffering of slaves.

This orgy of brutality produced immense wealth from the triangular trade to the cotton plantations in southern states. American wealth, the astonishing productivity of American capitalism owe their origin to the misery, to the ceaseless hard physical labor of generations of African-American slaves.

After centuries of repeated resistance in slave uprisings and in small acts of sabotage, in  national demonstrations and in quiet assertions of their dignity, some African Americans have gained good work and a middle-class incomes. But the majority is still struggling to get a decent education, to get decent work and to be accorded respect as human beings.
We probably need more museums of slavery. More importantly, we need a widespread recognition on the part of Whites in America that they are indebted for their high standard of living to the African-Americans who often do not share that standard of living. Whites in America owe a great debt. That debt is not paid by installing a plaque on a Harvard University building or by changing the logo of a university.

It is true that the present generation of white Americans does not own slaves. But it is also true that they are inheriting the wealth produced by slavery and are  for that reason under a heavy obligation to repay the descendants of slaves.

Reparations have been discussed for a long time. Obviously it involves money. One suggestion is that the gap in property ownership between whites and blacks--prominently the gap in home ownership-- be removed through payments to Blacks. There are many other proposals. For a number of years, Rep. Conyers has tried to introduce a bill in Congress to appoint a commission to study  reparations. Congress has never taken up that bill. The predominantly white Congress does not even want to think about reparations.

Congress does not want to consider reparations, even to study and debate, because they understand that “more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe . . .  [reparations involve] . . . a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history. (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/)

Conversations about Race 

 

In the present situation of great upset about racial killings, racial inequities, overt displays of anti-black racism, we hear a great deal about the need for conversation. A good example is a recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education, a publication read by college and university administrators and faculty. The story reported a meeting where 300 diversity officers discussed the racial climate on campus. The suggestion was made repeatedly that campuses needed to organize opportunities for white students to have conversations where they could learn what it was like to be black in the United States today.

This seems reasonable. Until some black friends explained to me the condition of African-Americans in the United States, I did not really understand the gravity of our racial situation. White people often just don't know.

At the same time, one must understand that passing on information in conversations will not be enough to improve racial justice in our country. Giving information to people who do not want to learn is useless. Every teacher knows that. You can put important facts before students and many of them will not learn anything because they don't want to learn. History suggests some reasons for white Americans being so reluctant to apprehend the facts about racism in America.

The Founders, men like Jefferson and Washington, who determined that a Black slave was not to count for more than 3/5 of the most abject white human being knew perfectly well what they were doing. They both owned slaves. Neither of them thought that owning slaves was morally acceptable. They knew that they were compromising their high political principles. They did, in fact, talk and correspond a good deal about the moral failure of owning slaves, but did not change their behavior. Their economic interest pushed them to go against their moral principles. Slaves provided cheap labor. In a time when all work was done by hand, refusing to have slaves meant that one had to pay people to work on the farm or in the house. Paid help was more expensive than slave help. Without slaves, one would have fewer servants and thus a more cramped style of living. Economic interest was a strong support for the institution of slavery.

But it was not the only support for racism. There are other reasons why Whites refuse to grasp the ravages of racism. Once again history helps us to understand that.

The first black men and women arrived in Virginia in 1609 – just about 400 years ago. Until the 1670s both black and white servants were indentured. In order to work off the cost of their voyage to the new world, they were committed to be servants for a set period. Their indenture at an end, they would be given a piece of land and supplies, including a gun, regardless of whether they were black or white. More often than not, the land they received was marginal.

Racism was widespread among the English immigrants; slavery was not unknown. From the middle of the 17^th century on, some blacks were enslaved. But that process of converting the temporary indentured servant status of Blacks to the permanent status of slaves accelerated after 1676. In that year, in Bacon's Rebellion, former indentured servants, both black and white together, rose up in Virginia to protest their land being in the foothills, and less fertile than the land of their previous masters. The rebellion was put down but afterwards the white masters encouraged the institution of slavery to drive a wedge between white and black pioneer farmers. Political rather than purely economic motives supported the development of slavery and the anti-black racism that accompanied it.

330 years later racism has become very much part of the flesh and bone of the American. Whites who are not wealthy and of high status have learned to reconcile themselves to their low condition by glorying in their whiteness, in the fact that they are not black. Racism serves a political purpose to keep large numbers of less favored Whites content. But our society, having changed a great deal in the last 330 years, now has an economy that is unable to provide jobs for everyone in the country. Racism that incarcerates large number of young black men and some black women restricts the number of job seekers and thereby serves an economic function. It reduces the opposition to prevailing economic practices.

White men and women may get a job that also has black applicants simply because they are white. That gives whites a serious economic advantage, especially when jobs are scarce. The racism that supports those practices is not going to be extinguished by having conversations about race.

As long as it is to someone's advantage to be racist, that blot on our national identity will remain. Conversations about racism will have very limited effect because Whites derive advantages—economic, political and psychological—from racism. Ours will remain a country plagued by racism until we have changed our economy to provide enough good work for everyone. Until everyone has work and lives, that they can be justly proud of, whites will bolster their self-esteem by oppressing blacks and other groups—Hispanics, immigrants, homosexuals.

Slavery and Guilt

An upcoming PBS special "Traces of the Trade: a Story from the Deep North" chronicles the trip taken by 10 members of the DeWolfe family to visit the slave castles in Ghana
and places in Cuba. Their family had traded slaves from Ghana and used them in their Cuban sugar plantations in the 19th century. The documentary is based on a book written by one of the members of this family, Katrina Browne, uncovering the family's history in the trafficking in human beings.

According to one man who went on this journey, James DeWolfe Perry V, people who had read the book or seen the documentary asked him whether he felt any guilt because his ancestors were slavers. He responds: "I don't feel guilty about what my ancestors did, because I didn't do it."

That seems right. It is unreasonable to feel guilt about things one did not do. What is more, guilt often paralyzes people. The guilty indulge in endless self accusation that keep them from taking action to repair the damage done, wherever possible. Guilt can, however, take more positive forms. Instead of an emotion that paralyzes, guilt, at its best, is an eagerness to make amends, to help those one has harmed, and to improve oneself to do better in the future.

The slave trade is a thing of the past -- or almost so. Last week a very rich couple in New York was convicted of keeping their undocumented household help as virtual slaves. There is still a trade in women destined to end up as prostitutes. They, too, are virtually enslaved.

But the slave system as it existed until the Civil War and, for all practical purposes, for another hundred years after that, it is now no longer with us. Feeling guilt about what is past is unproductive.

But to the extent that the after effects of the slave system are still with us, all of us deserve to feel guilt -- not the guilt that paralyzes by self accusation, but the guilt that wants to change the world and also ourselves for the better.

Yes, to be sure the Democratic party has nominated a black man to be its presidential candidate. Other black men and women hold positions of leadership in business, in government, in the arts and in local communities. At the same time, average black Americans earn less, own less wealth, and are more likely to end up in prison, or to receive second-rate medical care when they are sick than many white people. Slavery may be a thing of the past but its effects are still with us.

Its effects are with us in a second way. The descendants of the DeWolfe family travels to Africa and to Cuba to retrace some of its family history. People on welfare usually don't undertake that kind of travel. That family and many others still profit from the slave trading of their ancestors. So do American institutions. Another Rhode Island family, the Browns, became wealthy in the slave trade and endowed a college which is now known as Brown University. The students and faculty at that college are still the beneficiaries of the slave trade.

The effects of the slave trade remain are very much with us in the well-being of some and the difficult lives of others.

All of us, including James DeWolfe Perry V, should acknowledge that these inequalities are an important heritage from our slave owning ancestors. We may let them suffer the punishment of a just God. But those of us who profit from the after effects of the slave trade must take responsibility for that and work as hard as we can to end racial discrimination and its many injustices.

Some examples: schools in low income -- and that means frequently black or Hispanic -- neighborhoods often have fewer resources than schools in more affluent neighborhoods. As taxpayers we must resist the agitation for lowering taxes and instead be willing to pay for giving a good education to all children, especially those whose ancestors were enslaved by the ancestors of some of us. We must be willing to provide a halfway decent standard of living to everyone and that involves food, shelter, medical care and access to education.

As long as the effects of slavery endure we must redouble our efforts to overcome them.