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Race, Slavery and Freedom in the Black Atlantic World. Making of the Modern World Dr Lydia Plath. Key questions:. Is race “real”? How have black people experienced “race” since slavery? What did “freedom” mean to formerly enslaved people?
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Race, Slavery and Freedom in the Black Atlantic World Making of the Modern World Dr Lydia Plath
Key questions: • Is race “real”? • How have black people experienced “race” since slavery? • What did “freedom” mean to formerly enslaved people? • How has “blackness” been conceptualised by black people?
Martin Luther King’s “dream” (1963) – and the myth of “colourblindness” • “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”
Is race “real”? Social “construction” / “invention” / “idea” Historically and culturally contingent Lived reality of racism
Afua Hirsch on being “Brit(ish)” (2018) • “I remember very clearly a warm autumn day, sitting under the breeze of a horse chestnut tree, baked by the long weeks of the summer holiday, with my school friends aged fourteen. One girl looked at me, a slight tone of pity in her voice, and said, ‘Don’t worry, Af, we don’t see you as black.’ The others concurred. I remember their faces; kind, accommodating, distancing themselves proudly from any possibility that they could be accused of being racist, and at the same time willing to overlook the problem my very existence created. This act of kindness is one of the most traumatic things that has ever happened to me. . . It felt like my friends were erasing my very identity, all the while claiming to be doing me a favour.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on discovering she is “black” (2017) • “I discovered I was black when I came to the US. I would say, “I’m not black, I’m Nigerian.” I did that for maybe a year. And I realised even that, my reaction, was an indictment of American racism. Because obviously I’m black, but because I realised that America’s understanding of black was so loaded with negativity, I thought no, I don’t want that.”
Stuart Hall on race, immigration and identity • “Already the young immigrant is trying to span the gap between Britain and home … There is the identity which belongs to the part of him that is West Indian, or Pakistani or Indian … there is also the identity of ‘the young Englander’ toward which every new experience beckons … somehow he must learn to reconcile his two identities and make them one. But many of the avenues into wider society are closed to him … The route back is closed. But so too is the route forward.” (1967) • “The trouble is that the instant one learns to be ‘an immigrant’, one recognizes one can't be an immigrant any longer: it isn't a tenable place to be. I then went through the long, important, political education of discovering that I am ‘black’.” (1996) • ‘I'd never called myself black ever in my life, nor did most people … lots of people who were black did not think of themselves in the way in which people after the late '60s came to think of themselves as black. So it was a discovery for me.” (2009)
W. E. B. Du Bois on how it feels to be a “problem” (1903) • “I remember well when the shadow swept across me. … it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt … Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.” • “the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
Olaudah Equiano on his first encounter with white people (1789) • “I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, (which was very different from any I had ever heard) united to confirm me in this belief . . . When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate . . . I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and loose hair.” • “I asked them if these people had no country, but lived in this hollow place (the ship): they told me they did not, but came from a distant one. 'Then,' said I, 'how comes it in all our country we never heard of them?' They told me because they lived so very far off. . . I asked how the vessel could go? they told me they could not tell; but that there were cloths put upon the masts by the help of the ropes I saw, and then the vessel went on; and the white men had some spell or magic they put in the water when they liked in order to stop the vessel. I was exceedingly amazed at this account, and really thought they were spirits. I therefore wished much to be from amongst them, for I expected they would sacrifice me: but my wishes were vain.”
Frederick Douglass on ‘The Meaning of July Fourth to the Negro’ (1852) • “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.” • “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
Tom W. Woods on the difference between poor whites and enslaved people (1930s) • “Us darkies was taught dat poor white folks didn’t amount to much. Course we knoweddey was white and we was black and dey was to be respected for dat, but dat was about all.”
Formerly enslaved people on the meaning of “freedom” in the US • “Liberty and Freedom was all I ever heard any colored folks say dey expected to get out of de war, and mighty proud of dot. . . Didn’t nobody want land, they jess wanted freedom.” (Wylie Nealy, South Carolina, 1930s) • Mama said, “You fool, you is free!” I didn’t know what freedom was, but I know the soldiers did a lot of devilment. . . Course we ought to be free you know privilege is worth everything. (Susa Lagrone, Mississippi, 1930s) • Coase I rather be free den a slave, but we never have so much worryations den as people have dese days. (Charlie Davis, South Carolina, 1930s)
Formerly enslaved people on the limitations of “freedom” in the US • “I never freed myself, & was doing well before freedom came about, since which time I have & had no one to look to, for assistance & have fared worse than I ever did in all my life & now starvation, seems at length to be the price I & my helpless children must pay for freedom, a bargain I had no hand in making- freedom is to us, but permission to go naked & starve & none to help” (Gillie Arrington, Virginia 1866) • “De slaves, where I lived, knowed after de war dat they had abundance of datsomethin’ called freedom, what they could not eat, wear, and sleep in. Yes, sir, they soon found out dat freedom ain’tnothin’, ‘less you is got somethin’ to live on and a place to call home. . . You knows dat poor white folks and n****rs has got to work to live, regardless of liberty, love, and all them things.” (Ezra Adams, South Carolina, 1930s) • “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, South Carolina, 1930s)
James Williams on apprenticeship in Jamaica (1837) • “Apprentices get a great deal more punishment now than they did when they was slaves; the master take spite, and do all he can to hurt them before the free come;-I have heard my master say, "Those English devils say we to be free, but if we is to free, he will pretty well weaken we, before the six and the four years done; we shall be no use to ourselves afterwards." Apprentices a great deal worse off for provision than before-time; magistrate take away their day, and give to the property; massa give we no salt allowance, and no allowance at Christmas; since the new law begin, he only give them two mackarel,-that was one time when them going out to job. When I was a slave, I never flogged,-I sometimes was switched, but not badly; but since the new law begin, I have been flogged seven times, and put in the house of correction four times.”
Malcolm X on being African in America (1964) • “Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet. . . Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. . . No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism.” • “Right now, in this country, if you and I, 22 million African-Americans -- that's what we are -- Africans who are in America. You're nothing but Africans. Nothing but Africans. In fact, you'd get farther calling yourself African instead of Negro. Africans don't catch hell. You're the only one catching hell. They don't have to pass civil-rights bills for Africans. An African can go anywhere he wants right now. All you've got to do is tie your head up. That's right, go anywhere you want. Just stop being a Negro.”
Marcus Garvey on the “Back to Africa” campaign (1921) • “the Universal Negro Improvement Association is an organization that seeks to unite, into one solid body, the four hundred million Negroes in the world. To link up the fifty million Negroes in the United States of America, with the twenty million Negroes of the West Indies, the forty million Negroes of South and Central America, with the two hundred and eighty million Negroes of Africa, for the purpose of bettering our industrial, commercial, educational, social, and political conditions.” • “If you believe that the Negro has a soul, if you believe that the Negro is a man, if you believe the Negro was endowed with the senses commonly given to other men by the Creator, then you must acknowledge that what other men have done, Negroes can do. We want to build up cities, nations, governments, industries of our own in Africa, so that we will be able to have a chance to rise from the lowest to the highest position in the African Commonwealth.”
Stokely Carmichael on “black power” (1966) • “We are now engaged in a psychological struggle in this country about whether or not black people have the right to use the words they want to use without white people giving their sanction. We maintain the use of the words Black Power — let them address themselves to that. We are not going to wait for white people to sanction Black Power. We’re tired of waiting; every time black people try to move in this country, they’re forced to defend their position beforehand. It’s time that white people do that. They ought to start defending themselves as to why they have oppressed and exploited us. . . We are oppressed as a group because we are black, not because we are lazy or apathetic, not because we’re stupid or we stink, not because we eat watermelon or have good rhythm. We are oppressed because we are black.” • “White people associate Black Power with violence because of their own inability to deal with blackness. If we had said “Negro power” nobody would get scared. Everybody would support it. If we said power for colored people, everybody’d be for that, but it is the word “black” that bothers people in this country, and that’s their problem, not mine. That’s the lie that says anything black is bad.”
Nina Simone on Freedom (1968) and being “Young, Gifted and Black” (1969) • To be young, gifted and black,Oh what a lovely precious dreamTo be young, gifted and black,Open your heart to what I mean • In the whole world you knowThere are billion boys and girlsWho are young, gifted and black,And that's a fact! • Young, gifted and blackWe must begin to tell our youngThere's a world waiting for youThis is a quest that's just begun • When you feel really lowYeah, there's a great truth you should knowWhen you're young, gifted and blackYour soul's intact • Young, gifted and blackHow I long to know the truthThere are times when I look backAnd I am haunted by my youth • Oh but my joy of todayIs that we can all be proud to sayTo be young, gifted and blackIs where it's at
Farrukh Dhondy on the British Black Panthers and “Political Blackness” in the 1970s and 1980s (2018) • “They were not talking back to Africa black nationalism. They were talking about how do we find a place in British society here, all the rights that we should have. . . they recruited me to the movement and I soon became a member of the central core. There was no colourism in the black panther movement, obviously there were no white members. There were supporters, associates, but the membership was basically Asian and black. They saw it as a common fight against the ex-colonial masters.” • “I think [the backlash against “political blackness” is] the most disgraceful thing that has happened to our ex colonial community. . . . It's a kind of, a kind of nationalism has taken over. There was such a strong back to Africa movement that we are Africans and we have African culture this that and the other.”
MolefiKete Asante on “Afrocentricity” (2009) • “We know that Africans have thought about the universe longer than any other people. The people of the world have been black longer than any other color. In fact philosophy itself originated in Africa and the first philosophers in the world were Africans. The African tradition is intertwined with the earliest thought.” • “As a cultural configuration, the Afrocentric idea is distinguished by five characteristics: • an intense interest in psychological location as determined by symbols, motifs, rituals, and signs. • a commitment to finding the subject-place of Africans in any social, political, economic, or religious phenomenon with implications for questions of sex, gender, and class. • a defense of African cultural elements as historically valid in the context of art, music, and literature. • a celebration of “centeredness” and agency and a commitment to lexical refinement that eliminates pejoratives about Africans or other people. • a powerful imperative from historical sources to revise the collective text of African people.”
Frank B. Wilderson III on “Afro-Pessimism” (2010) • “The Afro-pessimists are theorists of Black positionality who share Fanon’s insistence, that though Blacks are sentient, the structure of the entire world’s semantic field…is sutured by anti-black solidarity” • “Whereas Humans exist on some plane of being and thus can become existentially present through some struggle for, of, or through recognition, Blacks cannot reach this plane”
Black Lives Matter across the Atlantic Chris Ofili, Union Black (2003) David Hammons,Untitled (African-American Flag) (1990)
Key questions: • Is race “real”? • How have black people experienced “race” since slavery? • What did “freedom” mean to formerly enslaved people, and what does it mean to black people today? • How has “blackness” been conceptualised by black people?
