racismreview.com

This commentary was prepared for this site by Roy L. Brooks, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law

On July 29th, the House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for centuries of American slavery and another 100 years of racial segregation mandated and sanctioned by the federal government’s Jim Crow laws. This first-time-ever resolution holds forth the promise of a post-atonement America; a society marked by racial healing and reconciliation.

But envisioning a post-atonement American is not easy. The difficulty does not lie in visualizing the acts of atonement themselves. Other governments have atoned for their past atrocities, including Germany (for its persecution of Jewish and other the victims of the Holocaust) and South Africa (for its subordination and murder of blacks under Apartheid). The U. S. government has itself atoned for a least one of its past atrocities. Congress and the President passed legislation in 1988 apologizing for the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Congress and the President made the government’s official apology believable by including in the legislation a $20,0000 reparation to the 60,000 detainees who were alive in 1988.
The problem in envisioning a post-atonement America lies in the more abstract and elusive aspect of understanding the true shift in perception that comes when a person, or in this case a government, feels genuine remorse for the atrocities it has committed.

Like all atrocities, slavery and Jim Crow were not historical accidents or mishaps. Founded upon the principle of liberty, the government of Washington and Jefferson—the government formed under our extant Constitution—denied liberty in a most blatant way. More than that, the U.S. government perpetuated a practice that was clearly in decline. The founding fathers breathed new life into the morally moribund institution of human bondage. Adding insult to injury, slavery was soon followed by a calculated attempt to impose the badges of slavery on 4 million manumitted blacks. Slavery and Jim Crow, in short, were committed knowingly and purposely. The U.S. government was not simply a passive receiver of illicit traditions

The volition with which atrocities of the magnitude of slavery and Jim Crow were conceived and executed raises doubts about the willingness of our government to pursue atonement. Will the government make only a perfunctory effort? Judging by the House Resolution, the early indications are that the government’s atonement might indeed be half-hearted.

Perusing the Resolution, one must come to the sad conclusion that the U.S. government has yet to tender a meaningful apology, let alone propose a single reparation, for slavery or Jim Crow. While Congress and the President have issued a formal, binding legislative apology for the internment of Japanese Americans, the House Resolution offers but a feeble apology. The apology is “nonbinding” and no other organ of government is considering a similar resolution. In addition, while the government’s internment apology was prologue to its internment reparations, the House’s apology is a preface to nothing—it is not followed by a single reparation. Without being backed by reparations, apologies are meaningless. They lack concreteness. Reparations, in other words, turn the rhetoric of apology into a material reality. They make apologies believable, more than mere words.

Curiously, the House Resolution itself makes the case for reparations. It expressly acknowledges not only the “injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity” of slavery, but also that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow are still present today. The victims of Jim Crow are as alive today as were the victims of internment in 1988.

By failing to atone for slavery and Jim Crow, our government reinforces white ignorance and complacency about the racial hierarchies we see in our society today. By failing to atone, the government makes it clear that, despite its words of apology, if fails to see slavery and Jim Crow “as the basic reality, the grim and irrepressible theme governing both the settlement of the Western hemisphere and the emergence of a government and society in the United States that white people regard as ‘free.’”
It is the government’s steadfast resistance to undergoing this mental transformation that creates conceptual difficulty in envisioning a post-atonement America. What does this shift in the understanding of the significance of slavery and Jim Crow mean for our citizens? What does it means in terms of the organizing principles–mainly law and politics—-that shape our society?

Judging by the House Resolution, it means very little. Continue Reading »

On a voice vote, late in the day on July 29, 2008, the U.S. House passed the historic resolution apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow, one sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen, a Jewish American representing a majority-black Memphis congressional district. Some 42 members of the Congressional Black Caucus signed on as cosponsors, plus another 78 members of Congress (but only two Republicans). Cohen made this comment: “I hope that this is part of the beginning of a dialogue that this country needs to engage in, concerning what the effects of slavery and Jim Crow have been, I think we started it and we’re going to continue.”

Here is the apology resolution. What do you make of all this? Please add your comments below.

“Apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans.

Whereas millions of Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and the 13 American colonies from 1619 through 1865;

Whereas slavery in America resembled no other form of involuntary servitude known in history, as Africans were captured and sold at auction like inanimate objects or animals;

Whereas Africans forced into slavery were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized, and subjected to the indignity of being stripped of their names and heritage;

Whereas enslaved families were torn apart after having been sold separately from one another;

Whereas the system of slavery and the visceral racism against persons of African descent upon which it depended became entrenched in the Nation’s social fabric;

Whereas slavery was not officially abolished until the passage of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865 after the end of the Civil War, which was fought over the slavery issue;

Whereas after emancipation from 246 years of slavery, African-Americans soon saw the fleeting political, social, and economic gains they made during Reconstruction eviscerated by virulent racism, lynchings, disenfranchisement, Black Codes, and racial segregation laws that imposed a rigid system of officially sanctioned racial segregation in virtually all areas of life;

Whereas the system of de jure racial segregation known as `Jim Crow,’ which arose in certain parts of the Nation following the Civil War to create separate and unequal societies for whites and African-Americans, was a direct result of the racism against persons of African descent engendered by slavery;

Whereas the system of Jim Crow laws officially existed into the 1960’s–a century after the official end of slavery in America–until Congress took action to end it, but the vestiges of Jim Crow continue to this day;

Whereas African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow–long after both systems were formally abolished–through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity;

Whereas the story of the enslavement and de jure segregation of African-Americans and the dehumanizing atrocities committed against them should not be purged from or minimized in the telling of American history;

Whereas on July 8, 2003, during a trip to Goree Island, Senegal, a former slave port, President George W. Bush acknowledged slavery’s continuing legacy in American life and the need to confront that legacy when he stated that slavery `was . . . one of the greatest crimes of history . . . The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destiny is set: liberty and justice for all.’;

Whereas President Bill Clinton also acknowledged the deep-seated problems caused by the continuing legacy of racism against African-Americans that began with slavery when he initiated a national dialogue about race;

Whereas a genuine apology is an important and necessary first step in the process of racial reconciliation;

Whereas an apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs committed can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help Americans confront the ghosts of their past;

Whereas the legislature of the Commonwealth of Virginia has recently taken the lead in adopting a resolution officially expressing appropriate remorse for slavery and other State legislatures are considering similar resolutions; and

Whereas it is important for this country, which legally recognized slavery through its Constitution and its laws, to make a formal apology for slavery and for its successor, Jim Crow, so that it can move forward and seek reconciliation, justice, and harmony for all of its citizens: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow;

(2) apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow; and

(3) expresses its commitment to rectify the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow and to stop the occurrence of human rights violations in the future.”

Rep. Steve Cohen from Memphis, Tennessee, has introduced a non-binding resolution (H.Res.194) next week “apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans,” according to John Breshanan at The Crypt. Cohen represents a majority African-American district in Memphis. The resolution, which was introduced at the beginning of the 110th Congress (image from wallyg), makes no mention of reparations, but it does state that black Americans “continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow — long after both systems were formally abolished…” The resolution also acknowledges that an apology “cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs committed can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help Americans confront the ghosts of their past.” The resolution has 120 co-sponsors.

What do you think about the resolution? Drop a comment.

Pearl Duncan, who is descended from both enslaved black Americans and white slaveholders, has written an interesting piece on “How DNA is rewriting history”:

She points up the use of DNA testing to track some of one’s ancestors, in this case African Americans:

Thousands of African-Americans have discovered ancestors through DNA, genealogy and family stories, and in the process reconnected with a wide range of ancestral cousins around the world. I digested details about the Founding Fathers in my ancestry, emotional as it was. In 1787, President John Adams purchased a mansion as a summer house from Leonard Vassal, a wealthy New England slave owner. Leonard Vassal owned seven sugar plantations in Jamaica, including Content, where a few of my ancestors were enslaved. With the proceeds and wealth from his slaves and plantations, he built a historic house in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1734. The mansion is the historic Adams Mansion beautifully displayed on page 68 of Peter Mallary’s Houses of New England.

She found she has now cousins in both Ghana and Scotland. But she also found that some of her enslaved ancestors had helped John Adams with his housing. Adams is one of the few U.S. presidents from Washington to Lincoln who did not himself enslave African Americans, and he is often celebrated for that. But we can see even he benefited greatly from the slavery system. His famous mansion house was built with money made off the backs of a great many enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, and probably in North America as well.

Duncan then adds a comment on

Another plantation owner, one of my Scottish ancestors, used the proceeds from his six Jamaican plantations and the inheritance from his cousins’ “Founding Brother’s” tobacco plantations in Virginia to purchase an estate in Scotland where shale oil was discovered. Shale oil gave rise to the independent oil companies, which was organized into the multinational oil company, BP, British Petroleum.

Notice in both these accounts several things. First the North American and Caribbean slavery system was not just a bloody and rapacious system that benefited white plantation owners in the South and the Caribbean. It was something foundational to the country that became the United States, in its colonies/states, and it played a central role in making European countries politically powerful. Secondly, notice the great wealth that this slavery system created, not only for southern and Caribbean whites, both slaveholders and whites who worked for them, but also by means of reinvestments it created much economic development outside the slavery arenas—even the development of oil companies that became such as British Petroleum.

As John Donne said, “No man is an island,” and indeed the United States and the Caribbean region were not isolated from the great Atlantic economy, which was founded in and grounded in the enslavement of Africans. They are “founders” of the United States as much as any other group, but where are their great monuments in Washington, D.C.?

On this Independence day it is well to remember a speech, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” given by the formerly enslaved and probably greatest 19th century American, Frederick Douglass, at Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, at the peak of North America slavery (indeed, about 230 years into that era):

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too-great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

But later adds:

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 sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, 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.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Take the American slave-trade, which we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave-trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words from the high places of the nation as an execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the Jaws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our doctors of divinity. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish them selves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon all those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass with out condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and American religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh jobbers, armed with pistol, whip, and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-curdling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the centre of your soul The crack you heard was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow this drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me, citizens, where, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.

And then concludes with this:

Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from oppression in your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill.

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,

And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign.
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.

Sadly, our system of racial oppression still persists, even as most white Americans are in denial about its deep and foundational reality. Yet, there remain many people like Frederick Douglass today who still fight to remove this “yoke of tyranny” from us all. May they flourish and prosper. We should remember those now and from the past who fought racism most on this day to celebrate freedom.

Back in April, Joe wrote about the major new book, Inheriting the Trade by Thomas Norman DeWolf, about a slave-trading family of “The Deep North.” Tonight, the related documentary, “Traces of the Trade,” by Katrina Browne airs on PBS (check your local listings). And, while I’m not great at predicting future trends, I think we will increasingly see non-fiction books combined with documentary films geared for (near) simultaneous release. Mark my words, this is a trend in search of a name, and it has implications for those of us in the classroom as well.


And, I stumbled upon another documentary called “Resolved,” (currently available on HBO in demand). It’s a documentary about high school debaters, predominantly white, and one debate team from a predominantly black school. It’s deeply engrossing - and not just because I did speech and debate in high school. I was unexpectedly blown away by this film, especially the Freire-ian-turn it takes. I highly recommend this film.


Finally, a brief thanks to Melissa F. Weiner, Assistant Professor at Quinnipiac University, for her suggestions for additional video titles. I’ve updated the video page with her suggestions.


Addendum from Joe: I just finished reading the very personal book by Tom DeWolf, Inheriting the Trade, and it is indeed dynamite. You learn not only about the central role of New Englanders in the slave trade, but also about the way in which some members of a large and extended white family learned about their heavy slavery history and tried to come to grips with it, including travels to slave regions of the US and to Africa. I highly recommend the book to you and for class use from high school to graduate school. It will likely change, a little or a lot, all who read it seriously.

I was reading a local Pennsylvania newspaper recently that had one of those all too common articles against the idea of reparations for African Americans and Native Americans that has come up in recent years. In the Wayne Independent Cal Teeple has an opinion article titled, “I Never Owned a Slave…,You?” Then out of curiosity I searched on a major search engine for just one typical white-generated phrase, “My family never owned any slaves.” Well, I got no less that 250,000 hits!
Teeple makes the usual argument:

I mean I never owned any slaves, and neither did you. My parents, grandparents, nor my great-grandparents owned slaves, neither did yours. And unless they come from a family line with Very Long-Lived ancestors, No One living today, nor their parents or grand-parents, were held as slaves!

He argues this takes whites off the hook for any kind of reparations for slavery. Basically the argument many whites make is that their families had no connection to the racial oppression of slavery. (Some whites also argue “my family never segregated any lunch counters,” which they too feel takes whites off the hook for the 350 years of racial oppression of this country.) The problem with all these arguments is that they only work because most whites do not know anything about the history of racial oppression in this country. They are signs of extreme ignorance.
Let me just trace out a little of this forgotten history. As every school child knows, the first task the European colonists undertook was to “settle the land.” This is the euphemistic phrase European Americans have long used for the theft of Native American land–which often required war, often genocidal war, because Native Americans did not comply. Once the land was stolen, the need for labor to work the land exceeded the supply of indentured and other white workers.
From the mid-17th century onward, enslaved Black laborers became ever more essential to the prosperity of the new white-dominated society, eventually becoming a major source of labor that generated significant prosperity for many whites. Black Americans were the only group of color that was internally central, as essential labor, to the prospering of the new North American colonies.
Huge numbers of whites worked in one way or another in the slavery economy. By the 18th century the slavery-centered North American economy and society involved not only economically successful slaveholders, in the South and the North (!), the owners of slave trading enterprises (mostly in the North), associated bankers, insurance brokers, and leading politicians supporting politically the plantations and the slave trade. Many of these white men were in northern cities. There was also a very large number of ordinary whites in all states, north and south, who worked in many occupations linked directly or indirectly to the slavery system. The latter whites included white-collar clerks and other white employees working for these various slave-related enterprises, the overseers on southern and northern plantations, the sailors on slave ships, the slave catchers who chased enslaved runaways, the small farmers who grew produce and other products for the plantations, lumber workers who cut timber for slave ships, ship builders, construction workers on roads for the trade in slaves and slave-produced products, fishers traded fish products to U.S. and Caribbean plantations, local and federal government workers policing enslaved runaways and processing slave-produced products for internal or external trade, and small farmers and urban entrepreneurs who rented groups of enslaved African Americans for temporary profit on their projects. And the list goes on and on.
In addition, all whites gained “racial capital,” either symbolic or material, from this oppressive system. A great many benefitted economically from the slavery-centered economic complex–which encompassed the slave trade, trade with and support of slave farms and plantations, the international trade in slave-produced products, and the great array of slavery-supporting occupations across the country and, indeed, across the Atlantic.
For two centuries slavery was the major foundation for this country, as an economy, a society, and a polity. If there had been no theft of Native American lands, there would be no United States. If there had been no African American enslavement, there probably would have been no huge North American wealth generation–and possibly no modern wealth-generating North America capitalism on the massive scale that developed over four centuries. Enslaved workers cultivating tobacco, rice, sugar, cotton, and other crops generated very large amounts of economic capital, much of which circulated through the European and North American economic systems generating much spin-off prosperity, including important industrial breakthroughs. Enslaved black Americans created much of the surplus capital (wealth) of this country for two centuries, half this country’s lifetime. Without slavery there is quite probably no United States and no U.S. Constitution–at least not when it happened in the 17^th and 18^th centuries–and thus no U.S. international empire later on.
In these early centuries the social relations of economic exploitation created much income and wealth for whites, which in turn provided much wealth for many later generations, to the present day. Thus, in North America white economic prosperity is racialized in its tap roots, although those tap roots are mostly left out of the national collective memory controlled by whites.

As I have been reading a lot about “race” matters and U.S. elections, including the views and discussions of Dr. Wright and Senator Obama, I have also been working on a book on the white racial frame and its long history. This makes me think a lot about the roots and foundations underlying today’s issues of racism. For this project, I have been doing a lot of research on the history of slavery and legal segregation. Clearly, these are the foundation of this country, with huge continuing significance.

One reason that the bloody realities of slavery, and later the near slavery of legal segregation, have shaped this society so fundamentally is because from their first decades they were legitimated by a dominant racial framing, firmly imbedded in private and state bureaucracies, and firmly legalized under North American laws. The development of the systemic oppression of Africans and indigenous peoples was made possible by the increasing organizational power of bureaucratized European and colonial companies and states. The norms of such military and other state and private bureaucracies accented stability, discipline, calculability of results, and impersonality. Mass killings and attacks were possible without bureaucracy, but recurring wars on Indians and a large-scale system of African American enslavement were not. Then, as in more recent times, extensive oppression requires complex organization and organizational agents and actors. Central to this bureaucratization and legitimation of slavery was the English and North American legal system. The legal system was, and still is, much more than just laws for by means of judges and other government actors, it enshrines and protects the elite-controlled hierarchical structure of society. In the North American case the legal system enshrined the views and values of the governing elite and, thus, a highly inegalitarian social structure for the new society.

The foundation of this legal and government-bureaucratic system is the U.S. Constitution. In 1787, in Philadelphia, fifty-five white men met and created a constitution for what has been called the “first democratic nation.” They were of European origin, mostly well-off for their day, and or had been slaveowners. Many others profited as merchants, shippers, lawyers, bankers from the trade in slaves, commerce in slave-produced agricultural products, or supplying provisions to slaveholders and slave-traders. In the preamble the founders cite “We the People,” but this did encompass those enslaved–one fifth of the population. As I show in Racist America, slavery was central to the making of this U.S. Constitution. At least seven sections of the Constitution protected the 140-year-old system of slavery: (1) Article 1, Section 2 counts slaves as three fifths of a person; (2) Article 1, Sections 2 and 9 apportion taxes using the three-fifths formula; (3) Article 1, Section 8 gives Congress authority to suppress slave insurrections; (4) Article 1, Section 9 prevents abolishing the slave trade before 1808; (5) Article 1, Sections 9 and 10 exempt slave-made goods from export duties; (6) Article 4, Section 2 requires the return of fugitive slaves; and (7) Article 4, Section 4 stipulates that the federal government must help states put down domestic violence, including slave uprisings. This is the same Constitution (and the same founders like GW) that so many people today say we should treasure and look back to as our model for equality, liberty, and justice as we deal with racism and other troubling issues today (?).

The bureaucratization and legalization of the oppression of Indians and African Americans made it easier for the European colonists and their descendants to rationalize that oppression. Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (The Way We Think) have noted how in the human mind the bloody killing of groups of people–such as Native Americans, or later, European Jews—sometimes gets blended with “ordinary bureaucratic frames to produce a blended concept of genocide as an everyday organizational operation. Because the projection to the blend is only partial, certain people who could not bring themselves to operate in the frame of genocide may find themselves operating comfortably in the blend.” For the most part, systems of oppression like Native American genocide and African American slavery are not carried out by human “monsters” with extreme psychological disorders. Most European Americans, including the majority who did not hold people in slavery, supported the “normal” slavery system with their indifference or various forms of collaboration, such as buying and selling slave-produced products in markets. As Zygmunt Bauman (Modernity and the Holocaust, 1989) has argued in analyzing the recent oppression of European Jews, “Evil can do its dirty work, hoping that most people most of the time will refrain from doing rash, reckless things – and resisting evil is rash and reckless. Evil needs neither enthusiastic followers nor an applauding audience – the instinct of self-preservation will do.

These ideas of Fauconnier, Turner, and Bauman do help make sense out of how “normal,” bureaucratic, and everyday the foundational system of racism has become. Evils, like the highly racist attacks (the white racial framing, again) on Senator Obama and Dr. Wright, now in the several millions on the Internet, or the highly sexist attacks on Senator Clinton, only require most people to stand by passively on the sidelines. And these attacks and the racial/gender framing behind them will help account for the likely loss of either of them to McCain in November. Our centuries- long racist and sexist history makes this quite clear.

I welcome your thoughts and comments on this train of thought.

African American slavery is the economic foundation of this country, yet that deep systemic reality and its major and continuing impacts on the present are usually papered over or ignored, even by most contemporary scholars. A new film and book by the white descendants of the country’s largest slave-trading family, a northern family, make this neglect both obvious and problematical.
The PBS program, “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North,” by Katrina Browne, is scheduled to be broadcast June 24, 2008 at 10 PM (presumably Eastern time). The PBS summary describes the centrality of the De Wolf family in the slavery system:

First-time filmmaker Katrina Browne makes a troubling discovery — her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. She and nine fellow descendants set off to retrace the Triangle Trade: from their old hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba. Step by step, they uncover the vast extent of Northern complicity in slavery while also stumbling through the minefield of contemporary race relations. In this bicentennial year of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade, “Traces of the Trade” offers powerful new perspectives on the black/white divide. An official selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

This important and revealing racial journey is also described by Thomas Norman DeWolf, author of the fascinating new book, Inheriting the Trade (Beacon Press, 2008). He too is a current descendant of the largest slave-trading family in the United States, the DeWolf family. A Barnes and Noble summary puts it this way:

In 2001 . . . Thomas DeWolf was astounded to discover that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in American history, responsible for transporting at least 10,000 Africans to the Americas. His infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol, Rhode Island, curried favor with President Jefferson to continue in the trade after it was outlawed. When James DeWolf died in 1837, he was the second-richest man in America.

Today Tom DeWolf, his direct descendant, kindly sent me this (somewhat duplicative) summary of both the film and the book:

In Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, Producer/Director Katrina Browne tells the story of her forefathers, the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. Given the myth that the South is solely responsible for slavery, viewers will be surprised to learn that Browne’s ancestors were Northerners. The film follows Browne and nine fellow family members on a remarkable journey retracing the Triangle Slave Trade which brings them face-to-face with the history and legacy of New England’s hidden enterprise. Inheriting The Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History is Thomas Norman DeWolf’s powerful and disarmingly honest memoir of the journey. An urgent call for meaningful and honest dialogue, Inheriting The Trade illuminates a path toward a more hopeful future, and provides a persuasive argument that the legacy of slavery isn’t merely a Southern issue but an enduring American one. . . . For further information, go here: http://www.inheritingthetrade.com/.

This is from DeWolf’s website as just noted:

Inheriting the Trade reveals that the Northern involvement in slavery was as common as it was in the South. Not only were black people enslaved in the North for over two hundred years but the vast majority of all slave trading in the United States was done by Northerners. Remarkably, half of all North American voyages involved in the slave trade originated from Rhode Island, and all the Northern states benefited.

Tom DeWolf and Katrina Browne are scheduled to be on the CBS’s The Early Show on April 29.
Finding hopeful signs in a highly racialized society is not easy these days, but here is a very big one to chew on.

        The speech on race and racism given by Senator Obama, and especially the negative attacks on it and on others who bring up the issue of slavery suggests that we need to revisit the data on some of this country’s bloody 240 years or so of slavery:


The year is 1787, the place Philadelphia. Fifty-five men are meeting in summer’s heat to write a constitution for the “first democratic nation.” Here we have an early fictions central ever since to the white racial frame. These are men of European origin, mostly well-off by the standards of their day. Significantly, at least 40 percent are or have been slave owners, and a significant proportion of the others profit to some degree as merchants, shippers, lawyers, bankers from the trade in slaves, commerce in slave-produced agricultural products, or supplying provisions to slaveholders and slave-traders. The chair of the constitutional convention, George Washington, is one of the richest men in the colonies because of the hundreds of black men, women, and children he and Martha have held in bondage. Washington and colleagues create the first “democratic” nation for whites only. In the preamble the founders cite “We the People,” but this does not encompass those enslaved–one fifth of the then population. Slavery was central to the U.S. Constitution, as James Madison made clear in his detailed notes on the convention.


Slavery had once been of some importance in all states, but northern states were moving away from slavery, and some had a growing abolitionist sentiment. Even so, many northern merchants, shippers, and consumers still depended on products produced by southern plantations, and many merchants sold goods to the plantations. (Notice that this extensive slavery creates much of the wealth, the circulating surplus capital, of the new nation, and indeed helps greatly to create its possibility to rebel against Great Britain and be a new nation.)


By the end of the summer of 1787 there were at least seven sections in the new U.S. Constitution where the white framers had the system of slavery in mind: (1) Article 1, Section 2, which counts slaves as three fifths of a person; (2) Article 1, Sections 2 and 9, which apportion taxes on the states using the three-fifths formula; (3) Article 1, Section 8, which gives Congress authority to suppress slave and other insurrections; (4) Article 1, Section 9, which prevents the slave trade from being abolished before 1808; (5) Article 1, Sections 9 and 10, which exempt goods made by slaves from export duties; (6) Article 4, Section 2, which requires the return of fugitive slaves; and (7) Article 4, Section 4, which stipulates that the federal government must help states put down domestic violence, including slave uprisings.


We still live under an undemocratically made U.S. Constitution, one substantially made by white male slaveholders. It is still part of the essential political-economic foundation of systemic racism and white privilege in the US. There is much here to continue a national dialogue, one bravely raised by Dr. Wright and Senator Obama, and even acknowledged recently by Secretary of State Rice.