Ok, bear with me a minute here.
I was reading this article about “gene nappers”. It talked about how identities can now be stolen by “stealing” genes from somebody and pretending that those genes belong to you. An example that they give was this:
For example, had the descendants of Thomas Jefferson not agreed to genetic testing, the heirs of his slave mistress, Sally Hemings, could have conducted clandestine analysis on the glassware used at the annual Jefferson family reunion.
Ok, so seeing as it’s not like the family of Sally Hemings hasn’t been accused of every misconduct under the sun by white racists (aka Thomas Jefferson’s white family) when it comes to establishing paternity (including Sally Hemings was a whore that slept with OTHER Jefferson men, etc), it kinda pissed me off to read this example. Why, oh, WHY did this author need to include such an explosive example?
Which then got me to reading and surfing all the various bullshit “articles” and “studies” done by white Jeffersons and others in an attempt to prove that they don’t have a negro in the family–which of coursed pissed me off and got me to this massive pet peeve of mine.
Why is it so hard to view a black woman slave as having the choice making skills to love her white master?
because the universal response to white folks attempting to put a “romantic” spin on the Hemings/Jefferson relationship seems to be that it’s not possible for a slave to love a master–and the mere thought of that being possible is racist, sexist, and even violent–as the “romance” exists as a way for white folks to disclaim the violent reality of slavery.
I get that argument–but I have to disagree with it. Or more, I have to move towards a more complicated understanding of the situation (which is why I love Annette Gordon-Reed so much–she decenters the conversation with whiteness to focus on Sally–while at the same time, addressing whiteness–only through Sally’s perspective.).
think of how privileged life was for a extremely light skinned house slave. now think of how many rights white women had at that same time. Was there really much of a difference between a very privileged house slave and a white wife? why are white women viewed as being imbibed with a humanity that can hate her station in life but also love her white husband (that rapes all the black women)–while a black woman who gets lots of really important privileges from the same white man is viewed as incapable of that same complicated hate/love relationship?
i think that you only have to look at the historical relationship between white mistresses and black slave women to see that:
1. a *vast* portion of the resentment by white women towards their women slaves is based on jealousy–not simply “I hate that bitch” jealousy–but very complicated layered jealousy. White women knew that their husbands were “seeing other women” (as it were), and socially, white women had absolutely NO power to stop it, denounce it publicly or otherwise in any way use her feminine wiles to pressure the man into stopping.
But she *did* have the ability to “accidentally” beat the black woman because she was “sulky.” Or, “accidentally” refuse to give the woman food or “accidentally” sell her child up the river, etc. The white woman had the ability to hurt the man’s prize.
And imagine how she could hurt that “prize” if it looked like the prize was capable of loving (or faking loving) her husband and getting special gifts out of him etc?
And 2. black women had power hierarchies within slave communities–some, probably more than what we are willing to imagine, may have even felt considerably closer to their white mistress than they did their fellow black slave. Many black women on smaller plantations/farms may not have had other women slaves or even white women around them–they may have literally been the only woman on the location other than mothers/sisters. Which means that black women could’ve *legitimately* considered romantic relationships with white men a viable option in their lives–and as a result, *black women* would’ve been capable of considering *white women* to be their “competition.” (as opposed to vise/versa, which is a scenario that seems to make more sense in our culture of allowing complicated humanity to some people and not to others–or, more simply–who is YOU little black girl? thinking you got a chance with a white man??? our thinking process hasn’t changed much, huh?).
Which means, our questions here would be: would it have been possible for there to be at least a few black women who were cocky and arrogant enough to believe that they had more of a right to a white master than the white woman did? or that she had a way to “hold” the white man to her even if a white woman entered the picture?
And is it possible that some black women may have actually been extremely aware of all the hidden and quiet politics and dynamics within a particular house? And that she may have actually been *more* aware of how to play those dynamics in a way that benefited her than a white woman who grew up on a different plantation would’ve been?
Is this possibly where the Jezebel stereotype came from? That is, is the Jezebel slur a word that white women used in an attempt to drive off her competition? Her competition that she regarded as a very real threat to her (in other words: a fully human woman that was capable of doing the same human things she was doing: using “love” and “sex” and “compliance” as a way to get herself a better life? Or, even worse, falling in love with the same man she herself was in love with?).
What historical insights to resistance and possibly even alliance building can we gain from allowing black slave women a more ambiguous complicated humanity?
——————–
addendum
1. this essay in NO way is acting as an attempt to deny rape and any/all types of sexual violence were enacted on the bodies and souls of black women.
2. i am specifically speaking of very privileged slave women (house slaves, children of masters, etc) within a context that decenters white maleness. but even so, again, I am in no way assuming or even remotely arguing that privileged slave women were not also raped and sexually violated by white masters.
3. In assuming black women were able and maybe even did use their sexuality to get what they needed–I am specifically pointing to white women to show that what black women were doing was not unheard of, unusual or in any way an indicator of their inherent Jezebel-ness. All women were doing the same thing at the time–that was one of the only forms of power women had (not much has changed, huh?).
4. Which really makes me reconsider how black female sexuality has been woven through various black movements throughout the decades (think:we want good clean Rosa Parks as are our movement “face,” not bad dirty pregnant girl–what made a woman “good”? Was it the “white standard” of female sexuality–the chaste pure virginal? And who decided this chaste pure virginal was the standard?)–and it *especially* makes me consider how even though the white/black women relationship has moved out of the kitchen and off the plantation–the relationship is still there. And in many ways it’s still as antagonistic, violent, complex, nuanced and layered as it was when the living quarters were so much closer.
- Share
November 13th, 2009 at 5:29 am #
I think we don’t look at the black slave woman as having agency because 1)there’s still a push really for people to teach and see the horrors of slavery. so the focus is always on the gross mistreatment. 2)its a story about slaves. slaves by definition aren’t suppose to be able to do anything but work for their masters (or run away). 3)money. i think we equate independence/agency with money. so it seems natural for us to think that anyone who does not have money(agency) would bend to those who do. 4) Good (Black) women never want to have sex with anyone but their husband.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:36 am #
omg. ok. this is going to sound a little crazy. but only because like almost no one talks about this common experience that i have.
as some of you know. my partner is white. i am black. we live in egypt. and one of the experiences i have had a lot in the time that we have been together. is lighter skinned or white women’s straight up hostility toward me when they realize that that white man is my partner.
-as in what is he doing with you when you are so dark/ he could be with someone lighter.
this type of hostility has happened the most in egypt and mexico, rather than in the states. in other words in societies that value white skin so so much. but very few people could really ‘pass’ for white. and unlike in the states people in mexcio or egypt have little problem complimenting my daughter’s light skin.
in egypt when someone says you are beautiful. they mean that you are white. i had a good friend who was palestinian and she was surprised when i said that there was a lot of racism in palestine. and she was like. no. we are not like that. and then i pointed out that having white skin is considered more desirable than dark skin. and she said. that is different.
so on the one hand. it is assumed that i must spend my nights smoothing whitening cream (very very popular here) on my ugly skin. and on the other hand i receive this palpable hostility. as lighter skinned women-esp. esp. women who ‘almost pass’ you know like they look southern italian or something.= take my partner’s choice in mate who is black personally.
and the assumption here is that black women are prostitutes. which i know somehow fits into this racism mosaic as well. as in that we do not have complicated sexualities, social moral codes, and loves.
and is it a coincidence that these are both countries. that are strongly colorist. have history of slavery of african peoples, but the culture mainly denies that heritage…although the amount of dark skinned curly haired folks speaks for itself. and claim that there is no racism in their respective countries.
oh and for the crazy part. when i went to an east coast private college. i learned a very important lesson. that white girls for the most part. assume that men will not be as attracted to a black woman as they would be do a white one.
and the second that a black woman proves that assumption wrong. white girls can get really really scared. angry mean scared.
i have never seen more racism come straight out of a progressive liberal girls mouth than when she found out that that black woman was sexual competition.
when habibi and i got together most of our colleagues decided that we were obviously not going to last because we were -so- different. and because we all lived together, i would hear them say that really he belonged with this sweet white girl or that sweet white girl. and how dating across cultures is just a bad idea. -not that this had anything to do with race or anything…oh no…-
i know that these are all random thoughts. but god.
i have a back log of posts i want to write. that i dont get to. and now i definitely want to do something on black female/white male relationships. because i feel like there is so little written about it. we are either pawns in the white mans game. or we are gold diggas. or we are whores. and srsly i dont mind gold diggas or whores…i think both of which can be honorable professions. im just not one.
can i also say that i resent that people assume that because my partner is white. that makes him some anti racism expert. ppl assume that he must be so ‘sensitive’ to racial issues. as if i dont love him *and* spend more time than i would like calling him out on his racism.
i have always wondered why folks insisted that sally hemmings could not have loved jefferson. and resented him. that he did not love her and abuse her.
last night i was thinking about social darwinism and racism. and how black women are assumed to be much more simplistic and closer to the primates, the jungle, the wildness. like hyenas.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:30 am #
I mean, yes, it’s possible that she ‘loved’ him. I mean, people have had and continue to have complex feelings towards their abusers. But I kind of find it offensive to say that she had much agency in the matter. And I’m not saying that “a slave’s a slave” or “that it’s the worst thing ever, so how dare you.” Just that in a situation where a woman and her family is literally owned by generations, it’s hard to envision her right to say no to a Thomas Jefferson or even just some guy who has 1 or 2 slaves. I feel like this makes the point agency kind of moot. idk, this post just really stings, for various reasons.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:32 am #
This post has made me think about it further, even if I initially disagree w/ something. Also, I apologize if I’ve misread you.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:26 am #
Kim B–why are we so certain that Jefferson’s white white “loved” him? She was owned by Jefferson in every legal sense of the word–and what’s worse, she went into her “master/slave” relationship willingly. But her relationship with Jefferson is never challenged–when they say “he was her great love” we all go, oh, ok. Why do we understand and just accept? What makes it more believable that a white woman who could legally be beaten by her husband (and who often were), could not own property, whose property shifted completely over to her husband upon marriage, who was forced to take the name of her husband, who could be divorced without repercussions, who could be jailed and killed for having sex outside of the relationship, etc etc etc–could love her husband? What makes it believable? But doesn’t make Sally Hemings situation believable?
Also–what is “agency?” As you’ve presented it here, it means “the right to say no straight up without stuttering.” I disagree. Was Sally Hemmings a living breathing human being? Who had to make choices about how to live life? Even if those choices may have been a choice between a rock and a hard place? then, I think she had agency.
What I’m asking here, is how can decentering “white male/black woman” relationship cause us to think more complexly about the idea that slavery in the U.S. has ended? How does it point to the fact that there are still roles and relationships that have morphed and twisted a bit–but are still an integral part of the make up of U.S. culture? That just because it has shape shifted, doesn’t mean it’s *gone*. I mean–the “virgin pure chaste” standard we all live under is basically the white slave mistress role–and it’s been imposed upon us all…what does that mean for those women who will never and/or can never adopt that role? Why are we all still so severely punished for not modeling ourselves under the patriarchal relationship of white master/white mistress?
As I posted on facebook–I’m thinking of angela davis when she says–jails are used to make those on the outside think they’re free. that’s what I’m wondering here–if we decenter “White Man” and start looking at all the crooks and crannies–how much has changed really–do we believe people aren’t owned any more?
And outside of that…just…this.
this. no radical theory or thinking needed to understand those words. the historical current pain of those words.
the very real black woman speaking those words.
ETA: i just reread my comment and realized what the very last bit sounded like! “No radical thinking needed to understand black woman!! Woot woot!” just wanted to clarify–I meant–no need to for high theoretcial debate about what is agency or are we in or are we out of slavery etc–not when real lived experiences are right here. And in my opinion we should start with real lived experiences and then move into the theory…
November 13th, 2009 at 11:31 am #
yes yes yes yes. and even tho *I* am the one who has done all this organizing etc–they look at HIM and go–so. tell us.
Um. WHAT??????
November 13th, 2009 at 1:00 pm #
ah, wow, this post. yes. i think sometimes people are reluctant to assign to oppressed groups (either out of their own prejudice against them, or out of a misguided over-protectiveness of their ‘purity’) anything less than innocent-victim status. like, if a member of an oppressed group does something ethically questionable or complicated, it somehow is perceived as complicating the fact that oppression is wrong, which itself is not that complicated, and also not at all related to the personal characteristics of the oppressed.
this is maybe tangential but i feel like there’s a connection here: i got into it in some comment thread once with someone who said, basically, they hold members of oppressed groups to higher standards. or, when a member of an oppressed group themselves perpetuate some oppressive behavior, this person was more disappointed than if a straight white cis dude did it. i think it might have been about the prop 8 thing, the idea that because racism exists therefore black people are more expected to not be homophobic than white people.
and what i was trying to say is that that point of view is kind of gross to me because it still places the ubernormative experience at the center – you know? people are defined not by what they ARE but by how far they deviate from the norm. it’s like people who don’t understand how latin@s could be racist, because “they’re a minority too” – like, it’s actually a product of white supremacist culture that we are inclined to divide the world into White and NotWhite and assume that all NotWhite groups have identical relationships with whiteness and each other.
and even if the relatively small (compared to how many whites there are in CA) percentage of black voters voting yes on prop 8 for religious reasons HAD been The One Reason it passed (which is… questionable from an empirical point of view to say the LEAST, but even if it were true) – the way to analyze that is not, in my opinion, by being like, “but wait they’ve been discriminated against, why aren’t they magically enlightened?” it isn’t by placing them relative to white people. it’s by focusing on black history first.
or even when some liberals look at evangelical whites with all this scorn, and don’t stop to think, what about their lives and the history of their communities might make this form of religion so appealing to them? what are they getting from it? and none of this has any bearing on the morality of the actions themselves, but if you really want to UNDERSTAND people, i sort of think that, at least at first, you have to put aside judgment, not necessarily because of any moral reason but because it will cloud your ability to accurately see the astounding complexity of human motivations.
and this is maybe another reach (or maybe this entire comment has nothing to do with what you were talking about) but it made me think of La Malinche, and the way people react so strongly to her, I think, because the historical evidence just doesn’t let her be simplified. i mean, i know when i first learned about her when i was a kid, i found her story off-putting – she was the victim, she was Cortes’s slave, she was a member of the people he was destroying… and the evidence doesn’t let her be a passive victim. but it’s also too easy to just villainize her. and people want to be able to do one or the other to her. but she was just a person.
i guess i think, it’s important to engage with people on their own terms. and their own terms involve them being the center of the universe
aghh i’m trying to think of a way to say “it involves looking at their position relative to certain things, but without centering those things” in a more clear/less vapid way. but i can’t. anyway. thank you for this post.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:01 pm #
holy tl;dr batman that was long, i’m sorry i had no idea how long that was getting!
November 13th, 2009 at 1:07 pm #
Thank you for the response. I think it’s what I wasn’t getting originally because of my initial emotional response. I agree with what you said about agency too.
And this is a great question:
“What I’m asking here, is how can decentering “white male/black woman” relationship cause us to think more complexly about the idea that slavery in the U.S. has ended? How does it point to the fact that there are still roles and relationships that have morphed and twisted a bit–but are still an integral part of the make up of U.S. culture?”
November 13th, 2009 at 1:12 pm #
I appreciate the project of complicating agency — the idea that we must be completely free in order to exercise agency is problematic and reveals the vacuousness in the western tradition of describing what agency is.
I see how you are using the situation of white women in the antebellum era to make this point — that we assume black women’s agency is diminished because they are enslaved, although white women were also subjugated, yet their agency (in the context of love and sex) are not as immediately questioned. I agree with the critique that there is something problematic, objectifying and probably stigmatizing, that we don’t see the subjectivity in black enslaved women. The complexity. The internality.
However, I don’t agree that the difference between the situation of black women enslaved as chattle and the situation of white women is a difference of degree. I think it’s a difference of kind, and the difference is radical.
The loss of family — both ancestors and descendents. The kind of alienation one experiences when forcibly cut off from history, a place of birth, a language, a culture, a legacy. That your children were *regularly* taken from you, as a normal practice, as an essential part of the economy. That rape was not just for the sake of sex and violence on the part of the rapist, but for the sake of terrorism, to control a population (see Dorothy Roberts). That rape is part of a nationalist war, an explicit economic project.
White women were allowed to be educated, to be literate. They could testify in court, being recognized as subjects under the law. They had some very important legal and cultural protections. They had access to their parents and their children. They knew where they were from. In short, white women were not chattel slaves. The situation of black women was not just worse, it was qualitatively different.
I also agree with you that it’s problematic to think of the history of anti-black racism as this bold thick line of pre-slavery and post-slavery, as if the narratives, much of the economic structure, and the political violence didn’t linger and morph. (See recent book, “Slavery By Another Name.”) However, looking backwards from 2009, and keeping in mind the crisis of prisons and economic devastation, as well as the persistent narratives/logics of gendered white supremacy, I do think it’s important to note that the current situation of Black people in America is, of course, qualitatively and profoundly different than the situation of enslaved folks. This sounds obvious, and so maybe it reads a little flippant, but I promise I’m not trying to be.
I just think that your argument, as I understand it, is that in order to believe in the complex subjectivity of enslaved black women, we would have to first either think of slavery as not as bad we usually do, or think of us in a kind of persistent state of “slavery” (or maybe you mean ongoing white supremacies and imperialisms). I argue that we can and must follow your recommendation to complicate our view of the agency of enslaved black women (and agency in general), regardless of how wholly catastrophic North American slavery was and the way it continues to echo through history.
That said, I think that objectifying slavery as, how did you put it on fb, “the worst horror of the worst horrors” is not a good move. We’ve seen this happen with the Nazi holocaust and it’s a problem there as well. The story becomes untouchable, the actors become one dimensional, and it’s difficult to sustain a view of the complex humanity of the people who experienced these horrific things. This is your point about Sally Hemings, which I agree with.
But again, we don’t have to say that North American slavery was the worst horror of the worst horrors to acknowledge the difference of a kind between it and the oppression of white women, to acknowledge the complexity of the agents that lived through it, and to acknowledge that the contradiction of being an agent while also being oppressed is actually the agential status for most people.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:15 pm #
excellent points all the way around, thatgirl.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:20 pm #
you mean ongoing white supremacies and imperialisms)
i think this is what I am saying–not sure, gotta have some time to really think it through…but I think this is it. And *esp* re: the holocaust–where things have become SO untouchable–the narratives, i guess? have become SO untouchable–that we can’t question or challenge things in a way that presents a more complex picture of the reality of then so we can better understand where we are today….like, the continued “boxing in” of black women and their complex identities into neat little boxes–she’s a sapphire, she’s a mammy, she’s a strong black woman, etc…
November 13th, 2009 at 1:27 pm #
Yep, that makes sense. My last paragraph doesn’t, though. I should have written:
But again, we don’t have to diminish the actual horror of North American slavery to acknowledge the complexity of the agents that lived through it, and to acknowledge that the contradiction of being an agent while also being oppressed is actually the agential status for most people.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:29 pm #
thatgirlhasissues: wow that was a really awesome comment, thank you.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:33 pm #
Yup–totally agree with you–and I think that’s a big thing I was struggling with in writing this essay–all the annedums! I felt that there was something not quite right with *how* I was saying it–but I didn’t know how to get it out the way I needed it–without saying–oh, slavery wasn’t all that bad–but with saying–can we get more complex???
November 13th, 2009 at 1:44 pm #
and that’s just really helpful, thatgirl, to think about the holocaust in context here–i that, actually is what I where i was headed most specifically, but not really sure how to think it through or name it….
November 13th, 2009 at 2:17 pm #
ok, i got just a minute more here, then I gotta go for the night–but–what i was thinking about in writing this was actually what isabel talked about la malinche–and pocohontas and sacagawea and so many other women of color who have national identies, and how much of our national identities are tied up in believing a certain *something* about that woman of color. ANd I’ve been thinking about how there’s been feminist interventions in many of these other woc national identieis, and wondering why sally hemings seems to be stuck in these “yes she did/no she didn’t” narratives that are SO hard to get her out of. and i think a LOT of what I’ve been thinking is that with native women, “nationalism” is much more easily identified because the basis of their subjugation is nationalism/colonialism/imperialism–or, crossing national boudaries with force and violence.
so…is sally hemings harder to pull out of an overriding narrative because she seems to be “our girl?” that there’s more invested in claiming her as “an american?” because it doesn’t appear that nationalism and forced border crossing is written all over her identity?
but most of all for me–i’m talking with her and looking at her woman to woman. and thinking about how much I HATE having narratives written over me. and wondering what those narratives mean for women today. and wondering how to understand the vestiges of chattle slavery as they exist today.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:39 pm #
I really think you’d enjoy Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, & Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America by Saidiya Hartman. She does some really critical and provocative work in rethinking enslaved women’s sexual agency and choice-making in the absurdist context of slavery.
These are hard questions that you’re asking and, in some ways, painful. In some ways, I think slavery is constantly diminished, justified, excused. I feel like I often hear folks, for different reasons, not able to fully ingest the core terror if it, and so we get the mammies and all the other happy, childlike slave ideas. And we even get the false uncomplicated dichotomy of house slave vs field slave (Malcolm popularized this. Gah! It was a metaphor, and often a useful one, but it wasn’t historically accurate. There’s some reason to believe that the closer you were to the master white family, that the violence wasn’t less, but different, more intimate. Skin color didn’t necessarily correlate with where enslaved people were located and didn’t necessarily correlate with the amount of violence they experienced. And, Angela Davis has argued that slaves located in the home used their location and access as strategies for resistance.).
So, the move to objectify slavery as “the worst horror of horrors” is a defense mechanism to being in a terrible and absurd position of being forced to argue that, yes, this did happen, to *people*, not *animals*.
But, ironically, this defensive move isn’t a complete, long, careful gaze at the full 3 dimensional truth of it. Because they were *people* which means that enslaved people did and felt things like other people did. Like love. For example.
I don’t know how Sally Hemings felt about her enslaver, Thomas Jefferson. I do know that I respect her as a woman who made some choices in conditions that I honestly can’t begin to imagine. It’s arrogant to presume anything for certainty, as you have already bravely argued. There was a time when the idea that she could have loved him made me feel nauseated. Frankly, it still makes me a little nauseated, like sea sickness, like I’m on a boat on a sea that’s much too rough for me.
But maybe remembering our own baggage when we review these stories, our own investments in their choices, might help us move away from defensiveness, and instead, hold strong the recognition of the truth of the unbelievable brutality, while also holding on to the sides of the boat when the story really starts to fuck with you.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:53 pm #
Isabel, you wrote, “…it made me think of La Malinche, and the way people react so strongly to her…”
I also think that the intense debates about La Malinche reflects these investments. The ache I hear in some of those discussions also reminds me of what it’s like to hold on to the sides of that shaky boat. That loss of certainty about what a woman meant because she has somehow become an icon, or an avatar that stands in for something that’s important to us. The acknowledgment of their subjectivities may mean a loss of power for us because our needs can no longer take the place of their actual humanity.
November 13th, 2009 at 4:17 pm #
There’s a book, “Mama Day” by Gloria Naylor that has this theme; about how a community comes to “own” the story of the Black enslaved woman and the white male lover. And people use her, like thatgirlhasissues said, to stand in for something we want to believe about ourselves and our history. I notice this a lot with how people (descendants of enslaved Africans) talk about their Native/white ancestry. The white is shameful and nothing to be proud of because we have it in us because of rape. While our Native ancestors (who, in reality, were also slaveholders) were benevolent and our friends so we can be proud of that part of us. It’s like a kind of creation myth that people recite. I think people feel comfortable framing Sally Hemmings and other enslaved Black women as Absolute Victims for a lot of reasons ppl have mentioned already: it fits the colonialist framings of race/gender, counters the “Sex-crazed Animal” stereotype… But I think too it’s a way to cope with feelings of betrayal. The house slave isn’t *choosing* to “leave us behind” in the field– She/They had no other option. Our slave masters/fathers *couldn’t* have loved us so there’s no need to acknowledge any feelings of betrayal that they loved us as human beings, but “owned” us at the same time.
I dunno, this is all kind of jumbly in my head right now. Just going off of my own feelings of loss and grief and betrayal when i think about slavery in general…
November 14th, 2009 at 5:35 am #
“…to acknowledge that the contradiction of being an agent while also being oppressed is actually the agential status for most people” – I haven’t ever heard this put so succinctly – thank you, thatgirlhasissues, and bfp and everyone for this conversation…
November 14th, 2009 at 9:25 am #
So, another development on facebook is this:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/note.php?note_id=174338863868&id=1383770351&ref=mf
A woman (i think she’s black), had her son put into child protective services by the army so that the woman could be shipped to afghanistan. She has very limited familial support, and the support that she does have, it sounds like there’s lots of disability and no resources–and the main caretaker tried to take over and watch the woman’s son but in the end just couldn’t. So the military put her son into child protective services. and god only knows that legally–if she’s deployed for a long enough time, she can lose her son permanently because the law recognizes her as “abandoning” her son….
but anyway–and especially powerful response to this link–especially powerful after reading the comments in this link–was a one word comment. Somebody left a comment that just said: Slavery.
Ugh.
November 14th, 2009 at 9:28 am #
For everybody’s reference–the books mentioned in this thread so far:
“Mama Day” by Gloria Naylor
Dorothy Roberts
Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, & Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America by Saidiya Hartman.
“Slavery By Another Name.”
November 14th, 2009 at 10:13 am #
Shelby, I think you make some really excellent points—especially the betrayal of white fathers…i know that Annette Gorden Reed has really made a point to bring up the messiness of familial relationships within the plantation system–a father could literally *own* some of his children, how in the hell do you negotiate that? How do we negotate that right now? Gordon Reed rightly notes that its the one thing that nobody seems to want to talk about–and I personally think it’s why many in the white jefferson family don’t want the conversation to go any further than “did she or didn’t she love him” because if we finally get a conclusive answer–then we have to turn to Jefferson and look at the fact that he owned his own children. Not slaves, not a woman who may or may not of been with him willingly–but his own children. He owned his own children–and what does it mean for “family” today–if we recognize family is ALSO the white folks in the big house–that it may very well be a grandfather that sold your mother? which is also so important to note–how black men take the brunt 100% of the time for being “bad fathers.”–but if we start acknowledging and digging in that familial aspect of slavery parent/owned father/slave etc–who is the fucking bad father here? and the irony of the “great white father” of colonialism that was happening even as the great white father was *literally* selling and owning his own children (thomas jefferson again…) can’t be lost here….
November 14th, 2009 at 10:22 am #
from maia:
–you know, this made me remember a conversation I had a long looong time ago–when i was in my late teens/early twenties–I was working in flint, and a fellow worker and I were gossiping about our sex lives–and she said to me that her boyfriend and her were watching porn together, and a black woman was in one of the porns. ANd she said she felt *literally* sick watching it because “she was so disgusting” and even more specifically–”how can a man (re: white) be attracted to *that*?”
Of course, i didn’t have the guts to tell her that I was queer (i didn’t even know what that *was* at the time), so I didn’t tell her exactly how easy it is to be attracted to pussy
–but I also didn’t even begin to have the resources to understand where her disgust stemmed from. but when I read your comment maia–it clicked, it took fifteen years for that time to click, but I got it…how that threat–it’s so ingrained in our fabric today, its almost like it’s built into the physical make up of white women’s bodies, you know? where it *physically* affects a white woman to see a (white) man attracted in any way to a black woman. because white man with black woman=rejection of white woman. a destabilization of “her place.” if that makes sense?
November 14th, 2009 at 10:37 am #
that’s exactly what I was talking about!!!! I actually spent the majority of my educational career working with La Malinche storyline and how she’s been used and had all these national colonial resistance politics written all over here–there’s so much invested on all sides on claiming her story as “ours”–and what happens if you just go–ok, she slept with Cortes? So what? She even liked it a few times! So what? So. What.? She wasn’t a savior, she wasn’t the ultimate betrayer, she wasn’t anything but a woman who dealt with life just like we all are doing today.
so now what?
I mean, i’ve had this conversation with a LOT of people, and one of them was a really hard line chicano nationalist–and he was all, but, but but–she was a WHORE, she *betrayed us*!!!! and i just kept asking–so what? let’s pretend that who one woman fucks 500 years ago can really and truly be the cause of imperialism and colonialsm and all the violence we’ve all lived through for the last 500 years…she was a whore that caused everything. Now what? and so what? He got so frustrated and angry at me because he couldn’t answer back. and when you stop believing that who a woman fucked is the ultimate cause of colonialism, can we start looking at weak male leaders? like montezuma? and that’s right around the time you get the exploding brains all over you. :p
I think that the one consistancy through all the women of color that have been claimed by “national identities” (i.e. malince, pocahontas, sacagawea, sally hemings,), is that their bodies and subsequently their *stories* are being used by a colonial project to justify itself. and in return, patriarchal movements use those same bodies and stories to “claim” their own identities–usually without a thought as to how ‘reclaiming’ or distancing from certain story lines will hurt or affect the women whose bodies are being used….
November 14th, 2009 at 12:57 pm #
but you know i think it goes deeper or further than simply a fear of white males rejection of white females. because i can understand a bit that fear as a black woman, who has a lot of close black men who are partnered with white women (namely my best friend and brother). and even though i have not really had a problem with interracial relationships, i have been around enough black women to understand some of that resentment.
see, i spent most of my life growing up in white neighborhoods. my best friends were white. and she was very open about her opinions about race, blackness, etc. as she grew older she denied having once said such things. but her attitudes toward race became less overt, but remained the same. so i got to see the stages of development of racism in a couple of white girls.
when we were 5,6,7 years old. they often explained to me as we were playing. that white skin was prettier than black skin. they also said that black people were cursed from the bible, or/and that black people were closer to ‘earlier primates’ evolutionarily speaking. (keep in mind that these girls had the really progressive parents who encouraged them to have inter racial friendships…)now of course by the time we were 13 they would never say that to me. nor probably be willing to say to each other. but in no way did their behaviour change.
when we were 16 and 17 and we would reminiscing about those days in elementary school. no one remembered ever saying any of this. or believing it.
and honestly i believe their amnesia about how they learned racism.
this is how we learn taboos. and sex with the black pussy is taboo. because it is akin to bestiality.
——-
but i am also thinking of the differences in ancestral narratives among women of color. and i think that one of the differences is that some of us cannot claim any ancestral nationality other than ‘american’. one of the first real pieces of language i learn in a foreign language when i am overseas is to be able to explain why i dont know where i come from. obviously my ancestors are not native nor white (even though they are heavily both…) but from sub sahara africa. so where do i come from? originally?
i have explained the tran continental slave trade in five different languages.
i think part of that desire to claim native ancestry among blacks is to claim a spot on the map. an ancestral home.
sally has no social power not only because she is a slave. but also because she has no nation, no people.
it is one thing to make a person a slave. it is another thing to rip their culture away from them. it is a third thing to force migration. it is a fourth thing to refuse them any knowledge, even the basics such as reading and writing.
in doing so white folks took from the africans in america all of the requirements according to european culture to be considered a human being. and effectively made them into animals. but to me the problem is that once made into animals, it is doubtful in white mind whether we can ever become fully human.
that is the look i see on women’s faces (and i say women because i dont spend a lot of time looking men in the eye…) when cal and i go out together every day…’but you are barely human…’
—————–
will sally emerge in the national consciousness as thomas jefferson’s slave mistresses? a bodice ripping romance?
allowing white women to get live out their ‘animalistic fantasies’ by imagining themselves into the body of a black woman, sally hemmings.
yeah. probably.
November 14th, 2009 at 1:34 pm #
sally has no social power not only because she is a slave. but also because she has no nation, no people.
it is one thing to make a person a slave. it is another thing to rip their culture away from them. it is a third thing to force migration. it is a fourth thing to refuse them any knowledge, even the basics such as reading and writing.
yes. oh, god yes. i live this–no culture, no nation, no people. yes. on one side of my fam we can after the internet was invented (!!!) finally figure out what tribe we came from and how we came from our tribe to where we are today–but…those people–they’ve moved on. they don’t need us anymore. and so we’re not family. we share blood, but we’re not family. because we were the ones that got lost, or left, or were forcibly removed, or couldn’t take it any more, or or or…we don’t know. but we’re not there any more, and we’ve not settled since then. my family today…i often feel like i am Eve or something.
like, my family started with me. like…this is the first time in generations that anybody in my blood line has had the privilege and the time to really sit and decide..*this* is what a family is–it’s staying in one damn spot and not moving from it. blowing warmth on the roots, even if you are rooted to hell…it’s a privilege. it’s a human right that is forcibly and violently taken away…just like with new orleans, and how even people in the black community were criticizing new orleans folks, saying–you know, get out into the world, explore a little bit! stop tying yourself to one place and thinking it’s the world! (and oh, LORD, i’ll never be able to remember the dude’s name who said it, but he’s old school hip/hop guy and he gave a speech at my university at the time, and i couldn’t *believe* what he was saying….)–because we’re all trained to see our “movement’ as normal and right–we don’t stop and realize that black folk living in the same spot for generations–how radical that is. how native people are fighting tooth and nail for that right. and losing. because only white folks who can use that land ‘the right way’ are entitled to it. so we look at black folk who have their own land and house that they’ve lived in for generations as backwards and scared to face the world…because like you said, according to the social consciousness…black folks don’t become human again after they’ve been made into animals…
…
elementary school. no one remembered ever saying any of this. or believing it.
and honestly i believe their amnesia about how they learned racism.
this is how we learn taboos. and sex with the black pussy is taboo. because it is akin to bestiality.
and this maia. i just need to sit with this and touch it’s edges for a bit. because it’s so big. and raw and painful. for so many generations of black women.
November 14th, 2009 at 5:46 pm #
^^^ This is why I don’t know what to say when people ask me why I’m so depressed/angry/hopeless all the time. “Just think positive!” “Just focus on the good things!” “You’re not unlovable!”
It seems that in order to feel all those things, I’d have to divorce myself from being Black. Because when I wake up in the morning I’m *feeling* the fact that my story begins in slavery. There is no narrative or knowledge that goes back further than that. When I wake up in the morning I know that when people see me they do not see a human being. The people who are my friend, who I love, who I don’t know, who don’t know me, who love me, who call me beautiful– most of them do not look at me and see a human being.
And I don’t think I’m the only person who can’t shake off that knowledge. I asked my granddad recently where his people are from and he got angry. He gave vague details and then ranted about how stupid and useless it is to talk about where we come from. My grandparents don’t talk about the past, their childhoods, their grandparents. It feels almost rude to ask. But i guess it makes sense. What would the stories be? “Your great great grandfather? He was a slave.” “Your great great grandmother? She was a slave.” “Where did they come from? I don’t know, they were slaves.” So where do you go from there?
November 16th, 2009 at 4:33 pm #
A few weeks ago I did a group class project with two white coeds. We were supposed to demonstrate the various roles of women in Frederick Douglass’s narrative. When we each turned in our drafts to compile, both girls had focused on Douglass’s being raised by his grandmother in his very early years and then later the mistress who began to teach him how to read. Both. Entire content.
What they chose not to include from the narrative was 1) Mistresses beating and even murdering slaves. 2) Jealousy of mistresses, which Douglass directly addresses and points out the injustice the white women suffer as their men freely commit “adultery” with slaves. 3) That many slave owners actually “inherited” their slaves through marriage, though the mistresses had no control of the “property.” For instance the mistress who was teaching Douglass to read brought him into the marriage as her family’s property and was told to stop teaching him by her husband and of course she had to because she had no rights to do other than what her husband said. 4) Douglass’s further acknowledgment of the white women not having any rights in their marriages (oh yeah, but one girl wanted to include something about Douglass’s involvement with suffrage which was beyond the scope of the assignment). 5) No mention of the general abuse female slaves suffered—none, as one student pointed out because that has all been said before.
That last bit just seemed pretty typical and commonly seen in whites’ attitude of denial like “I had nothing to do with that anyway, so let’s not even go there anymore.” But these white women also didn’t want to address the recent history of white women not having any rights. This incident, along with a couple others, has finally helped me to see how white women are complacent to white men in patriarchy. They do see themselves as next in line to the throne. Women of color being genuinely romantically involved with white men, not being raped by them or used sexually, but in real relationships is a direct threat to white women.
In another recent incident I did a presentation on some of Paula Gunn Allen’s critical theory and the all white class did not take well to her in general and especially the historical facts that many Native women had far more rights than the white women did when they touched down and how it was imperative that Native women be stripped of those rights lest the white women get uppity. Not acceptable history to my classmates. Two white guys started attacking me first, followed by the alpha white women. An aha moment for me, which I get here too, thanks.
November 16th, 2009 at 5:56 pm #
i’ve sat in on classrooms where exactly this has happened…a native woman points out the stake colonial powers had in ripping away rights of native women, and you can feel the mood shift in the classroom. hands go up. proof! proof! give me proof! show me evidence! that is approved by “real” professors (read: white)!
re: the willful ignorance of the “ugly” side of white femaleness…I am so glad that this is being talked about. because we all know how people say, oh, XXXX was SUCH a good (wo)man! SURE, XXXX has his/her weaknesses and did some rotten things…but…SO important and good and for the greater good, etc.
And i’ve always felt like…ok. it’s being fair. admitting faults while at the same time admitting goodness. I don’t have a problem with that, right?
but reading what has been posted on this thread…i’ve spent so much time meditating on it and thinking about it. and now I’m starting to see that this whole “prioritize the good” thing is actually a strategy of racism….one that regularly gets used by powerful mainstream corporate structures like feminism, the media, the government–and the universities are especially skilled at employing this little strategy…..where “presenting a more complex understanding” of a person or a thing or an entity actually acts as a way to dismiss or overwrite very real responsibility and culpability in violent horrors…thinking about how uncomfortably close this post is to the “complex understanding as a way to hide” really is.
thinking about how i’ve never had the experience of willful ignorance of the truth with somebody i loved because when people do something horrible to me, i tend to leave. to never look back. and i’m thinking about the bravery of people like maia and shelby and brOOke and thatgirl that stay and confront….
and thinking about how feminism has pulled this mighty little trick….how it indoctrinates more and more and more white girls into this willful ignorance…encourages them to do so in the name of “reclaiming” and “empowerment”….empowerment that comes at the price of the literal physical well being of black women specifically…
November 16th, 2009 at 7:26 pm #
I’m trying to think of a context, BFP, for presenting this quote to my partner, who is out listening to New Orleans-style music right now w/ some other fans (one of whom traveled/s there a good bit to participate in music-making). I don’t know what it’ll be yet, but I would like to share this. Timely, for me. And a “wow” point. Thank you.
(By the way, “wow” points all through this thread by many people. Sorry for not quoting them all.)
November 18th, 2009 at 9:03 am #
I honestly think that soon being negative is going to be illegal. We live in the era of positive thinking and positive energy. “Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.” Wayne Dyer.
I am a new-age guru enabler. I love Wayne. I watch the PBS specials and own one of his books, I feel warm and mushy inside after listening too him. And I’ve struggle with depression almost all my life and I’ve being looking desperately through new age wisdom and as far away from organized religion, looking for well, wisdom, illumination, enlightenment, peace. A way off meds.
But I still haven’t found what I am looking for, neither with the gurus or the books. Because though God sent me out in this world with a full supply of the 5 Element, from where all the positive things derive, but I piss it all out at birth. So now I am condemned to be obsessed about prejudice, racism, bigotry, injustice, ignorance and see the worst in everything and everybody. I’ll never be happy. That explains why I am the one who sees racism in my own family. Negative me managed to find them all. Because I am thinking negative thoughts and negative thoughts attract negative experiences. And that is why at 5 years old my white abuelas where already complaining about my “bad hair” and why o’ why I had so much, and one of them suggested I put a clothes pin on my nose to make it “finer”. And that is why “Someone” in my family suggested I marry white so I improved the race, I think he meant the black part of my racial makeup but I could be wrong (assholeness-blue coloured lenses maybe). And these are the “cute/lite” examples. I can write the 50,000 word November novel just with phrases uttered within my past and present inner circle about blackness and “black-like” features. Because people feel very comfortable talking in front of me about it, after all I am a mutt, somewhat black but not quite. And although it is wrong and feels uneasy I don’t put most of them in their place. When I do I get the “is it your negative inferiority complex over-reacting”. They are just stating the plain social, economical, aesthetic facts. My frequencies are fucked up.
And maybe, maybe all this is why in my mid thirties I find myself, Surprise Surprise, married to a “white” Puerto Rican man, the mother of a “white” girl. To whom people ask, Is that your mother? After she just called me mommy in front of them. Utterly alone with these feelings. As confused and hurt as 5 year old me. And it is easier to write about it in bad English rather than in Spanish, which is my native tongue, because somehow Spanish makes it all too real and the memories hit home with so much greater force and also because English just takes away the pressure of saying it perfectly, it feels more objective, distant.
I came to this website from an autism/LD kind-of blog thinking it’ll be the same – we are a family of 3 dealing with at least 10 LD between us, and I found so much more. The ADD/ADHD the funny disability and the slave woman/mistress posts shook me to the core.
I guess I am trying to say thanks.
November 19th, 2009 at 7:17 pm #
OB, just want u to know that your comment struck a cord w/ me. Especially what you said about speaking english. It’s exactly why I write in my journal in spanish. One of my favorite things to do is to drink and speak spanish–because I get to be as far away from myself as possible. When people assume I’m latina, it’s so so so hard to correct them. Nope, I’m just Black. Yes, *that* kind of Black. The english speaking one descended from slaves. Sometimes I’ll throw in that I’m multiracial. Because it’s true. But also because it’s a step away from *that* kind of Black. The kind of Black that is me.
November 20th, 2009 at 8:20 pm #
oh god. yes. i feel myself as a black woman doing this. trying to hold onto the fact that i am *that* kind of black–the slave black. and trying to step away from being *that* kind of black. i speak spanish and french and live abroad. and my daughter is biracial. and i get asked three or four times in a row if that is my daughter…
and i use languages as a way to slip through their stereotypes.
for so long i kept trying to think positively about race and not get upset at racism, and not see racism, and telling myself that i was ‘creating’ racism by focusing on it. and if i just close my eyes to it. it all will go away. or prove itself not to exist.
instead i was just enabling the situation. the racism got worse. and words become actions. and people get hurt.
and positive thinking doesnt heal racial trauma or childhood trauma. that is what i learned. we need to consciously develop authentic ways for women of color to heal from racial trauma.
we need to develop these ways for many reasons. but one reason is that trauma isolates us from one another. and community is often a necessary component of healing.
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:23 am #
So true about “that black” so many categories, the hispanic black, european black, american black and so on… and everybody has an opinion on which one is better. I find myself trying to get away from the hispanic stereotype, part of it is just not finding too much in common, but it is also the weight of the expectations; the good ones and the bad ones, that is sooo heavy to carry.
There’s an essay in Spanish “Pulseando con el dificil” by Ana Lydia Vega a Puerto Rican writer, about her struggles between English and Spanish and how learning French helped her move beyond the internal conflict. I am actually shopping around for a third language something kinder if such thing exists…
It’s hard for me to feel entitled to speak about healing from racial trauma because I still have prejudices. I still fear and I still judge myself and others. And just writing that gets my perception of safety to zero.
I also feel selfish and childish paying attention to racism like I should be worrying about derivatives or autism you know what’s considered “real problems”.
What a mess!!! trying to assert yourself and escape yourself at the same time.
November 25th, 2009 at 8:08 am #
So true that the “good” kind of Black is different for different places. I got to study in Spain a couple summers ago and it felt soooo strange to have privilege as an *American* Black. There’s a rising number of Latin American immigrants there and whenever I spoke Spanish, people assumed I was “one of them.” It was actually easier (and a bit safer) for me to speak English and signal to folks that I’m from the states.