Beyond Slavery
A lot of people think slavery really messed our people up. A lot of people in America, black and white, think it is our slave past that is at the root of the economic, educational, and social problems the African American community faces today.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret: slavery didn't do this to us. Not true. Not all all. No, it wasn't slavery—it was Reconstruction. Reconstruction really f*cked us up.
We came out of slavery eager to vote, dying to be educated, ready to own businesses and seize the American Dream. In short, you could say that in some ways we as a community were more mentally prepared to thrive in America in 1866 than we are in 2006.
Then Reconstruction happened. Or rather, it didn't. That is the real failure of the United States. That is the real defining moment were the dream became deferred. And the greatest shame of it all is that most of us have no idea what happened.
Do you know about free-range chickens? In New York, to call a chicken a more expensive "free-range" chicken, or sell its eggs as pricey "free-range eggs," the chickens have to be able to walk around out of their cages for a few hours each day. But the thing is that in reality the chickens are so used to their cages that when the farmers open the doors, the birds just sit there, afraid to go outside. I thought about black America when I heard that story. If we as a community are like those chickens, it was Reconstruction and the de facto slavery that followed that did that too us.
PBS has an excellent documentary up about the Reconstruction Era; the entire thing is available for viewing online. Check it out, and send it around if you can: Reconstruction: The Second Civil War
10 Comments:
Everyone read DuBois' Black Reconstruction pronto! ~jbb
Heck yeah...I'm writing an essay on Reconstruction era for my history class and I'm left saddened and with a sour taste in my mouth over the shattered possibilities of this country--not to mention looking at Lincoln in a new and different light.
--Ro
Reconstruction and the white backlash that followed happened over a few years. Slavery happened over generations.
People felt profound aftereffects from the Depression and WW2, but slavery . . . it's like comparing a cherry bomb to a hydrogen one.
Why do black immigrants do so much better as far as achievement in this country than the blacks who've lived with first world advantages for generations?
It can't be argued there's an inherent difference between blacks and blacks.
It has to come down to culture and why ours is broken. The implication from Ridley and many, many others (Coulter, Limbaugh) is that we're broken because of our inherent deficiencies.
This spiel is only continuing the familiar one from our American legacy.
How are we going to find the power to fix ourselves (and we obviously have to, nobody else is) unless we stop believing, accepting, and acting out we're naturally less than they are?
It's up to each individual to shape their life--there's no going back and fixing what happened so long ago, but there's no wrong in speaking a society's sins, past or present.
It's in vogue to dump on niggers, it's non de rigueur to speak of racism and the effects of generations of slavery.
But that's exactly Mat's point, the generations of black people who literally lived through slavery were ready to bounce back (and did bounce back, in ways that most of us don't even realize). It's not the legacy of slavery that has so severely damaged us, it's the legacy of white reaction to the proof that we could compete and even thrive when the playing field was leveled. Thus the absolute backbreaking piledriver of federal/state/local/personal racism that white America codified AFTER slavery. Maybe slavery was the long term torture and then the Civil War seemed like the moment when a door opened--the promise that our torture was at an end--black people ran toward that exit with great hope only to find...another torture chamber. A bit melodramatic maybe, but not by much.
Amen. I just had a long talk with my brilliant baby brother (a history major/poli-sci minor at Howard) about this. I've asked him to send me a list of his recommendations and will post them here once I receive them. He's got exams coming up so no promises on how soon this will be. In the meanwhile I second the motion about the DuBois book. Thanks Mat!
Thanks all of you for the smart posts.
Yeah jbb, Dubois really broke it down, and thank goodness he did or much of that history might have been lost or ignored.
Paula, I'd love to see that list.
Monica, again a smart post but take another look at Reconstruction if you get the chance, it wasn't just a flash in the pan. It's where the systematic disenfranchisement of our people took form, and why it took a hundred years for us to gain ground again. It's where we lost the vote, where our lands were stolen from us, where a generation of Alpha male leaders where murdered by new groups such as the Klan. It formed the foundation for our life in freedom.
I'd reccommend Eric Foner's work (Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, and Forever Free) which build on DuBois' classic text. I'm fascinated by that period, and it always infuriates me to see how the US pulled back the freed slaves back from the great strides they had been making, in many cases purely on their own, after the end of the war. And then, after the (stolen -- in Florida, and other southern states) election of 1876, "Redemption" arrived, and began constructing all the "Gone with the Wind"-style myths we still have to live with today.
I know the effects of the Reconstruction was profound, but how could it possibly have been unexpected? C'mon.
Do you really think Lincoln and his cohorts wanted black folk to achieve rather than wanting to humiliate the South? How could they not have anticipated the fierce white backlash?
In a way, one can say the same of societal changes after the Civil Rights Act when we finally achieved some parity to whites through the legal system. The backlash was smarter and far more subtle than the Reconstruction, but in the decimation of the black family, community and black potential and opportunity . . . (welfare, the removal of jobs, influx and distribution of drugs, the entire restructuring and expanding of the criminal system) it was as effective.
I think in hindsight the War on Poverty might be retitled the War Against Uppity Nigras.
When I tell people that the south won the war they think I'm just being ironic.
For White Southerners Reconstruction was no joy ride either. The fact is that Southern Whites and Blacks are beginning to realize that we have as much in common as we do differences.
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