The anniversary of 1619: 5 things that people are still wrong about slavery

In August 1619, the first ship with "20 and over" African enslaved Africans arrived on the shores of Virginia. Four hundred years later, we consider at this point the beginning of a lasting relationship between the founding of the United States and the abusive exploitation of slaves.

In a major project published this month by The New York Times Magazine, exploring the legacy of slavery, Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote:[The enslaved] and their descendants transformed the lands on which they had been brought into some of the most prosperous colonies of the British Empire. … But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of blacks to the vast material wealth created by our slavery. Black Americans have also been and continue to be the foundation of the idea of ​​American freedom. "

However, centuries later, the lasting impact of slavery continues to be minimized and myths continue to grow. For example, the many slave revolts and rebellions that have occurred throughout the country have been erased, perpetuating the lie that slaves were docile or satisfied with their conditions. There is also a lingering belief that black labor exploitation is over, while mass incarceration keeps millions of black Americans behind bars and often works for a "paycheck" of less than $ 1. 'hour. Then there is the idea that our understanding of slavery is accurate based on what we have learned in history textbooks, when in fact misinformation is still being taught in our schools. about the legacy of slavery.

To solve what is often misunderstood or misunderstood, we asked five historians to demystify the greatest myths about slavery. Here's what they said, with their own words.

1) The myth that slaves never rebelled

The education surrounding slavery in the United States has led to an elaborate mythology of half-truths and missing information. Slave revolts are one of the key elements of history: few history books or popular media about the transatlantic slave trade deal with the many slave rebellions that have occurred throughout history from America.

C.L.R. James's A history of the Pan African revolt describes many small rebellions such as the September 1739 Stono plantation uprising in the colony of South Carolina, where a small group of enslaved Africans killed two guards. Others joined them as they headed for nearby plantations, setting them on fire and making about two dozen slaves, particularly violent watchmen. The Nat Turner uprising in August 1831 in Southampton, Virginia, where some 55 to 65 slaves were killed and their plantations burned, is another example.

Africans enslaved have resisted and rebelled against individual slave holders and against the system of slavery as a whole. Some have secretly escaped to learn to read. Many simply escaped. Others have joined the abolitionist movements, written books and given lectures to the public about their captive experiences. And others led or participated in an open fight against their captors.

To omit or minimize these stories of rebellion is to hide the violent and traumatic experiences that African slaves endured at the hands of slaves, which provoked such revolts. If we ignore the resistance, it is easier for us to believe that the slaves were happy, docile, or that their conditions were not inhuman. It then becomes easier to reject the economic and epigenetic legacies of the transatlantic slave system.

Dale Allender is an associate professor at California State University in Sacramento.

2) The myth that house slaves had it better than field slaves

While the physical work in the fields was painful for the slaves – clearing, planting and harvesting that often destroyed their bodies – this did not prevent the physical and emotional violence that enslaved women, and sometimes men and children, women and children. hands of slaves in their homes.

In fact, the rape of black women by white slaves was so widespread that a 2016 study found that 16.7% of African-American ancestors date back to Europe. One of the authors of the study concludes that the first African-Americans to leave the South were those who were genetically linked to men who had raped their mothers, grandmothers and / or great-grandmothers. They were African-Americans enslaved to the nearest and who spent the longest periods with white men: those who worked in the homes of slave owners.

Transcendental Graphics / Getty Images

A 2015 study found that 50% of rape victims develop PTSD. It is difficult to imagine that African-American victims of enslaved and seeking freedom – female, male, elderly, young, whatever their physical or mental abilities – do not experience more anxiety, fear and shame associated with a condition that they could not control in a situation out of control. African Americans with the most European ancestry, those tormented mentally, physically, emotionally and genetically at home knew that they had to leave. In fact, they fled as far as possible – the whites of the South are closer to blacks now living in the North than in the South.

Jason Allen is a public historian and dialogue facilitator working for non-profit organizations, hospitals, and corporations in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.

3) The myth that abolition was the end of racism

A common myth about American slavery is that when it ended, white supremacy or racism in America also came to an end.

Recently, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell presented a familiar variation of this myth by stating that he opposed any reparation "for something that happened there is 150 years old. For the Kentucky Republican, descendant of slaves, slavery was simply, and then, that was no longer. t, as if the battlefield had leveled the ground for the race.

But the truth is that, long after the American Civil War, white Americans still have the same supremacist convictions as those who presided over their thoughts and actions during slavery and in the ensuing period. 'emancipation.

In the South in particular, whites have retained a slave mentality. In the late 19th century, they adopted sharecropping and sharecropping to control black labor, enacted Jim Crow's laws to regulate black behavior in the early 20th century, and used racial terror to control the line. of color to this day.

In the north, whites also rejected racial equality. After their emancipation, they refused to put abandoned and confiscated land at the disposal of the freedmen, believing that African-Americans would not work without white supervision. And when African-Americans started fleeing Dixie during the Great Migration, the North-whites created their own brand of Jim Crow, separating neighborhoods and refusing to hire black workers on a non-discriminatory basis.

The legacy of slavery is white supremacy. The ideology, which rationalized slavery for 250 years, justified the discriminatory treatment of African Americans during the 150 years of the end of the war. The belief that blacks are less than whites has made separate schools acceptable, possible mass incarceration and permitted police violence.

As a consequence, the myth that slavery did not have a lasting impact has extremely serious consequences: denying the persistence and existence of the white supremacemask the root causes of the problems that continue to affect African Americans. As a result, policymakers are committed to repairing black people instead of trying to suppress the discriminatory systems and structures that have resulted in separate and unequal education, voter suppression, disparities in health and a wealth gap.

Something happened 150 years ago: slavery ended. But the influence of this institution on American racism and its continuing impact on African Americans is still being felt today.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is Associate Professor at Ohio State University.

4) The myth that the history course taught us everything we needed to know about slavery

Many of us first learned about slavery in our high school and high school history classes, but some of us learned much earlier: in elementary school, in children's books, or even in Black History Month programs and programs. Unfortunately, we do not always learn the whole story.

Most of us have only learned partial truths about slavery in the United States. After the civil war and reconstruction, many people in the North and South wanted to put an end to the persistent tensions. But this was not done only by the 1877 compromise, when the federal government withdrew the last troops from the south; this has also been done by removing the rights of black Americans and raising the so-called "lost cause" of slaves.

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The lost cause is a distorted version of the history of civil war. In the decades following the war, a number of historians from the South began to write that slave owners were noble and had the right to part with the Union when the North wanted to to interfere in their way of life. Through the efforts of a group of Southern social figures known as the United Girls of Confederation, the ideology of the lost cause has influenced the history textbooks as well as the children's books and adults. The achievements of Black Americans involved in the abolition movement, such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Maria Stewart, Henry Highland Garnet and William Still, have been downplayed. Trade union generals like Ulysses S. Grant were denigrated, as were anti-racist whites from John Brown to William Lloyd Garrison. Generations later, many people in the country still think that the civil war was about the rights of states and that slaves who had good teachers were treated well.

Even a specific historical program puts the spotlight on progress, triumph and optimism for the country as a whole, regardless of how slavery continues to affect blacks Americans and to influence current domestic politics, from urban planning to health care. It does not emphasize that 12 of the first 16 presidents were slaves, that enslaved Africans belonging to particular cultures were valued for their skills, from rice growing to metallurgy, and that enslaved people used all the tools at their disposal to resist to serfdom and seek freedom. From slavery to Jim Crow via civil rights up to the first black president, black American history is forced to mingle with the story of the unassailable American dream, even when the truth is more complicated.

Given what we learn about slavery, when we learn it and how, it is clear that everyone still has a lot to learn. Teaching Tolerance and Teaching for Change are two organizations that struggle with the way we present this topic to our youth. And what they learn is that the way forward is to unlearn.

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

5) The myth that slavery does not exist today

One of the biggest myths about slavery is that it has ended. In fact, it has evolved into its modern form: mass incarceration.

The United States has the largest prison population in the world. More than 2.2 million Americans are incarcerated; 4.5 million are on probation or parole. African Americans make up about 13% of the general population. But men, women and black youth have a disproportionate representation in the criminal justice system, where they account for 34% of the 6.8 million people under its control. Their work is used to produce goods and services for companies that benefit from prison labor.

For those of us who are studying the beginnings of mass incarceration in America, these statistics are not surprising. From the late 1860s to the 1920s, Blacks invaded the prison and penitentiary populations of the South. Thousands of imprisoned men, women and children were hired by the state in factories and private farms for a fee. From sunrise to sunset, they worked under the watchful eye of brutal "whip bosses" who whipped, maimed and murdered them. They did not win anything for their work. Today, exploitation through labor, denial of human dignity and the right to citizenship, family separation and violent punishment define our criminal justice system to reflect the fact. slavery.

Hundreds of thousands of people in prison work. According to a report published in 2017 by the Prison Policy Initiative, "the average daily minimum wage paid to workers imprisoned for prison work other than those in the sector is now 86 cents". Those assigned to state-owned businesses (prison industries) earn between 33 cents and $ 1.41 per hour. In 2018, incarcerated Americans staged a national strike to end "slavery in prison." In a list of demands, striking people have called for "all persons imprisoned in a place of detention under United States jurisdiction" to be "paid at the wages in force in their State". or territory for their work. "

It's a year to remember the origins of slavery. It is also an opportunity to criticize his legacies. Let us not dwell too much on our efforts to commemorate the beginning of slavery instead of pleading for an end.

Talitha Flouria is associate professor at Lisa Smith's discovery at the University of Virginia.