>>> JKSCHW at aol.com 10/14/00 06:18PM >>>
In a message dated 10/14/00 5:50:24 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us writes:
<< I didn't say it was bad. I said it was brutal. The queston of brutality vs consent is exactly what is at issue here. Your interpretation of "what I am worried about" is as inaccurate as your claims about the consciousnesses of the slaves.
Neither Genovese nor I deny that it was brutal--unspeakably, horrifically brutal. The question is whether the brutality by itself was enough to maintain slavery in power. You assert that it was, I deny it.
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CB: Didn't I just say that ? The fact that it was so brutal is in part why slave behaviors which you and Genovese interpret as evidencing consent was not consent but dissembling, wearing a mask. For one thing the slaveowners demanded that the slaves act as if they consented to being slaves. It was fake consent.
This demonstrated by the character and historical misrememberance of Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom was a covert opponent of slavery. His overt behavior pretended to consent.
Of course, in the life long travails of an individual slave, many were opportunisitic or accomodating. But these pragmatic life strategies do not constitute consent.
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> CB:The slaveowner propaganda against the abolitionists' propaganda was that the slaves were consenting and happy in slavery. So, the coverup of the major and main role of brutality was critical in delaying other whites from opposing slavery.
Consent doesn't mean happiness. Workers consent to capitalism, but are they happy with it?
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CB: I didn't say it did. But the slaveowners' propaganda did include claims that slaves were happy. And coverup of the level of brutality was necessary to make those claims plausible.
I would even say that many slaves may have found some ways to find some happiness in life despite their plight. Just as many workers find ways to be happy despite their plight. But their overall condition would not be described as happy.
> Perhaps this: ending racism in the year 2000 does not need to focus on Black people "consenting" to it, rather on changing white people from "consenting" to it.
Both, I think. We have to work on both sides of this, don't we?
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CB: No, I would say the main side that has to be worked on to end racism is white people. Black people are ready right now to racism end and have been for a long time. And Black people are not consenting to living under racism.
Racism is in the conduct of white people, not Black people, other people of color.
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> The slaves were ready to overthrow slavery from the beginning.
So thought John Brown, and _he_ ended up on the gallows. Frederick Douglass warned him.
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CB: And the exact point here, relevant to the previous section of this post , is that the slaves could not end their enslavement by themselves. They needed a million of John Browns ( militant white abolitionists) to swing the balance. And John Brown's act was a famous inspiration to the whites who did end slavery.
The fact that the slaves did not rise up in response to John Brown's raid is not proof that they were sitting around consenting, but that they feared failing and dying because of their inferior weaponry.
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> It was the white masses fighting and dying to end slavery that tipped the balance. It was when the abolitionists obtained major force and fought fire with fire, not the dissolution of consent among the slaves. Fredrick Douglass' life mission was not to dissolve consent to slavery among the slaves. That is a patently false claim. The vast majority of people Douglass propagandized were white. His life mission was to dissolve white people's " consenting" to the enslavement of Black people.
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Both here too--I mean Douglass' aims. He was limited in his ability to propagandize slaves, as they mosrly couldn't read and he wasn't going to be allowed to tour the South stirring up trouble. But there si no question that he aimed throughout his life to change black consciousness to the extent that he could.
Of course it was whites--and I am surprised to see you overlook it--blacks too, fighting in the Union Army that overthrew sllavery. But this supports my point. The slaves only finally withdrew consent in the areas where they could bt leaving their masters en masse in the wake of the Union Army. Until they, they put up with it, even when no greater force opposed them.
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CB: Douglass' appeals to Blacks were not that they stop "consenting", but that they overcome fear and that they take the risks necessary.
Blacks fighting in the Union Army supports my point that they were not consenting to slavery. Given a gun their "consent" magically disappeared.
On a more general point, the Marxist assumption underlying the claim that history is a history of class struggles is that it is human nature of a sort to struggle against being exploited and subordinated, that lack of consent to exploitation is human nature. The claim that slaves consented to being slaves is a denial of their humanity.