Culture » May 11, 2005

The Uses and Abuses of Race

By Phyllis Eckhaus

This illustration appeared on an 1835 broadside illustrating John Greenleaf Whittier's poem, "My countrymen in Chains."

Race facilitates rule. If race did not exist, the powers-that-be would have had to invent it, for an ordered, hierarchical society requires an Other, preferably physically distinct from Us.

The Other serves many purposes, sometimes providing a disposable work force.

In the 16th century, the Catholic Church in cahoots with the Spanish throne defended the enslavement of Native Americans by denying they were human. When the natives began dying off in droves, leaving a potential labor shortage, the Church threw its weight behind African slavery. Africans were presumed to be both subhuman and exceptionally hardy, well suited for the wear and tear of slavery in the New World.

African blood became a prerequisite to slavery. The powerful proudly proclaimed slavery good for blacks, a conviction that informed the “black codes” of the mid-19th century South. John Bailey’s The Lost German Slave Girl exhumes and examines some of the laws that both created and crushed the Other. While a slave could be raffled off or wagered at the master’s whim, freeing a slave was fraught with legal obstacles. In Louisiana, anyone could halt the manumission process by alleging the slave’s bad conduct. Indeed, freed slave was such a threat to the social order that the former master had to post a thousand dollar bond to guarantee the ex-slave’s immediate exit from the state.

Bailey tells the fascinating true tale of Sally Miller, a New Orleans slave who in 1843 was suddenly “discovered” to be white. Blacks could not sue whites, but Miller sued her owner for damages in order to gain the freedom that would automatically follow a court’s acceptance of her as a white woman.

Was Sally white? The question had no objective answer. A parade of distinguished citizens, whom she’d served as a slave, swore she wasn’t—but as her lawyer repeatedly pointed out, they’d assumed she was black because she was being treated as a slave. Compounding their subjectivity was their demonization of her as Other, a strategy that conveniently masked the worst impulses of Us. A key question at the trial was whether Sally had given birth to her son Lafayette at the age of 10—for presumably, no white girl could have gotten knocked up at so indecently early an age, and it was understood that even the youngest black girl could seduce a white man.

Up North, free blacks remained the Other, though legally maintained oppression took the more subtle form of opportunity denied. In Sarah’s Long Walk, Stephen and Paul Kendrick’s earnest account of the mid-19th century fight to desegregate Boston’s public schools, the authors describe a valiant free black community under siege from poverty and prejudice. Black integrationists became dogged activists: petitioning, boycotting and even suing, deploying black lawyer Robert Morris in partnership with future senator Charles Sumner. They lost—and the state’s top court came forth with a rousing endorsement of “separate but equal” schools.

Boston’s black activists were so trapped by the larger society that the story of their efforts has all the drama of fireflies trying to escape from a jar. The book doesn’t get exciting until the Fugitive Slave Law essentially busts the jar open, finally giving the black community white allies with clout. Ultimately, the tumultuous times swept an entire slate of Know-Nothings into the state legislature—and in 1855, they voted to desegregate the Boston schools. The pendulum swung forward, breaking down the racialized legal fiction of Other versus Us.

Today, the pendulum swings back. Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin’s recent book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror, calls on Us to lock up the Other. Malkin claims that mass ethnic detentions are a prudent response to espionage and terror plots, as if securing a haystack automatically serves to pinpoint a needle. Her guilty-until-proven-innocent approach equates color with criminality and obstructs effective law enforcement. Only in the movies does badass bullying expose conspiracies rather than recruit new conspirators to the cause. Dragnets can’t substitute for field operatives and translators.

Most importantly, Malkin’s sleazy tract shows how readily our laws and law officials become instruments of evil. The “black codes” and segregation laws of yesteryear were not the freak consequences of unenlightened times—they were the ordinary outcomes of those in power protecting their self-interest through division and despotism. If we dismiss these laws as rogue jurisprudence with no contemporary relevance, we are the rogues, oblivious to our complicity in racism.

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• Reader Comments

  “Only in the movies does badass bullying expose conspiracies rather than recruit new conspirators to the cause. . . .laws of yesteryear were not the freak consequences of unenlightened times—they were the ordinary outcomes of those in power protecting their self-interest through . . .”

  Makes you realize there is no such thing as race, just ordinary human beings crossing the lines and the ensuing psychological miasma of denial, all of it a waste of time, compounding the ‘genocidal’ reality below.

  Love your neighbor.

  Posted by SGB Hubert on May 11, 2005 at 7:21 AM

  The basis for slavery is not historically race. There were plenty of white slaves in the South, particularly the Carolinas. Rome had slaves from all over. As did many cultures throughout time. . .

  Race is not only poorly defined, but it is useless in todays society. Blacks that are lucky enough to live in the US should be grateful that they ended up here. Not to mention that with the melting pot influence of the US, many (most?) of todays “blacks” are really largely white (and Indian as well).

  While class is also amorphous, it a much better indicator for deciding who needs societys help, now (with the expectation that those that are helped today very well be helping others in the future, as their situations improve). Race based aid is both counterproductive and foolish.

  Posted by Paul on May 11, 2005 at 9:00 AM

  From its inception, the USA has always been a racist oligarchy, never a true democracy.  The ruling class dramatically emphasized this by rendering the ballots of many African-Americans null and void during the 2000 presidential race, and felt no shame in allowing Mr. Bush to steal the White House.  However, no matter how hard corrupt rulers work to bury or hide the truth, it always emerges, often in an even more powerful form.  For more than a decade courageous African-American scholars and activists have been working inside the United Nations to establish Human Rights and secure Reparations for all slave descendants in the Western Hemisphere.  In many interventions before diverse bodies, including the Human Rights Commission, they have documented in detail how the U.S. government’s long-term practices of ethnocide and forced assimilation blatantly violate U.N. Covenants, including Article 27 of the International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights.  Although the Bush Administration and the American ruling class consider themselves above both the U.S. Constitution and international law, no ruling elite can indefinitely avoid reaping what it has sown.  That is why the wicked slavemaster Thomas Jefferson wrote the following words in his Memoirs: “I tremble for my countrymen when I reflect that God is just.”
  Sincerely,
  Malik Al-Arkam
  www.AllForReparations.org

  Posted by Malik Al-Arkam on May 11, 2005 at 10:41 AM

  Thanks, Paul, for your comments. 

  Yup, them there negra’s betta’ learn them places.  Because I was born inta power, I needs ta stays in power.  Dodn’t matter I’m dumb as rocks.  Because if you work hard like me… wait, I never worked a day in my life.  And Im as dumb as a rock.  Paul, what the hell’s goin’ on here?
  (gulps shot of whiskey)
  Ahh, now that’s better.  As I was sayin, because them there blackies was born poor, they shoulds stay poor.  Hell, ain’t they been free for damn near 100 years now?  Ain’t no racism anymore!  As long as them darkies thinks like i Dick wants them to think, then they be hired anytime!  I hired Condi, didn’t I?  Dammit!  Dese liberals with their equality and thinkin’ and stuff, they keep gettin me all mixed up! 

  (Pause)

  wait, is this camera on?  Daddy, save me!  I made some harmless comments about African-Americans and now these liberals are tryin’s ta’ hurts me!  Daddy!  (sobbing) DADDY!  I gotta tee time at 3pm today!  I can’t do another press conference!  Aren’t we killin’ enough of them Arabs for these damn liberals ta see we mean business?  DADDY!

  Posted by george w. on May 11, 2005 at 11:15 AM

  Race is biological fiction.  The conscept of race was invented in the 1500’s for economic reasons primarily.  It is useful for the rulers to use race, especially as a means of artificially dividing the masses, whose only strength is their unity.  However, as the ruling class in the U.S itself becomes less WASPy and as the upper layers of the petty bourgeoisie do as well, overt racism is less useful as a divide-and-conquer tool.  The anti-Arab racism of today is really fruitless, except in whipping up support for wars in the Middle East. I think anti-Latino racism is the wave of the future.  Latino immigrants can be scapegoated for all the ills of society,

  Reparations are simply a stupid idea because let’s not forget that there were black slave owners (usually light-skinned).  Many of the slaves brought to the Americas were slaves in Africa already.  And what about all the mixing that has taken place over the centuries?

  I think there’s an obsession with race. The class struggle is the only way that racism can be defeated.  A victorious working class revolution would require the unity of workers of all races and nations.

  Posted by Maximillian Al-Dakari on May 11, 2005 at 11:17 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 47 posts.

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