As Stovall takes readers through the history of white freedom, one of
the more fascinating connections he makes is one to piracy. Stovall
notes, “Piracy has represented a rejection of the integrity and laws of
the liberal nation-state, while at the same time often symbolizing a
romantic idea of freedom.” The work to tamp down the first, gave rise to
the second leading to the romanticized notion of pirates (read: Disney
and Johnny Depp) we still hold today. The golden age of piracy
“symbolized an exotic, untamed world, one in which fantasy and reality
still coexisted.”
Piracy’s greatest offense is its crime against property. Liberal freedom
sees the rule of law and the right to private property as paramount to
the ideas of liberty. Pirates opposed both of these. Put this together
with the fact that many enslaved became pirates, and that pirates often
took part in political struggles for liberty — slaves were considered
property — and you can see how piracy was “the kind of savage liberty
white freedom must ultimately destroy.”
https://chireviewofbooks.com/2021/01/19/american-racism-american-reckoning-in-white-freedom/
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