Forwarded with permission of the author
Shame and Advantage
By Don Samuels
Published in Insight news 5/23/05
American History is so deliberately devoid of information on slavery
that any mention of the subject seems to conjure fear, speculation,
irrational anger or flight. Our commitment to create a virtuous
American mythology has doomed us to confusion, ignorance, delusion and
national schizophrenia.
It is this trauma that lies behind reactions to my recent references to
my family’s slave history and the part that history played in my own
fortunes.
The truth is, like most African Americans, I bear, in my genes, African
and European DNA. My great grandfather was a mixed-race (mulatto) house
slave who inherited a hilly piece of land from his master. He passed
this land equally to his four sons. My grandfather passed his quarter
on to my own father, along with the trajectory of advantages that land
culture and “good hair” brought.
Of course there is another less visible story. It it’s the story of my
great grandmother who was probably a field slave. I know nothing of
her. My grandmother, who died before I was born, was a very African
woman and seemed to have married-up to granddad. My father never spoke
about her.
The truth is, dad said precious little about this past. In fact, he
gave me this meager historical gruel only after dogged inquiry, when he
was dying and I was forty years old. Before that day, I cannot remember
him saying the word about slavery outside a biblical context.
I know my parents would be embarrassed to hear my interpretation of our
family history. They thrived on the fact that our family did well
compared to the country folk they grew up with. You would think, as I
also did, that our advantage sprung solely from a certain innate family
brilliance and resiliency.
That is not true. Our advantage has everything to do with the fact that
there were mulatto house slaves in our family. Indeed, if you were to
go to Jamaica today, you can still see that complexion and class are
close allies.
Of course the same is true in America. I will post a separate article
from the New York Times that addresses this aspect. Suffice it to say
that the complexion of Lena Horne, Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton
Powell, Duke Ellington and a host of light skinned blacks often sprung
from white privilege and accrued to them as advantage.
In a April 10 New York Times article called Lust Across the Color Line
and the Rise of the Black Elite, Brent Staples wrote:
Madison's memoir, based partly on family history conveyed to him by his
mother, is as close to the voice of Sally Hemings as we will ever come.
But neither of these brief accounts, published in an Ohio newspaper in
1873, reveals anything about the intimate texture of the relationship
between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. They tell us a great deal,
however, about the circumstances that created the black intelligentsia
that sprang to life during Reconstruction and that dominated
African-American cultural, intellectual and political life through the
first half of the 20th century.
This black intelligentsia did not spring fully formed from the cotton
fields. It had its roots in the families of mixed-race slaves like the
Hemingses, who served as house servants for generations, often in the
homes of white families to whom they were related. Employed in "the big
house," these slaves often learned to read, at a time when few slaves
were literate. They also absorbed patterns of speech, dress and
deportment that served them well after emancipation.
Many of them were set free by their guilt-ridden slave owner fathers
long before the official end of slavery. The Hemings children were all
free by 1829 - or more than a third of a century before slavery was
finally abolished. Not surprisingly, mixed-race offspring who were well
educated became teachers, writers, newspaper editors. They formed the
bedrock of an emerging black elite and were disproportionately
represented in the African-American leadership during Reconstruction
and well into the 20th century.
Some would prefer that I deny connection this in my own family. They
argue that it is politically incorrect for me to acknowledge this
source of my advantages or to suggest that any wisdom can be salvaged
from this perverse arrangement. Some would prefer if I speak only of
being African, that I pretend that my ancestors were all field slaves.
If I don’t, I might not be accepted as the real deal.
I argue the contrary. There is also wisdom in my shameful ancestry. It
teaches that proximity to privilege and can have advantages even when
that proximity is also dangerous and coupled with shame.
The lesson is this, people who have the advantage to observe success
will reproduce it more easily and frequently than people who don’t.
That is why the black middle and working class and all middle class
people must come back to communities of great poverty and share their
capacity with the people left behind, especially people caught in a
cycle of generational poverty. Not only does capacity get transferred
but also love is experienced and abandonment is reversed. There is no
other way.
Of course, in the new America, there are many other paths to the new
“Big House” of wealth and power. Some people enter through great
athletic or musical talent, some through their intellect; others enter
through high political office. But whatever the sources of ones
advantage, history will judge us, not so much by how we came into
advantage, but the degree to which we parlayed that advantage into love
for our neighbor and service to our community; especially to the poor.
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