65435729 shapes of the black american past by john henrik clarke

8/4/2019 65435729 Shapes of the Black American Past by John Henrik Clarke

1/5

Clark Atlanta University

Review: Shapes of the Black American PastAuthor(s): John Henrik ClarkeSource: Phylon (1960-), Vol. 38, No. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1977), pp. 212-215Published by: Clark Atlanta UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/274685 .

Accessed: 18/09/2011 19:46

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Clark Atlanta University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Phylon (1960-

).

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cauhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/274685?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/274685?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cau


2/5

PHYLONHYLONdisciplined account that engages us in the rhythm of Africa, her seasons andher people. The subject matter, if not quite the style, is reminiscent of CamaraLaye's Dark Child. But Haley's narrative becomes difficult in recounting theAfrican-American experience. The development of a distinctive African-Ameri-can culture is a complex chapter in our history. It does not lend itself to theclarity and simplicity which characterize Haley's portrayal of boyhood ineigtheenth century West Africa. How, for example, should the slave's accommo-dation and resistance to the slave master, his culture and his oppression betreated?Haley acknowledges African survivals among the slaves: gestures, facial ex-pressions, cries of exclamation and "these blacks' great love of singing anddancing." These traits, however, are interpreted as incidental and unconscious.What the author apparently considers as weightier matters of culture seem tosurvive only among the Kintes. For example, the slave community which Haleydescribes appears not to be composed of families. In sharp contrast to the Kintefamily unit, the other slaves in Roots appear as a collection of unattached in-dividuals. The implication is that most slaves lived outside the bonds of kinshipand marriage. At issue is not literary style or emphasis, but rather the interpre-tation of the African-American experience. While the Kinte family is among anelite in its oral tradition, it is not unique in its family structure and function.Recent scholarship on the slave family would have informed Haley's work.Haley's perception of average slaves comes apparently from prevailing assump-tions that their families were unstable, their marriages casual and their culturechaotic. Herbert Gutman, in The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (which like Roots was published in late 1976), presents evidence that slavemarriages were of long duration; that families were structured in kinship net-works with strong intergenerational ties; and that some aspects of slave culture,specifically marriage customs and naming practices, apparently developed in-dependent of and in spite of Anglo-American culture and the circumstances ofslavery.This kind of evidence calls for further revision of the African-American story.With a careful reading of history and an imaginative working of art, the storywill continue to unfold in all of its complexity. Our debt is to Haley for in-troducing this story to the public and for engaging the nation in pursuit of itspast. Carole Meritt

Emory UniversitySHAPES OF THE BLACK AMERICAN PAST

THE SHAPING OF BLACK AMERICA. By Lerone Bennett, Jr. Illustrations by CharlesWhite. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., 1975.In his previous book, The Challenge of Blackness (1972), Lerone Bennett hassaid:If Black people are not what white people said we were, then whiteAmerica is not what it claims to be. What we have to deal with heretherefore is a contestation at the level of reality. We are engaged in astruggle over meaning, a struggle over truth. And it is my argumenthere that Blacks and not whites embody the common interest and thetruth of American society.

In a collective way, this is what the present book, The Shaping of Black America,is about. In a general way this is what all of the books of Lerone Bennett are

disciplined account that engages us in the rhythm of Africa, her seasons andher people. The subject matter, if not quite the style, is reminiscent of CamaraLaye's Dark Child. But Haley's narrative becomes difficult in recounting theAfrican-American experience. The development of a distinctive African-Ameri-can culture is a complex chapter in our history. It does not lend itself to theclarity and simplicity which characterize Haley's portrayal of boyhood ineigtheenth century West Africa. How, for example, should the slave's accommo-dation and resistance to the slave master, his culture and his oppression betreated?Haley acknowledges African survivals among the slaves: gestures, facial ex-pressions, cries of exclamation and "these blacks' great love of singing anddancing." These traits, however, are interpreted as incidental and unconscious.What the author apparently considers as weightier matters of culture seem tosurvive only among the Kintes. For example, the slave community which Haleydescribes appears not to be composed of families. In sharp contrast to the Kintefamily unit, the other slaves in Roots appear as a collection of unattached in-dividuals. The implication is that most slaves lived outside the bonds of kinshipand marriage. At issue is not literary style or emphasis, but rather the interpre-tation of the African-American experience. While the Kinte family is among anelite in its oral tradition, it is not unique in its family structure and function.Recent scholarship on the slave family would have informed Haley's work.Haley's perception of average slaves comes apparently from prevailing assump-tions that their families were unstable, their marriages casual and their culturechaotic. Herbert Gutman, in The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (which like Roots was published in late 1976), presents evidence that slavemarriages were of long duration; that families were structured in kinship net-works with strong intergenerational ties; and that some aspects of slave culture,specifically marriage customs and naming practices, apparently developed in-dependent of and in spite of Anglo-American culture and the circumstances ofslavery.This kind of evidence calls for further revision of the African-American story.With a careful reading of history and an imaginative working of art, the storywill continue to unfold in all of its complexity. Our debt is to Haley for in-troducing this story to the public and for engaging the nation in pursuit of itspast. Carole Meritt

Emory UniversitySHAPES OF THE BLACK AMERICAN PAST

THE SHAPING OF BLACK AMERICA. By Lerone Bennett, Jr. Illustrations by CharlesWhite. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., 1975.In his previous book, The Challenge of Blackness (1972), Lerone Bennett hassaid:If Black people are not what white people said we were, then whiteAmerica is not what it claims to be. What we have to deal with heretherefore is a contestation at the level of reality. We are engaged in astruggle over meaning, a struggle over truth. And it is my argumenthere that Blacks and not whites embody the common interest and thetruth of American society.

In a collective way, this is what the present book, The Shaping of Black America,is about. In a general way this is what all of the books of Lerone Bennett are

21212


3/5


4/5

PHYLONsearchingly and very carefully shows how the indentured-servant status wastransformed into chattel slavery. After the period of indenture, this first gen-eration of blacks became early Americans in many ways. Some of them becamethe owners of land and slaves. Others became part of the craft and technologyclass that helped to tame a young and raw America. Labor was needed and thisis what these first blacks meant to the colonists.The indentured servant system was not created for the blacks who landed inJamestown, Virginia. The system was intact long before they arrived, withlarge numbers of white indentured servants. In the second chapter, Bennettexamines this rather neglected issue of white servitude. In the following passagehe explains some of the reasons for the neglect:

Although great care has been taken to hide the fact, black bondsmeninherited their chains from white bondsmen, who were, in a mannerof speaking, America's first slaves. And as America moved, in themiddle of the seventeenth century, toward a fateful decision thatwould define it forever, increasing attention was directed toward thestatus of these white bondsmen, who pioneered in both servitude andslavery. To understandwhat happened to blacks in the second half ofthe seventeenth century, one must first understand what happenedto these whites in the first and second half of the seventeenth cen-tury. For they ran the first leg of the marathon of American servitudebefore passing on the baton of anguish to the reds and the blacks.Bennett continues his explanation in this manner:

The second and possibly more important reason for the centrality ofwhite servitude is that it was, as Eric Williams noted, "the historicbase upon which Negro slavery was constructed." In other words,white servitude was the proving ground for the mechanisms of con-trol and subordination used later in African-American slavery. Theplantation pass system, the slave trade, the sexual exploitation ofservant women, the whipping post and slave chain and brandingiron, the overseer, the house servant, the Uncle Tom: all thesemechanisms were tried out and perfected first on white men andwomen. Also tried out and perfected first on white men and womenwas the theory of racism. It is not the least of the paradoxes of thisperiod that Colonial masters used the traditional Sambo and theminstrel stereotypes to characterize white servants, who were saidto be good-natured and faithful but biologically inferior and sub-ject to laziness, immorality and crime.

And thus the seed that was going to develop into modern racism was planted.That is worth noting. For the first one hundred years during the period ofEuropean exploration into the broader world, Europe as well as Africa was ahunting ground for slaves. Sometime during the second century of the settle-ment of America, the white slaves began to shake off their bondage. They becameracists rapidly in order to identify themselves with the rest of white America.They measured their identification and their status to the extent that theywere furtherest from the red man and the black man in appearance and inhuman consideration. It was only then that the color factor became prevalent inblack and white relationships.In his chapter "Red and Black" Bennett shows that the relationship betweenblacks and Indians was both good and bad. Some blacks joined whites in a fightagainst the Indians and some blacks joined the Indians in a fight against the

214


5/5

LITERATURE OF RACE AND CULTUREITERATURE OF RACE AND CULTUREwhites. In the Seminole wars in Florida, blacks and Indians joined in the mostmeaningful alliance of those groups that is on record about the Seminole wars.General Thomas Sidney Jesup was moved to say in the 25th Congress, 2ndSession, 1837-38:

This, you may be assured, is a negro, not an Indian war; and if itbe not speedily put down, the South will feel the effects of it ontheir slave population before the end of the next season.Because the winters were long in New England and black labor could not beused the year round, slavery in this part of America was not as successful asin the South. In the chapter "The Black Founding Fathers," Bennet shows how aclass of freed blacks developed into the first responsible black elite. These mentook it upon themselves to use their acquaintanceship with the basic literatureof their day in order to ask relevant questions about the promise of America.Against great odds they founded the early black churches, newspapers, maga-zines, and community institutions. To a present generation of young blacks whotalk so much and know so little of nineteeth century black culture, this chaptershould be compulsory reading.In the chapter "The World of the Slave," Bennett gives us a panoramic viewof the way slaves lived and how they struggled against their environment. Itwas during this period that the slaves began to learn what most slaves learnedeventually, that their masters were unworthy of ruling them. This was the begin-ning of the liberation of the mind that would ultimately loosen the chains on theslaves no matter how tight they had been.Freedom came at last and was well paid for in spite of the denial by manywhite historians, Lerone Bennett tells us in "Jubilee." From the latter part of

the eighteeenth century to the eve of the Civil War, blacks were instrumentsof their own liberation as well as partners with white abolitionists who hadtheir own reasons for participating in black liberation. These nineteenth centuryblacks, written about with such great feeling and understanding in this book,laid the basis for black radical activity in the twentieth century. I do not thinkthat we are going to understand present-day movements until we have aclearer picture of their nineteenth-century antecedents. We have the pictureshere. All we have to do is to view them and understand them.John Henrik ClarkeHunter College

CLASS AND CASTE AGAINSOCIAL INEQUALITY: CLASS AND CASTE IN AMERICA. By Lucile Duberman. Philadel-phia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1976; 314 pp. No Price Indicated.

In Social Inequality Lucile Duberman sets for herself the task of disentanglingthe complex lacings of social inequality. Three explicitly stated objectives forthe book are offered: to acquaint undergraduate sociology students with thestudy of inequality; to bring some clarity and order to the chaotic state of thisfield; and to treat the caste component of the stratification system.The author offers several closely connected reasons for the need of a book ofthis type, all of which in her view are in turn related to a general neglect ofthe area by sociologists. Accordingly, she reasons that since sociologists, likemost other Americans, have geneuinely believed that opportunity is open toindividual effort and that America is truly a democratic society (with all thatthat implies) they have been unwilling to face the social realities that counterthis smug view of the American society.

whites. In the Seminole wars in Florida, blacks and Indians joined in the mostmeaningful alliance of those groups that is on record about the Seminole wars.General Thomas Sidney Jesup was moved to say in the 25th Congress, 2ndSession, 1837-38:

This, you may be assured, is a negro, not an Indian war; and if itbe not speedily put down, the South will feel the effects of it ontheir slave population before the end of the next season.Because the winters were long in New England and black labor could not beused the year round, slavery in this part of America was not as successful asin the South. In the chapter "The Black Founding Fathers," Bennet shows how aclass of freed blacks developed into the first responsible black elite. These mentook it upon themselves to use their acquaintanceship with the basic literatureof their day in order to ask relevant questions about the promise of America.Against great odds they founded the early black churches, newspapers, maga-zines, and community institutions. To a present generation of young blacks whotalk so much and know so little of nineteeth century black culture, this chaptershould be compulsory reading.In the chapter "The World of the Slave," Bennett gives us a panoramic viewof the way slaves lived and how they struggled against their environment. Itwas during this period that the slaves began to learn what most slaves learnedeventually, that their masters were unworthy of ruling them. This was the begin-ning of the liberation of the mind that would ultimately loosen the chains on theslaves no matter how tight they had been.Freedom came at last and was well paid for in spite of the denial by manywhite historians, Lerone Bennett tells us in "Jubilee." From the latter part of

the eighteeenth century to the eve of the Civil War, blacks were instrumentsof their own liberation as well as partners with white abolitionists who hadtheir own reasons for participating in black liberation. These nineteenth centuryblacks, written about with such great feeling and understanding in this book,laid the basis for black radical activity in the twentieth century. I do not thinkthat we are going to understand present-day movements until we have aclearer picture of their nineteenth-century antecedents. We have the pictureshere. All we have to do is to view them and understand them.John Henrik ClarkeHunter College

CLASS AND CASTE AGAINSOCIAL INEQUALITY: CLASS AND CASTE IN AMERICA. By Lucile Duberman. Philadel-phia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1976; 314 pp. No Price Indicated.

In Social Inequality Lucile Duberman sets for herself the task of disentanglingthe complex lacings of social inequality. Three explicitly stated objectives forthe book are offered: to acquaint undergraduate sociology students with thestudy of inequality; to bring some clarity and order to the chaotic state of thisfield; and to treat the caste component of the stratification system.The author offers several closely connected reasons for the need of a book ofthis type, all of which in her view are in turn related to a general neglect ofthe area by sociologists. Accordingly, she reasons that since sociologists, likemost other Americans, have geneuinely believed that opportunity is open toindividual effort and that America is truly a democratic society (with all thatthat implies) they have been unwilling to face the social realities that counterthis smug view of the American society.

21515

65435729 shapes of the black american past by john henrik clarke

Documents