Roots Formed Your Image Of Slavery

Recently, I had the opportunity to buy the movie Mandingo that was originally released in 1975 starring Ken Norton playing the character Mede, a full blooded Mandingo. Apparently, a Mandingo was a prize melanin man to possess and own by slave masters in 1830 Louisiana.

The master of the Falcon Hurst Plantation appeared to literally drool when his son Hammond came from New Orleans with his prize buck, Mede. The old man immediately wanted to have Mede breed Big Pearl another full blooded Mandingo female. Hammond, quickly objected to Mede “getting it on” with Big Pearl since he was actually sexing Big Pearl. The owners of the slaves and the plantation were just having a hella orgy at their leisure. Old Massa even said Lucretia Borgia has had 24 babies. I’m quite sure most, if not all the 24 babies were his.

After watching the movie, it occurred to me that this movie Mandingo, and the television series Roots are the templates of how we, all of us think about slavery. Mandingo and Roots are the images we conjure in our minds when we think of the horrific chattel slavery that took place here in the Americas. We see white men having their way sexually and any other way with the women of the plantation. They were slaves. They were property, to be used like a mule and worse. This could and would often be forcible sex, more specifically rape of the enslaved women, without anyone to report such a violation. Essentially, there was of course an air of fear present since the slave could be, at a whim, sold to another plantation and torn away from their family.

As people, we by nature, adapt to situations or die. Even the most dire of situations. Those that did not die had to accept a harsh way of life, a form of life that forced them into the survival mode of living. Surely, there were instances where the enslaved women would willingly lay down with massa in hope of having a child that may have a chance of a better life by simply being the offspring of the plantation owner. Or, to find favor in the eyes of massa. Never the less the children of these liaisons would have to remain as slaves and property of the plantation owner since she herself was a slave. In turn I am sure there were men that played this same sexual hand

All too often when studying the history of chattel slavery we get the image of a massa sexually raping women they owned, as in massa Hammond’s case. An image of heterosexual white men having their way with black women. But, the Caucasian has not changed that much. The time period was not all that long ago. The Caucasian has a notorious history of homosexuality. We see it in the culture of the Roman and the Greek city states. Then, we should consider the homosexual rape of black men on the plantation. Surely, those coming from Europe, like the proverbial leopard, could not change his sexual spots so easily. And, yet like some women there were surely black men that willingly participated in homosexual sex with their white masters.

Films like Mandingo and Roots do a good job in distorting facts during the slavery period. Plantation life during slavery time was only one facet of the life black people endured. These films have been the template of our images of slavery. None, however, treat us to the images of enslaved people walking freely through cities and towns. Visiting local pubs or hiring themselves out as cheap labor competing against poor whites for skilled labor. None depicts free blacks (and those of mixed black and white parentage) affecting society and the economy. And, certainly neither of these films or any like them are willing to be smudge the white land owner, by portraying their homosexual and deviant, perverse sexual behavior as many of them still retain.

Do you understand the words that are coming out of your mouth?

Words, phrases and sayings all have roots in other languages that have come over into English and on to the (A)Merican language. Many words we use today may have common origins and meanings familiar to us and others may not. For instance I’ve noticed how the word Black evolves and bleaches to white in it’s origins. Here are some words that we use everyday and may not have thought of their etymological roots or where they come from and how they just may affect our psyche without us ever noticing. I thought about this when I saw the Chris Tucker character in the movie Rush Hour said to his Chinese collegue “do you understand the words that are coming our of my mouth?” So I ask do you understand the words that are coming out of your mouth?

Wife - Having roots in that of a veiled person, shame or female shame; pudenda “one being made to shame.” To the Germanic wibam (wombman) or simply woman. Originally having nothing to do with being in a state of marriage.

Witch - Later understood to be a woman having dealings with the devil. From the Germanic female soothsayer, wikken. One skilled with drugs or poisons (pharmacology). From the Gothic weihs meaning sacred. Ultimately a witch is a WISE woman.

Wit - As you can see the root of the word wit-ch. From the Germanic witz; a joke. Wid meaning to see, to see is to know.

Genius - One possessing superior intelligence. A person with distinguished mental prowess or an outstanding creative talent. The Romans believed the genius was the guiding or “tutelary”(guardian) spirit of a person, an inborn nature. From the Arabic Djinn or Genii, coming into English as “genie,” from the Kemetan (Egyptian) Guardian Angel.

God/god - Origins of the word are uncertain. Possibly from Proto-Germanic gudan. The immanent spirit in a burial ground. Or the pouring of libations. Also, believed to be from the heathen word for deity. Possibly from the Proto-Indo-European grau meaning “to call or invoke”(conjure?) Others believe the word God/god derives from the Buddha’s patriarchal name Guatama or Gotama, to the Danish Gud, German Gott, to English God. At any rate the word God/god is a relatively new EUROPEAN invention in terms of history.

Roots; African or American?

In the 1980’s, during the surge of Black “Afro-centric” authors and books, I became an avid reader of every angle of the history and legacy of Black people across space and time. From reading Stolen Legacy by George G.M. James to African Origin of Biological Psychiatry by Dr. Richard M. King to the Biography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley, Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton, and even Divine Horsemen by Maya Deren and Secrets of Voodoo by Milo Rigaud.

My reading addiction has not stopped, nor was it or is it all by Black authors on Black/African history and accomplishments. Eventually things began to become stale for me, as if I was beginning to read things that were being rehashed over and over, but with a little different spice added to the mix thus, in the end it was basically the same.

While listening to my favorite community radio station in Atlanta in December of 2000, there was an advertisement that would be rotated throughout the many hours of the day as I listened while I worked ,saying something to the affect of “Have you ever heard grandmamma or great grand ma was in Indian? Come down to the Auburn Research Library to learn more about this.”

Of course this peaked my curiosity since I had heard this very same thing all my life from my mother concerning her grandfather, my great grandfather “papa” all my life. She would point at his picture on our living room wall and say “look at papa, looking just like and Indian.” So, of course I was at the library’s auditorium promptly at 6 o’clock.

Shortly after 6 pm, the little auditorium was filled with many people, from college professors from the AU center (the center where several HBCU’s are located in Atlanta) and professors from Georgia State and a couple reporters from local Black newspapers, to average people wanting clarity about this “Indian” ancestry we have.

By 6:30, Rev. Radine Amen Ra took the stage and proceeded to layout her argument that the aboriginal people of the Americas , including the Caribbean islands were Black people and how European history books and European artists’ renditions of the aboriginal people of the Americas had been anglicized to fit the imaginations of the people back home in Europe.

She actually based her theory on several books, writings and portraits by George Catlin and county tax records and court documents of various states. She pointed to books by J. leitch Wright that wrote of the plight of Indians of the Southeastern United States. Rev. Amen Ra spoke of the logic and logistics of a huge Atlantic slave trade including cost and expense of transporting so many people from the west coast of Africa.(Ah yaw ne tak oar-A warriror of the Menominee or more specifically the Mamaceqtaw nation)

For years I had heard and read how the enslaved Africans would often runaway and live with the Native Americans, and if any Africans were enslaved by the Indian their slave system was nothing like the system of slavery that was instituted by the Europeans. Thus, the Africans would intermarry with the Indians and would often become great leaders of the “tribes.” This is what I was taught, which made sense to me and of course Alex Haley’s Roots re-enforced these lessons. But is that really the truth?

Next time what I learned.