WAKE UP! UP YOU WAKE, UP YOU WAKE - KARDINAL OFFISHALL

Slavery's legacy has truly crushed the minds of many black people of the Western Hemisphere.  It has settled into the very bone marrow of the people affected by it. The enslavement of our people of the West was horrific, the mass transit of human bodies beyond their borders, and beyond their homes was devastating.  Yet, we survive. And merely surviving is what we believe we must do.  However, slavery in the Americas was not as simple and clear cut as presented to us.  It created and crossed many lines and barriers.  Slavery in it's urban form in the Americas was a different sort than that taught to us by films produced and directed by whites.  Slavery in our minds have been formed also by the learned scholars of our times.  People we hold in high esteem, that may have another agenda because they are sworn to a secret society that the average black man or black woman walking down any street in the U.S or even in our sister countries and surrounding islands wouldn't have the slightest idea that such societies existed and exists until this very moment.  But they do exist and many of our esteemed scholars are bound to them by taking an oath.  Somehow each time I picked up the book the Mis-Education Of The Negro, my little Angel inside would always say "put that ish down", thus I've never read the book completely.

Slavery's legacy, the story handed down to us, what we imagine now, may be quite different than that of the slavery story we hold so near and dear. Rarely do we imagine conditions of slavery in the large cities. One often conjurs up pictures of cotton plantations or possibly sugar cane fields, but snapshots in the mind of slavery in the cities is rarely imagined.  " This slavery (urban slavery) was much different from the slavery of cotton, rice and indigo plantations of rural South Carolina. Urban slavery provided much more mobility and many more work opportunities than rural slavery. Many slaves worked as skilled or semiskilled artisans, as did free African Americans. Often these artisans had as much independence and autonomy as their free African-American counterparts. A full 15 percent of the slave population lived away from their masters. These slaves hired themselves out in the city and only saw their masters once a week to collect their earnings. They had the opportunity to live away from the eye of whites and develop their own social groups with other slaves and free African Americans" The mobility of black people from the 1790's up until circa the 1840's was not what we imagined as we don't imagine slaves going no where with out a white master escorting the slave.  And still on top of white slavery there was another stage in of slavery that I would never have imagined and put into this context.   "Another group of slaves served free African-American family members and lived as de facto free."

With some nuances I feel confident that a similar form of life for black people was common in most major southern U.S. cities.  The ability of blacks to move around in major southern cities and from state to state may have been the catalyst for the strong reaction taken by black people in New Orleans when Jim Crow laws were to go into effect after Reconstruction, which led to  the creation of the Comite des Citoyens.  The Comite des Citoyens fought through the courts, all the way to the supreme court of the U.S. in the famous case of Plessy vs.. Ferguson case. The first time I truly understood what took place in this case it really blew my mind.  These black people, many of whom were quite wealthy, did not feel as if they were marginalized in 1892 by the courts even if "...Whites possessed far more legal and civil rights than free African Americans."  I suppose these black people understood that far more rights should not be interpreted as having no legal and civil rights at all.  When the Constitution of the U.S. was ratified five of the 13 colonies allowed black people to vote, and I feel confident we exercised our rights and voted.  What then has happened to us today?  Is it really Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome?  Or, are we being misled by those that look like us once again?

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is a theory based on a collective suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  A collective manifesting symptoms of PTSD, a theory posited by Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary.  I suppose the memory of slavery has so traumitized black people that we are suffering from some sort of collective self esteem crisis is what Dr. Leary hoped to impart on us.  It appears to me that Jim Crow laws have affected us in many ways but the continued cycling and recycling that 'a slave you were and slave you will always be' meme will, I suppose, create false memory of slavery that will in fact affect us psychologically more than the actual chattel slavery that went on.  And, sadly much of the recycling of the legacy of slavery is done by those who look like us.  It seems quite apparent to me the people that lived during the slavery time and the years following the Civil War somehow were missed with the slave you are a slave you will always be meme.  It is the recycling of this meme by other blacks whether esteemed learned scholars or people with a blog and a social media account that makes the new title Descendent of Slaves a badge of honor.  The belief in the mythological black buck being whipped by massa for being rebellious is burned into the minds of the western hemisphere Negro. Instead  the belief of  wealthy free black people could create a  group of black citizens such as the Comite des Citoyens going to court to the Supreme Court of the U.S. is seen as an impossibility. 

We are doing the most damage to ourselves.  We paint ourselves as the descendents of slaves when there is a possibility that we may not be such.  We may be the descendents of free black people and free people of colour that fought against injustices waged against our people.affluent people that may have lost/stolen farms and businesses, land and real estate property under Jim Crow laws.  I would rather not forget that under this government that we allow to perpetuate itself, that we do have legal and civil remedies right now and are not merely victims of the system.  "Free African Americans could not challenge whites politically and had to establish separate social structures, but to a great extent they could ECONOMICALLY [emphasis mine] challenge the dividing lines between themselves and whites." if we now understood that our economic power, especially today is our power, and it is power that the Most Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey said we need.   "It is the commercial and financial power of the United States of America that makes her the greatest banker in the world. Hence it is advisable for the Negro to get power of every kind. POWER in education, science, industry, politics and higher government. That kind of power that will stand out signally, so that other races and nations can see, and if they will not see, then FEEL."  Maybe we need to understand just what is meant by the economy of black people in the U.S. and what that really means.  However, lets not forget how the power of economy can be wield right now starting with what we buy to put into our bodies .  And how what we buy can influence what is stocked in grocery stores easily accessible by the majority black populations.

Jason Poole: On Borrowed Ground:African American Life In Charleston South Carolina, 1810 to 1860.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey: The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey

Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome [PTSS]:America's Legacy Of Enduring Injury And Healing.

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.