This is a very ugly story. Anyone who is extremely sensitive or who has a
problem with nasty things should tune into another channel.
GIVEN the nature of human beings' behaviour under extraordinarily
demoralising conditions, certain general assumptions can be made about the
passage of enchained black men and women from Africa to the New World,
namely, that they were treated as brutally as animals, given just enough
food and water to keep them alive, and forced to lie in their own urine and
excrement until some sailors -- probably those with the lowest status on
board -- came with buckets of sea-water to desultorily rinse the filth from
their bodies and holding-shelves, even as one would hose down pigs in a
sty. It can also be assumed that any nubile and fairly attractive female
would have been raped, either with the ship's officers' active
participation or at least with their tacit approval, as a way of keeping
the men from grumbling at the horrendous toil and loathsome nature of their
mission. Even with the most strict and God-fearing Puritan captain at the
helm (and there were plenty of them, be sure! Many would later go into the
whaling trade), it is unlikely that "the wenches" escaped this treatment,
and probably experienced it with appalling regularity during the course of
the passage.
Second, GIVEN the length of the journey and the emaciated state they must
have been in when they arrived, at least some of these young women must
have been noticeably pregnant by the time they reached the slave markets on
the Virginia coast. It can also be assumed that, aside from the
strongest-looking and most able "bucks" who would have been sold first and
at the highest prices, the pregnant "wenches" would have been the most
attractive objects for a potential buyer: two slaves for the price of one.
Furthermore, the paternity of the unborn brat being of no consequence, what
difference did it make whether it was black or yellow?
Third, GIVEN the universally prevailing notion among plantation owners (and
all whites, for that matter) that the negro was NOT a human being in the
same sense that a white man was, that blacks were the sons and daughters of
Ham, every one of them accursed by God and forever doomed to be "a servant
of servants…unto his brethren" (Genesis 9:25), it is not surprising that a
slave-owner and his pampered wife might have seen in the mulatto child a
"difference". Having white blood, this child would have been considered
more educable, more potentially trustworthy, "better-looking"; in short
(though the slave-owners would never have sunk to admitting it), more like
themselves, less "alien", and therefore deserving of an easier lot in life
than the murderously grueling work that blacks were obliged to perform,
under the lash, in the cotton and tobacco fields, the rice paddies, the
forests. The mulattos (particularly females) were brought up as house
servants, taught to cook and wait table, to sew and clean, to manage
everyday household affairs, and to sing and play instruments for their
masters' and mistresses' amusement. Of course these mulatto "house niggers"
soon perceived themselves as being "privileged", a cut above the blacks,
who could never hope to attain such refinement and comforts, such airs and
graces if you will.
Many a slave-owner had an eye to a pretty mulatto house servant, and
silky-fair-haired quadroon babies (even more white than their mothers) were
a thorn in the side of many a slave-owner's wife, who had to endure the
sight of "high-yellow" pickaninnies -- whose fine-chiselled, delicate European
features were the graven image of her own husband's -- having the run of the
place and being endlessly indulged by the master of the house. Propaganda
tracts such as the television series "Roots" would have us believe that
these children could only have been the product of rape; however, knowing
my fellow men and women as I do, I think the better part of this conjugal
hanky-panky was by mutual consent, and nothing less. (Show me, all you
Politically Correct moralists, the low-born woman who has not attempted to
raise her children's status in society by breeding with the "right" sort of
man! In fact, I believe this phenomenon is called "human nature".) Not
seldom, the children who resulted from these unions were allowed, even
encouraged, to learn a trade of some kind, and on becoming adults, were set
free by their fathers/masters with a little money to get started in life.
They set themselves up as craftsmen: blacksmiths, carpenters, seamstresses,
hat-makers, tailors, shoemakers, sail-makers, saddle-makers, coopers,
locksmiths, gamekeepers, chandlers, cooks, cowboys -- and even farmers if they
were foolhardy enough.
But most important, the black "field niggers" were keenly aware of the
difference in status that the "house niggers" enjoyed in contrast to what
they were forced to endure. Mulattos were often raised to the status of
overseers and foremen, housekeepers and managers of production; in other
words, blacks not only had the whites above them, but the mulattos too -- if
only by one step!
When the Civil War ended, the South was in a state that for us modern
people is extremely difficult to comprehend. The very feudal nature of the
plantation society made it vulnerable in ways that a more modern social
entity could have resisted, contained, or even absorbed. Its emphasis on
honour and blood, for example, belonged more to the time of
Charlemagne -- crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire on Christmas Day, anno
800 -- than to the time of the Spinning Jenny and the arrival of unwashed,
hungry refugees who were flocking into New York from Ireland and Sweden,
from Italy and Hungary.
And the carpetbaggers came, the parasites, the manipulators, the wheelers
and dealers from the North, who saw in a defeated Dixie a wide-open
invitation, at least figuratively, to plunder, rape and burn in the name of
Commerce. We, who had lost everything we ever had (and I mean black as well
as white in the South, because master and slave define each other; their
fates are inseparable), had no reason to see these marauders from the North
as anything but enemies. It wasn't just the plantation owner who lost his
birthright, his home and his property, it was all of us other people as
well, everyone from slaves and freedmen to clerks to tradesmen, to
artisans, to academics! Why has everyone forgotten this? For the love of
Christ, IT WAS ALL OF US! WE LOST THE GODDAMN WAR! Every man and woman jack
of us! And for some reason that I have yet to fathom, we have never
admitted defeat, or allowed ourselves to be confronted with the conflicts
that the War was supposed to have resolved, or the questions that our
defeat lay suddenly and obscenely wide-open under our very noses! We never
got to share the sorrow or observe the mourning -- together, black and
white -- that would have cleansed and rehabilitated us, that would have freed
us from the rancour that even today makes us grate our teeth in anger.
Mulattos were voted into the State senates and the House of
Representatives, sent to Washington by their constituencies, encouraged to
take revenge on their fathers/masters. But sadly enough, they were backed
up by the carpetbaggers and federal bullies, who hated the South, the black
South as well as the white, and were only on the scene to wield their power
over a conquered nation. As soon as they got bored with the meagre pickings
to be had, they dusted off their carpetbags, and went north again, leaving
behind the mess they had made. One of Mississippi's first race laws, I
believe (and memory does not always serve me these days, so you can look it
up yourself!), was the one-drop law, that stated that any man who had a
KNOWN AFRICAN ANCESTOR, was considered to be a negro, and, as such, could
not serve in a duly-elected assembly of white men.
The KKK rode out of the night, and people, black and white alike, who
opposed their tyranny and craziness were dragged out of their beds and
murdered in the southern moonlight. In reaction to all this, the mulatto
community, such as it was, retreated into a stoic but strangely frivolous
silence, never exerting itself, or making claim to what should have been
its birthright -- in other words, never taking advantage of its latent ability
to be a bridge between the two races whose blood flowed in their veins
(with the singular exception of W.E.B. Dubois, but he was, as I said, an
exception). They opted instead for complacency, for a somewhat privileged
little rung on society's ladder (no matter how low that rung might have
been); busied themselves with their social engagements (at which pretty,
fair-skinned girls were given the highest priority); accepted the white
man's alms and support; and lorded it over black-skinned people with an
absolutely unparalleled arrogance. I know this, because I have never met
people who were so thoroughly racist as my own mother's family. (Oh, but
then, when I think about it, I know that's not really quite true. Black
people have hated me in the same way -- from the gut!)
The resentment felt then has lived long into our own time, and up until the
Second World War represented a far more bitter racial dividing line than
the one between black and white.
I know that many people feel that the "multiracial movement" is just one
more attempt by the "high yellow" to re-establish the hegemony they enjoyed
both before and after the civil war. But I staunchly maintain that this is
not so. My son and my daughter know nothing of this nonsense. All they know
is that their mom's face is brown, and their dad's face was white. What is
called for now is quite a different thing, and something I can share
equally with the blackest or whitest of my people. Having gone through what
I called in my earlier essay "the fashions of journalistic and official whim" - not
to mention the insecurity of black people altogether in the USA - and
"being called coloured, negro, Negro, black, Afro-American and now
(fanfare) African American (roughly a new designation for every ten years
of my life)", I have always felt that I was being forced to deny and
abandon a large part of my heritage, banishing a great many individuals and
families whose very existence is the basis for my own existence, into
limbo, simply. By allowing myself to be identified only with Africa, I am
wiping out all my non-African peoples, who are in fact in the majority, as
if they had never existed.
And then a chilling little revelation struck me. When my grandchildren grow
up and look in the mirror, if the current cyclops-view of "race" is still
100% in force, they will opt for the only sensible alternative open to
them, and call themselves "white", thereby banishing ME AND ALL THE INDIANS
AND AFRICANS IN THEIR BACKGROUND, INTO LIMBO! You see, it works both ways
in time, both backwards and forwards. And that is why I demand to be
acknowledged as "multiracial", for their sake, in order that they may be so
acknowledged.
But then, we have come, all of us, to another and in many ways imperative
stage, the Millennium. There is nothing in this particular date that is
magic; however, it should be a good time to take stock, to weigh and
measure ourselves, and to divine what it is we really stand for. I once
wrote that even something as stupid as a computer can reckon out that each
and every one of us is related (I mean all of humanity, each member of it).
And I feel that the millennium might be a good time to give over, to
lighten up, to stop playing power games based on race. If we don't stop
this foolishness, we might as well bend over and kiss our arses goodbye.
I want an end to this. I am not a negro; I know people, charming, elegant,
funny, delightful and learned black people from Africa, whose integrity is
as valid as anyone else's. Their heritage is as noble and worthy of respect
as anyone's on this earth; but I am only theirs by half, I AM NOT ONE OF
THEM. And because I respect their racial and historical integrity, I will
not see their race as a dumping-ground for the white man's bastards:
indeed, that particular stigma is something that I am strong enough to bear
on my own. I am multiracial; I choose that as the only legitimate signum
for WHAT I AM, the only designation that I will accept.
Yours, in all humility and loving-kindness,
Susanne
Also by Susanne M.J. Heine:
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