It’s rare to encounter encouraging news about contemporary slavery. Wherever unpaid forced labor arrangements occur, whether in Mauritania or the U.S., they usually occur as part of informal sectors of society and the economy that are difficult to observe, and with limited enforcement of laws and policies for a variety of reasons. The article “Mauritania: The Real Beginning of the End of Slavery?,” from AllAfrica.com, offers at least the hope of real change on this issue in that national context.
The following is from the article:
“Four months after the passing of a law criminalising slavery in Mauritania, anti-slavery activists hope newly-announced funding for the reintegration of former slaves will address the many problems they continue to face in Mauritanian society.
"Quite obviously, we're very pleased with the announcement," said Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, member of the anti-slavery organisation SOS Esclaves, which has been leading the fight against slavery in Mauritania for years. "The government is sending slaves a strong signal and it is also proof that the authorities have heard our calls."
When slavery was criminalised in August, human rights and anti-slavery organisations urged the government - as they had been doing for years - to adopt accompanying measures for the law to be effective.
Officially abolished in 1981, slavery continues to be practiced in all Mauritanian communities, mostly in rural areas, by upper-class lighter-skinned Moors (Berber Arabs) as well as black Africans. One estimate by the Open Society Justice Initiative places the number of slaves and former slaves at 20 percent of the population - or about 500,000 people - but the numbers are difficult to confirm.”
Showing posts with label slavery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slavery. Show all posts
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Southern Culture, Part III
In the U.S. Southeast, it’s not particularly uncommon to encounter cars and pick-ups with various Confederate Flag bumper stickers or other adornments. One fairly common sticker has a Confederate flag and the phrase, “Heritage, Not Hate.”
When white southerners make such claims about the Confederate flag or other symbols of the Confederacy, that that flag today represents simple pride in “Southern Culture” – and where “Southern Culture” represents a subset of southern cultural traits (in terms of Sapir’s discussion of a third sense of “culture” – see my previous post), things like hospitality, pride in family and region, southern food, a laid back approach to life, etc. – and that it doesn’t represent to them the southern past of slavery and Jim Crow, some are simply being disingenuous. After all, it was largely in response to the civil rights movement that displays of the Confederate flag, including its adoption as part of some state flags, became prominent beginning in the 1960s. (Some don’t bother being disingenuous. I once encountered another bumper sticker featuring a Confederate flag that read, “If I had known, I would have picked my own cotton.” At a roadside stand selling flags, I recently saw for sale a Confederate flag with superimposed German Iron Cross. I’m pretty sure anyone who’d fly that flag fully intends to invoke racism.)
Still, many are sincere in that sentiment. It’s not that they’re unaware necessarily of the South’s sordid race history, so much as they find it easy or convenient to elide it, or they don’t see it as an essential component of “Southern Culture” which for them the Confederate flag stands for, or they don’t see the connection between the plantation past and the present, given the wholesale and real transformation of economic infrastructure and cultural ecology in much of the South.
Plantation agriculture and the attendant race system is not part of the way of life, not part of the “culture core” (see my previous post) for most southerners today (with a major exception being for many migrant laborers working in Florida citrus and plantation remnants elsewhere). For many southern whites, the plantation and all it entailed is simply a matter of the past. For many southern blacks, while the civil rights movement clearly improved the situation dramatically, the plantation past is not so easily elided – 250 years of slavery and another century of Jim Crow aren’t so easy to overlook, and while southern economic infrastructure and mode of production have been thoroughly transformed over the past half century, the economic inequalities associated with previous racism continue to have real and serious economic effects for many southern blacks – the past may be over, but the real effects of it are not yet past for quite a few southern blacks.
In my experience, there is actually quite a bit of commonality and agreement between southern whites and blacks when it comes to the positive valuation of much of the content of “Southern Culture.” Most all can agree about the worth of southern hospitality or about the delicious quality of southern food – food in particular seems a particularly “safe” and enjoyable topic for anyone to talk about (As Chris Rock put it, “Cornbread – ain’t nothing wrong with that”). It is more symbols associated with the Confederacy that generate controversy and about which there is a cleavage of interpretation that often follows racial lines. For many southern whites, the Confederate flag simply stands in for “Southern Culture” and pride in it. For that matter, for many “The Confederacy” has come to stand for nobility, virtue, manliness, and defiant self-reliance rather than the secession of states with slavery based economies. For many southern blacks, that same symbol stands not for “Southern Culture,” but for the Confederacy, which in turn is indelibly tied to lack of freedom or self-reliance and to racial tyranny.
When white southerners make such claims about the Confederate flag or other symbols of the Confederacy, that that flag today represents simple pride in “Southern Culture” – and where “Southern Culture” represents a subset of southern cultural traits (in terms of Sapir’s discussion of a third sense of “culture” – see my previous post), things like hospitality, pride in family and region, southern food, a laid back approach to life, etc. – and that it doesn’t represent to them the southern past of slavery and Jim Crow, some are simply being disingenuous. After all, it was largely in response to the civil rights movement that displays of the Confederate flag, including its adoption as part of some state flags, became prominent beginning in the 1960s. (Some don’t bother being disingenuous. I once encountered another bumper sticker featuring a Confederate flag that read, “If I had known, I would have picked my own cotton.” At a roadside stand selling flags, I recently saw for sale a Confederate flag with superimposed German Iron Cross. I’m pretty sure anyone who’d fly that flag fully intends to invoke racism.)
Still, many are sincere in that sentiment. It’s not that they’re unaware necessarily of the South’s sordid race history, so much as they find it easy or convenient to elide it, or they don’t see it as an essential component of “Southern Culture” which for them the Confederate flag stands for, or they don’t see the connection between the plantation past and the present, given the wholesale and real transformation of economic infrastructure and cultural ecology in much of the South.
Plantation agriculture and the attendant race system is not part of the way of life, not part of the “culture core” (see my previous post) for most southerners today (with a major exception being for many migrant laborers working in Florida citrus and plantation remnants elsewhere). For many southern whites, the plantation and all it entailed is simply a matter of the past. For many southern blacks, while the civil rights movement clearly improved the situation dramatically, the plantation past is not so easily elided – 250 years of slavery and another century of Jim Crow aren’t so easy to overlook, and while southern economic infrastructure and mode of production have been thoroughly transformed over the past half century, the economic inequalities associated with previous racism continue to have real and serious economic effects for many southern blacks – the past may be over, but the real effects of it are not yet past for quite a few southern blacks.
In my experience, there is actually quite a bit of commonality and agreement between southern whites and blacks when it comes to the positive valuation of much of the content of “Southern Culture.” Most all can agree about the worth of southern hospitality or about the delicious quality of southern food – food in particular seems a particularly “safe” and enjoyable topic for anyone to talk about (As Chris Rock put it, “Cornbread – ain’t nothing wrong with that”). It is more symbols associated with the Confederacy that generate controversy and about which there is a cleavage of interpretation that often follows racial lines. For many southern whites, the Confederate flag simply stands in for “Southern Culture” and pride in it. For that matter, for many “The Confederacy” has come to stand for nobility, virtue, manliness, and defiant self-reliance rather than the secession of states with slavery based economies. For many southern blacks, that same symbol stands not for “Southern Culture,” but for the Confederacy, which in turn is indelibly tied to lack of freedom or self-reliance and to racial tyranny.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Southern Culture, Part I
In the Southeastern United States, there is a cottage industry focused on Southern Culture Studies. This is partly an academic enterprise, with much attention to southern culture in history and humanities departments of southern colleges and universities, and with academic conferences and programs focused on southern culture generally, or southern foodways or folkways. There is also a popular component, with much regional interest in southern culture expressed in various festivals celebrating aspects of it or with tourist sites like Stone Mountain near Atlanta.
What is Southern Culture?
What’s usually meant by “Southern Culture” is a set of cultural elements seen as typical of or typifying (not quite the same thing) the South or part of it, rather than the total set of important elements characterizing life in the South in the fullest anthropological sense of “culture.” The sorts of elements most often emphasized are food, language, and a variety of dispositions or character traits.
Food
As I’ve written before, food is particularly meaningful to people (see “Sushi and Globalization”). Like music, the meaning of food is generally without linguistic content, but it nonetheless can carry significant emotional weight and is invested with identity. Food is vital to life, and the foods we grow up with can be associated with home, family, region, and one’s culture in a variety of ways. Interest in Southern food can be general, emphasizing foods common and thought to be quintessentially southern throughout the region (cornbread, collards, black eye peas, sweet tea, fried chicken, or just about anything else fried), or it can emphasize southern regional diversity in foodways (fried mullet in the Pensacola area of the Central Gulf Coast, tamale pie in central Mississippi, vinegar barbecue sauces in central and northern Georgia and other regional barbecue traditions, Cajun and creole cooking in Louisiana, etc.).
Language
Much academic analysis of southern culture focuses on language, especially the study of southern regional dialects and accents. Distinct dialects, and even more so accents, are also one of the most clear markers of southern culture to the lay public. (When I was a child, whenever we would visit relatives in upstate New York, northern relatives would always want my sister and I to "say something southern" or to say "y'all." I'd ask them in turn to say "yous guys.")
Disposition
To many, southern culture means “Southern hospitality,” friendly attitudes, and a laid-back approach to life. Some would also include notions of noble and chivalrous masculinity, gentility, or other dispositions and character traits.
All of these things are, to varying extents, part of southern culture. Much of this is worthy of celebration. (Personally, I’m wary of any sort of glorification of masculinity, and the glorification of an old-style white upper class of southern gentility turns my stomach. Southern food is wonderful – as occasional food – but I worry about the many southerners who eat large amounts of the salty, fatty fare.)
Symbols
“Southern culture” also evokes or brings to mind various symbols of the South. The most controversial of these is the Confederate flag, a.k.a. the Confederate Battle Flag or the Stars and Bars, but a variety of monuments, especially Civil War monuments, throughout the South are also often associated with “Southern Culture” and capable of generating controversy (see two earlier posts: "Race and Public Monuments in Pensacola, Florida" and "Sometimes a Statue is just a Statue.") (Interestingly, the many monuments throughout the region to Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of the South if there ever was one, seem to be much less associated with southern culture, and for clearer reasons much less controversial.)
These things, food, language, socially patterned dispositions, and symbols, are important (if not always clearly good), and they do define the South in certain ways, but as I indicated above, they are only one subset of the patterning of social life in the region. An anthropological perspective on cultural ecology, economy, and social interaction indicates other important features (of at least cultural historical importance) of the South as well.
Cultural Ecology and Economy
In terms of cultural ecology and economy, plantation agriculture dominated and in part (if never wholly) defined the region both before and for a long time after the American Civil War. This was particularly the case through the “cotton belt” stretching across South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, part of Louisiana, and into East Texas, where after Indian removal and after Eli Whitney’s cotton gin made large scale cotton production feasible, this region of the South was largely colonized by new plantations that transformed the social and natural landscape. Long after the abolition of slavery, this sub-region of the south had both the largest black populations and more of the worst abuses of racism.
Race
The South has also been characterized by a contradictory system of racial classification and interaction, emphasizing both racial intermixture and absolute distinction and division.
Many anthropological and sociological analyses of race have emphasized that in North America, racial classification (at least with regard to black and whites) is characterized by hypodescent, sometimes called the “One Drop Rule,” whereby anyone with any known ancestry in one category (in this case “black” – the category historically constructed as inferior in racist logic) is classified as belonging to that category – even if they majority of their ancestry were from the other category. This is in contrast to racial classification systems in other parts of the Americas, e.g. the Caribbean, where race is not thought of in so starkly binary terms, where there is a gradation of categories in between black and white or African and European ends of a continuum.
What has been less noted is that throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th century, much of the South had a hybrid system which combined the recognition of racial intermixture as with Caribbean race classification and the recognition of absolute and stark division as with North American hypodescent generally. For example, in addition to the categories “black” and “white,” some were categorized as “quadroons” or “octoroons.” Such classifications indicated both racial (and sexual) intermixture, but also emphasized a clear divide. An octoroon was 7/8 white, but it was the 1/8 black ancestry that named the category and marked it as a subset of “black.”
In practice, southern racism has also often had a distinctive intimate quality to it. An older relative of mine who was dear to my heart as I grew up had a very close friend who was a black woman, but at the same time, this relative was in many ways quite racist, having no qualms with making racist generalizations and occasionally using flagrantly racist language. She was typical in this regard. As I grew up in the South, I heard many white racists defend their racism through a lens of intimacy – “We know they’re inferior, because we know them so well,” (usually phrased in contrast to those “damn Yankees” who didn’t know any better). The pattern of interracial friendship with specific individuals alongside a feeling of stark separation between general categories, or even explicit racism, has also been typical in the South.
Race and Class
Historically, race has been intertwined with class in complex ways in the South (as is true most anywhere in the Americas). In the South, there was historically an underclass of poor whites (mostly poor white farmers until well into the 20th century) who saw themselves as having at least a limited stake in the racial system. (This hadn’t always been the case – a number of excellent analyses have spoken of solidarity across race lines by subaltern whites and blacks in the early colonial south, but by the 19th century at least, white racial solidarity could often trump the class antagonism between poor and wealthy whites.) This stake in the racial system was partly about identity, about being part of a superior racial group even if poor, but it was also partly about economics. Slavery and later Jim Crow laws, by prohibiting free action, including economic action, of blacks, shored up the economic positions, even if they were still weak, of poor and working class southern whites.
Many southern whites would understandably like to forget about things like the long history of plantations as ecological and social systems in the South, and the dynamics of race, racism, class, and Jim Crow, and to simply move on. For many southern blacks (for whom such things are not ancient history, but things they experienced, or at least things experienced by their parents and/or grandparents), these are also part of southern culture (not in place of southern food, dialects, or laid-back attitudes, but alongside those things), and for many, who also want to “move on,” moving on entails remembering this less positive side of southern culture and history and dealing with the lasting material legacy of it.
What is Southern Culture?
What’s usually meant by “Southern Culture” is a set of cultural elements seen as typical of or typifying (not quite the same thing) the South or part of it, rather than the total set of important elements characterizing life in the South in the fullest anthropological sense of “culture.” The sorts of elements most often emphasized are food, language, and a variety of dispositions or character traits.
Food
As I’ve written before, food is particularly meaningful to people (see “Sushi and Globalization”). Like music, the meaning of food is generally without linguistic content, but it nonetheless can carry significant emotional weight and is invested with identity. Food is vital to life, and the foods we grow up with can be associated with home, family, region, and one’s culture in a variety of ways. Interest in Southern food can be general, emphasizing foods common and thought to be quintessentially southern throughout the region (cornbread, collards, black eye peas, sweet tea, fried chicken, or just about anything else fried), or it can emphasize southern regional diversity in foodways (fried mullet in the Pensacola area of the Central Gulf Coast, tamale pie in central Mississippi, vinegar barbecue sauces in central and northern Georgia and other regional barbecue traditions, Cajun and creole cooking in Louisiana, etc.).
Language
Much academic analysis of southern culture focuses on language, especially the study of southern regional dialects and accents. Distinct dialects, and even more so accents, are also one of the most clear markers of southern culture to the lay public. (When I was a child, whenever we would visit relatives in upstate New York, northern relatives would always want my sister and I to "say something southern" or to say "y'all." I'd ask them in turn to say "yous guys.")
Disposition
To many, southern culture means “Southern hospitality,” friendly attitudes, and a laid-back approach to life. Some would also include notions of noble and chivalrous masculinity, gentility, or other dispositions and character traits.
All of these things are, to varying extents, part of southern culture. Much of this is worthy of celebration. (Personally, I’m wary of any sort of glorification of masculinity, and the glorification of an old-style white upper class of southern gentility turns my stomach. Southern food is wonderful – as occasional food – but I worry about the many southerners who eat large amounts of the salty, fatty fare.)
Symbols
“Southern culture” also evokes or brings to mind various symbols of the South. The most controversial of these is the Confederate flag, a.k.a. the Confederate Battle Flag or the Stars and Bars, but a variety of monuments, especially Civil War monuments, throughout the South are also often associated with “Southern Culture” and capable of generating controversy (see two earlier posts: "Race and Public Monuments in Pensacola, Florida" and "Sometimes a Statue is just a Statue.") (Interestingly, the many monuments throughout the region to Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of the South if there ever was one, seem to be much less associated with southern culture, and for clearer reasons much less controversial.)
These things, food, language, socially patterned dispositions, and symbols, are important (if not always clearly good), and they do define the South in certain ways, but as I indicated above, they are only one subset of the patterning of social life in the region. An anthropological perspective on cultural ecology, economy, and social interaction indicates other important features (of at least cultural historical importance) of the South as well.
Cultural Ecology and Economy
In terms of cultural ecology and economy, plantation agriculture dominated and in part (if never wholly) defined the region both before and for a long time after the American Civil War. This was particularly the case through the “cotton belt” stretching across South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, part of Louisiana, and into East Texas, where after Indian removal and after Eli Whitney’s cotton gin made large scale cotton production feasible, this region of the South was largely colonized by new plantations that transformed the social and natural landscape. Long after the abolition of slavery, this sub-region of the south had both the largest black populations and more of the worst abuses of racism.
Race
The South has also been characterized by a contradictory system of racial classification and interaction, emphasizing both racial intermixture and absolute distinction and division.
Many anthropological and sociological analyses of race have emphasized that in North America, racial classification (at least with regard to black and whites) is characterized by hypodescent, sometimes called the “One Drop Rule,” whereby anyone with any known ancestry in one category (in this case “black” – the category historically constructed as inferior in racist logic) is classified as belonging to that category – even if they majority of their ancestry were from the other category. This is in contrast to racial classification systems in other parts of the Americas, e.g. the Caribbean, where race is not thought of in so starkly binary terms, where there is a gradation of categories in between black and white or African and European ends of a continuum.
What has been less noted is that throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th century, much of the South had a hybrid system which combined the recognition of racial intermixture as with Caribbean race classification and the recognition of absolute and stark division as with North American hypodescent generally. For example, in addition to the categories “black” and “white,” some were categorized as “quadroons” or “octoroons.” Such classifications indicated both racial (and sexual) intermixture, but also emphasized a clear divide. An octoroon was 7/8 white, but it was the 1/8 black ancestry that named the category and marked it as a subset of “black.”
In practice, southern racism has also often had a distinctive intimate quality to it. An older relative of mine who was dear to my heart as I grew up had a very close friend who was a black woman, but at the same time, this relative was in many ways quite racist, having no qualms with making racist generalizations and occasionally using flagrantly racist language. She was typical in this regard. As I grew up in the South, I heard many white racists defend their racism through a lens of intimacy – “We know they’re inferior, because we know them so well,” (usually phrased in contrast to those “damn Yankees” who didn’t know any better). The pattern of interracial friendship with specific individuals alongside a feeling of stark separation between general categories, or even explicit racism, has also been typical in the South.
Race and Class
Historically, race has been intertwined with class in complex ways in the South (as is true most anywhere in the Americas). In the South, there was historically an underclass of poor whites (mostly poor white farmers until well into the 20th century) who saw themselves as having at least a limited stake in the racial system. (This hadn’t always been the case – a number of excellent analyses have spoken of solidarity across race lines by subaltern whites and blacks in the early colonial south, but by the 19th century at least, white racial solidarity could often trump the class antagonism between poor and wealthy whites.) This stake in the racial system was partly about identity, about being part of a superior racial group even if poor, but it was also partly about economics. Slavery and later Jim Crow laws, by prohibiting free action, including economic action, of blacks, shored up the economic positions, even if they were still weak, of poor and working class southern whites.
Many southern whites would understandably like to forget about things like the long history of plantations as ecological and social systems in the South, and the dynamics of race, racism, class, and Jim Crow, and to simply move on. For many southern blacks (for whom such things are not ancient history, but things they experienced, or at least things experienced by their parents and/or grandparents), these are also part of southern culture (not in place of southern food, dialects, or laid-back attitudes, but alongside those things), and for many, who also want to “move on,” moving on entails remembering this less positive side of southern culture and history and dealing with the lasting material legacy of it.
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