I just read this book by Debra Bruno. It was interesting, both the history and the story of how the author learned the story and talked with people about it. I don’t really have anything to say here; just wanted to share it as it has some of the sort of political science content that we don’t usually discuss in this space.
Andrew:
Bruno isn’t alone. Several months ago, while tracing my ancestors back to the early Dutch settlers in Kingston, New York, I was surprised— naively— to encounter a whoa-wait-what? hand-written letter to my great, great, great, great grand uncle, dated February 23, 1796, requesting “a healthy, stout male slave to go on board the Sloop”.
John
What are the major conclusions of the book?
If this is like “land acknowledgements”, the things that some universities/academics and companies do at their events where they say “we acknowledge that we’re on Native American land” and then do nothing else about it, it’s kind of useless. Maybe even worse than useless, because it’s just virtue signaling, in addition to an in-your-face “we own it now”.
This is one reason why the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists told the American Anthropological Association to stop doing them. (https://theconversation.com/land-acknowledgments-meant-to-honor-indigenous-people-too-often-do-the-opposite-erasing-american-indians-and-sanitizing-history-instead-163787)
What is different about acknowledging that your family owned slaves generations ago and then doing nothing? (Talking does not constitute action.)
If no useful action follows from this, then it shouldn’t be done.
Anon:
The book doesn’t really have conclusions. It’s published by an academic press, but it’s not a scholarly manuscript. It’s someone telling a story that’s of historical interest. Just speaking in general terms, I think it’s fine for a book of history to tell a factual story of historical interest. Not every book has to directly change the world to be of value.
Beyond that, it seems pretty harsh for you to start speculating that a book you’ve never seen is “worse than useless” or that it “shouldn’t be done.” Who are you to say that the author shouldn’t have written a book telling her family story? And why are you so sure that she is “doing nothing”?
If it’s just a story, that’s fine. Stories are nice. History is good.
I’m just extremely skeptical of any of the race-based programs/practices and articles whose only purpose is to make people who do them/read them congratulate themselves about being enlightened, as exemplified by land acknowledgements. Other examples include implicit bias training, as you have posted about on this blog before, I think. Or things like the New York Times’ practice of capitalizing “black” but not “white”. The default posture should be to believe that such things are useless, in my opinion.
I read the article that the book is based on
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/07/22/after-i-discovered-that-my-ancestors-had-enslaved-people-i-connected-with-descendant-those-who-were-enslaved/)
It has a paragraph about how this isn’t taught in the schools and “we thought we were different from those racist Southerners but we actually weren’t.”
Puncturing superiority is fine, that’s a use too. Even if it’s not useful in the way we want history to be, family stories are fine if that’s all they are.
Anon:
Individual stories are an important part of history. Historians can use such stories to form larger hypotheses, and stories that are both truthful and specific are valuable for their ability to punch holes in naive theories.
I don’t see what this recent book has to do with the decisions in a newspaper’s style guide. I get that there’s a lot out there that annoys you—there’s a lot out there that annoys me too!—; I just think it’s a stretch for you to be bringing it up here. To flip it around, someone should be able to write a book of historical interest about her family story without needing to feel responsible for various authors, bureaucrats, and newspaper editors who have made decisions that you happen to disagree with.
Andrew, it’s all a part of the same politics. That’s what it has to do with it, she is not “responsible” for it. Some books like those examples I mentioned are “White Fragility” by Robin DeAngelo and “How to be an Anti-Racist” by Ibram X. Kendi.
I’m sure as well there are many books that claim to be just telling family stories but are actually like the books I mentioned above (using the true story for that purpose).
If this isn’t like that and I am overcorrecting, I’m happy to withdraw my statement. I think we should just be reflexively skeptical of this politics and anything like it.
I’ve seen a lot of criticism of “White Fragility” and “How to Be an Anti-Racist”, but “the author’s purpose in writing them was to make white people congratulate themselves” was not one of them!
John, it is. Once you go through the “gauntlet” of White Fragility and accept that you are a racist by the author’s definition unless you agree with her politics, you are now enlightened and can congratulate yourself. See e.g
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/
Anon –
You have proven my point. The essay author John McWhorter criticizes the book’s contents and “unintentional” effect “despite the sincere intentions of its author”, Robin DeAngelo. DeAngelo states that the self-examination promoted by the book is a prerequisite for “meaningful progress on personal and societal racism to occur”, in McWhorter’s words.
So what we have is a book whose purpose is to combat racism by laying out what its author views as a necessary step in combating racism, but whose unintended consequence is a self-congratulatory feeling by those who take that step…and then stop.
Your criticism applies to the unintended consequence, not the purpose. And while the author can be criticized for not foreseeing such consequences, I wouldn’t assume they intended them.
On the other hand, there does appear to be a rich history in Hollywood of requiring movies about racism to include a white self-congratulatory character, at least partly so that mostly white audiences can feel good about themselves upon leaving the theater (it’s better box office that way).
John, the reason I linked this article is these quotes at the end:
“And herein is the real problem with White Fragility. DiAngelo does not see fit to address why all of this agonizing soul-searching is necessary to forging change in society. One might ask just how a people can be poised for making change when they have been taught that pretty much anything they say or think is racist and thus antithetical to the good. What end does all this self-mortification serve? Impatient with such questions, DiAngelo insists that “wanting to jump over the hard, personal work and get to ‘solutions’” is a “foundation of white fragility.” In other words, for DiAngelo, the whole point is the suffering. And note the scare quotes around solutions, as if wanting such a thing were somehow ridiculous.”
“White Fragility is, in the end, a book about how to make certain educated white readers feel better about themselves.”
Is the consequence really *unintended*? The thing he says is unintentional is the diminishing of black people despite her “sincere intention”.
This post kept me entertained for quite a while
Most of my family arrived in the US in the period immediately preceding or following the Civil War. I do not know of any slave holders in the family, although it can’t be ruled out. However, I do know that my great great grandmother’s second husband was a Union soldier and apparently died at the famous Andersonville Confederate prison camp.
This got me thinking: what are the odds that a current American citizen is decdended from an American slave holder? Similarly, what are the odds that a current American citizen is descended from someone who had a child that perished as a member of the Union Army during the war?
In poking around a bit I discovered that the first question was a bit of a hot topic a while back, with a lot of propaganda being produced by “minimizers” and “maximizers”. But just from a quick look at the numbers, it doens’t seem like you need to conjer up a alot of BS to see a few important points.
First, slavery was banned in all northern states by 1804, and had been in decline for decades. At that time, the population of the future Union states was about 4m.
Second, on the eve of the Civil war in 1860, there were about 400,000 slave holders in the US.
Third, during the civil war, about 365,000 Union soldiers lost their lives during the war, either in fighting, to disease, in accidents or in Confederate prisons; and there were about Union 280,000 wounded.
Forth, for perspective, about 83M people have obtained official permanent residence in the US since 1865. Presumably these people are immigrants. This is equal to 25% of the *modern* US population; yet these people arrived here over hte course of 160 years and no doubt have produced a substantial number of descendents that are part of the modern population.
Overall, my guess that a current American citizen has very roughly less than a one in ten chance of having *any* ancestors that were in the US during the period of slavery; and that of the people who do have such ancestors, they have nearly an equal chance of having suffered the loss of a family member in emancipating slaves as they do of being the descendent of a slave holder.
But it would be interesting to know if anyone has generated solid numbers on either or both questions!