Against the family

One of the most poignant stories in Edward E. Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told concerned one man sold away from his family. He had a wife and two daughters. When he first learned he was sold he laughed in shock; it would be an example of how unfeeling the slaves were, he thought. As he was carried further and further away, with less hope of ever seeing them again, he became despondent.

There were multiple stories in the book of transplanted slaves who went into a kind of zombie state that could have been fatal, but kindness from fellow slaves brought them back. It was the same for this man. One family took him in, caring for him and helping him. As he became more engaged with the life around him, he took in a young boy in a similar situation. That boy eventually grew and had a family of his own. He named two daughters after those other two daughters: not quite his sisters, always remembered by him and his not quite father.

You can imagine how much I think of people who say that Black people were better off under slavery because of their superior family lives.

There is a history of viewing the Black family as pathologically broken, going back at least to Daniel Moynihan's 1965 report The Negro Family: The Case For National Action. It was very influential. It was also flawed at the time. It is also pretty old now.

(I partially treated this topic a few years ago: http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/06/lies-we-tell-about-black-people.html)

Regardless of public conception and misconception since 1965, it takes stunning ignorance to claim intact families as one of the benefits of slavery. That takes effort.

This week we have talked about greed and dehumanization. They both matter here.

Greed was a huge incentive. Slaves regularly grew in population, every time a child was born. They could be converted to cash easily.

Dehumanization mattered too; their feelings were perceived as less sensitive. Along with the many complaints about having to work in Been in the Storm So Long there were also complaints about desertion, and the ingratitude, and the lack of feeling. There were some very bitter laments about parents coming and taking their children back.

Records still exist of countless post-Emancipation newspaper ads trying to find out what had become of parents, siblings, and children. Sometimes they found each other, but sometimes there wasn't enough to go on. Slavery was a hard life; probably a lot were dead.

Guessing at the Haley family history from Roots, George and Eliza did a pretty good job of keeping their children together. Some of that could have been related to an amenable family of owners and their insistence on their children learning valuable skills probably made them more valuable to hire out than sell. I can't help but think that a lot of that is also being closer to the end of the war. If you were separated only five years before the war, maybe memories are fresher once you get a chance to search.

I found it interesting that there was nothing on George's grandparents. Once Kizzie was sold away from them, their story ended as far as the book went. There was no speculation on their reaction, and then I realized it was because they didn't know. They were not able to see each other again in life. That was true of Kunta Kinte and his family in Africa too. Those lines of communication were cut.

(More on that at http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/06/thoughts-on-roots-connected.html.)

At the same time, names of people from George's childhood were preserved, because new connections were made. They connected to each other because the alternative was letting their hearts go cold. For all of the tragedy that you find going back, the triumphs of the human spirit and capacity for love are truly inspiring.

That inspiration does not make me forget how much pain that never needed to happen did, and for terrible reasons.

All of that should be pretty well-understood too, yet still there are people being so smugly stupid about it. Now here we are, still separating families. I can't even say again. Who and how changes, but not that it happens at all. I guess those who forget the past truly are doomed to repeat it.

I don't have much helpful to say on this. We should know. We should do better.

I will leave you with this:

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/02/black-panther-erik-killmonger/553805/