Ugh, in only the first minute of the program, we, per usual, hear Gates ask some Africans if any of them inherited wealth from the slave trade. Again! It's as if Gates want place the blame for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade entirely on Africans, something he claimed in a New York Times op-ed would complicate the notion of reparations to descendants of black slaves. And Bank of America is the sponsor? Dear Lord, a bank that probably profited off or helped perpetuate I watched it here at this blog I follow, and it really goes to show one how black intellectuals can be so easily bought and sold like Gates. The man, who I once met in person and find an overall pleasant guy, seems to always have this urge to ease and please white folks. I guess that's what happens when you're caught up in neoliberal education and offering yourself to the highest bidder, much as Gates recently did in securing a wealthy white benefactor to donate to Harvard's African American Studies program. When black intellectual warfare against mainstream white supremacism in academia and other institutions can be bought and sold so easily, and our 'premier' black scholars perpetuate garbage or half-truths and stereotypes to much larger audiences to assuage whites, we know we're in trouble.
Anywho, the program begins before the arrival of blacks in the English colony of Virginia in 1619, focusing on early black slaves and auxiliaries of the Spanish conquerors and explores. He did get James H. Sweet to appear on the show, though. Sweet has written a lot about Central Africa (Angola), Brazil, and slavery, and because I am familiar with his work and attended a university he teaches at, do appreciate that. Anywho, Antonio 'the Negro,' one of the first black residents, 'earned' his freedom from indentured servitude after his service on the farm of a white man. Antonio Johnson even had white indentured servants and an African slave of his own! Soon enough, the growth of tobacco agriculture and the need for labor, led to increasingly racialized slavery and forced labor in Virginia. Now, none of this is exactly groundbreaking news, we all probably learned this in high school history courses on the development of slavery in the English colonies. Indeed, a similar process from white indentured servitude in Barbados to black slavery occurred. Sweet does remind the viewer of the interesting fact that most of the major cities in the Americas in the early 1600s had more Africans than Europeans, including Lima, Mexico City, etc. The interesting question of studies of colonial urban centres in the western hemisphere certainly deserves its own long documentary series.
Moving back to Africa, Gates goes to Sierra Leone and spends time among the Temne people. He is critical of romanticized notions of Africa, rightly so, but then takes time to talk to descendants of slave traders in Sierra Leone, poor black folks whose ancestors are not the ones who made the black ancestors of Gates live through hell under racial slavery and Jim Crow in the US. One elder who claims his family once owned 500 slaves is interviewed by Gates, but Gates never takes the time to explain the nuances of slavery within African societies. Anyone with half a brain would know the Temne and Mende did not historically consider themselves to both be 'black,' but that's because nearly everyone in Sierra Leone is 'black.' Yet Gates continues to feel some sense of loyalty (perhaps because of his "mulatto" ancestors, he is very public and interested in his family's white/European roots) to whites and 'defends' their role by overemphasizing the blame on the part of Africans for selling captives and slaves to whites.
Furthermore, Christopher Brown, who attributes to Europeans the 'novelty' of using race as a marker for deserved enslavement for Africans, probably should read some of the writings of Arab, Persian, and Turkish scholars from the same period. Some of the ideas and views expressed by intellectuals from those lands stinks or racism or 'proto-racism' against darker-hued Africans. That said, Gates does a good thing showing the remains of a slave fort on Bunce Island, where at least 50,000 Africans were sold into slavery in the Americas. Priscilla, one individual whose life is used to put a human face onto the misery that took place in the Middle Passage and Bunce Island, was a slave woman who entered the US through Charleston, the major slave port of the US. The horrors of the Middle Passage are described in disgusting detail, though probably not enough to give a more accurate depiction of the lack of humanity Europeans and European-descended Americans showed toward black folks. Indeed, death was so common on slaveships, sharks followed to feast on corpses thrown overboard, as Gates says.
In South Carolina now, Gates visits the former site of Priscilla's enslavement, rice plantations in South Carolina. A descendant of the planter who purchased her shows Gates around the area where the young woman, Priscilla, became property of the Ball family. Surprisingly, Gates chooses to pass over the advanced skills of West Africans in rice cultivation, the very reason why there was a "Rice Coast" of Sierra Leone and why so many of South Carolina's slaves came from the Senegambia and Sierra Leone areas of West Africa. A shame, really, Gates missed out on a great opportunity to discuss how so much of the agricultural techniques, innovation and material culture of the US South was an imported African civilization. I suppose he does mention how slaves built roads, bridges, factories and farms, but there is a lot of specific examples and details not mentioned, except an example of an 18th century meal for how distinct African influences appeared in the cuisine of the South. Now, food and cuisine obviously shapes culture and society, so that's big, I guess, but only one example.
As for St. Augustine, Gates again omits the presence of Saint Dominguan Spanish auxiliaries who chose to stay in service to the Spanish crown rather than unite under Toussaint for the French Republic during the Haitian Revolution. This could be due to it's much later date into the late 18th and early 19th century, but at least an 'honorable mention' of Saint Dominguan blacks in Spanish St. Augustine would have been of some interest to viewers for showing how much African-American slaves were tied into a broader "Black Atlantic" world. However, I suppose he does a good job covering the importance of Spanish Florida as a a runaway haven. Since I don't know enough about Stono's Rebellion, I cannot speak to how accurate or troubling Gates's portrayal might be.
His praise for the 'greatest champion of freedom,' George Washington, is certainly a cringe-worthy moment of the program though! I suppose uttering such absurd notions comes with the territory in catering to mainstream white America. One cannot go all "Malcolm X" or 'angry black' man lest one wishes to lose ties to the monied interests that could be tapped to support black studies. Later, Gates 'saves' himself by emphasizing the contradictions of the American War of Independence, and he does mention the Haitian Revolution near the end of the program as an example of another world for people of African descent, as well as becoming a beacon of hope to those toiling in bondage in the 'land of the free.'
But perhaps I am being too critical and expecting too much. It's a struggle just getting anything about black history out there in the mainstream, and though it's far from perfect, like Black in Latin America, it's a useful introduction. Let's see how long my patience lasts me and I will try to evaluate the remainder of the series.
No comments:
Post a Comment