Melissa Sandifer

April 24, 2010

Black or White: Who Really Made Early America Thrive?

For this research post, I began by researching a few key terms that have been discussed through the semester.  I started asking myself questions such as, what ethnicity means and more importantly what was America’s general consensus on who was an American in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  Through readings this semester I have become quite enamored with the idea that Africans were not considered to be a part of America, even though they helped build America.  Through their blood, sweat, and tears a lot of America was cultivated, so why would someone even attempt to say that they had no part in what America is today and that they were not significant.

            I assume my questioning truly began after reading Letters from an American Farmer by Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur. He seeks the answers to “What is an American” and he questions ethnicity.  Crevecoeur realizes that in America, almost anyone can become an American, if you have the right skin color and if you are an immigrant.  Africans do not apply to this, because they did not immigrate here, they were brought here and of course their skin is dark.  The conclusion that Crevecoeur came to was that the dominant culture was European, Scotts and Irish, men and women with the same light skin and cultural background.  Men and women who came to America in search of a better life and the American dream were the dominant culture.  But Crevecoeur seems to have a difficult time with this, because he witnesses how the Africans are treated and what they have to go through.  In Letter IX, Crevecoeur describes the scene of Africans being torn from mothers, fathers, husbands, and wives, thrown into boats and brought to a land where they knew no one and nothing, just so the white man did not have to till his own land.  Crevecoeur writes, “Day after day they drudge on without any prospect of ever reaping for themselves; they are obliged to devote their lives, their limbs, their will, and their very vital exertion to swell the wealth of masters.”  The thought of this is extremely distressing to me, and once again I pose the question as to why anyone would say Africans were not vital in building America.  I personally am a strong believer in America being a salad bowl.  I appreciate all the cultures that surround me and I love the thought of all different kinds of people attributing to the magnificent country we call the United States of America.  I somewhat think that America would be quite boring if only made up by one ethnic group who all thought and acted alike.  So my research progressed.

            In the middle of my research I happened to stumble upon Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson and was actually shocked at his views on Africans.  Thomas Jefferson believed that Africans brought nothing to the American culture and among other thing should be gathered up and sent back to the coast of Africa.  He also states that compared to whites, Africans are substandard in their abilities of memory, reason, and imagination.  My first thought was obviously he has not read a poem by the amazing Phillis Wheatley, but as my reading continued I realized that he did not see Miss Wheatley as being an amazing poet.  When speaking about Wheatley, Jefferson says, “Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions under her name are below the dignity of criticism.”  I am astounded that he could not see how wonderful the poems of this African woman were.  While Jefferson bashed the African community, he praised the Native tribes of American and even thought it a good idea to mix blood lines with the Native tribes.  He maintained a very liberal view when it concerned them.  In the article Thomas Jefferson: Race, Culture, and Failure of Anthropological Method, author Frank Shuffleton writes that Jefferson’s view on Africans was due to a lack of information.

            Shuffleton notes that Jefferson sees the Native tribes as having their own culture and recognizing the different tribes and areas they belong to.  Jefferson did extensive research to find out information of Indians and he failed to do this with Africans.  When it comes to Jefferson’s thoughts on Africans, Shuffleton realizes that Jefferson believes that African all originate from the same place, Africa, and they do not have different cultural identities.  Thomas Jefferson failed to realize that Africans do come from a multitude of different places in Africa and they do in fact have certain cultures that they too come from.  Shuffleton finds it most surprising that Jefferson does not even recognize the own uniqueness of the Africans he had in his own household, which were storytellers, carpenters, and accomplished cooks.  Jefferson for some reason fails to see the potential of the Africans around him and their contribution to the world he lived in.  In Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia he states,

“Many [Africans] have been brought up to the handcraft arts…some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes…They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory…But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never seen an elementary trait, of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites…Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive melody…is yet to be proved.”

Basically Jefferson is saying that the Indians are worthy of praise because they do these wonderful things such as painting on pipes and drawing things that they have seen and speaking great stories, but Africans just imitate what the white man does.  He thinks that nothing Africans do is original or comes from original thought, they are just assuming the culture of the white, because they have no culture of their own.  This is exactly the reason he belittles Phillis Wheatley the way he does in his Notes. Shuffleton argues that Jefferson is unreasonable in his account of Africans.  He brings up the work of John Hemmings who was a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson.  Hemmings, who was born into slavery under Jefferson, began his work as an “out-carpenter” cutting down trees and doing other rough jobs involving wood outside.  He soon became a skilled carpenter working under white woodworkers.  Most of the wood work inside Jefferson’s house was attributed to John Hemmings.  He even created a large landau carriage that Jefferson had designed.  Frank Shuffleton brings John Hemmings into the picture to illustrate the magnificent skills of an African that was indeed very significant in Jefferson’s life.  Jefferson personally witnessed this magnificent work every day while walking around his home or riding in his carriage.  This information alone would cause some people to question why Jefferson was so hard on Africans.  The answer to this may never be known.  There are many speculations that say that Jefferson envied the Africans and was in many ways jealous of them.

            Personally Jefferson’s thoughts on Africans make my skin crawl and I do feel if he had been better informed he would have seen what a large impact they have had on America.  Africans were stolen from their country, ripped away from their lives to come to America and be enslaved by white men who wanted to make money, but did not want to work too hard for it.  White men may have had the money, but it was the Africans who poured their soul into America to make it prosper.  I would disagree with anyone who tried to say that Africans were not part of America and did not help cultivate our country.  America may have been discovered by the white man, but it was made to prosper at the hands of the black man.

Work Cited

Saar, Doreen Alvarez. "The Heritage of America Ethnicity in Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer." A Mixed Race Ethnicity in Early America. Ed. Frank Shuffleton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. 241-256. Print. 

Shuffleton, Frank. "Thomas Jefferson: Race, Culture, and the Failure of Anthropological Method." A Mixed Race Ethnicity in Early America. Ed. Frank Shuffleton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. 257-277. Print. 

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/Crevecoeurexcerpts.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h490t.html

http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/John_Hemmings