Helena Suess

web review

Leah Guillory

De-Niggerization and Democratization by Voice and Choice

Comparing Douglass’ struggle for freedom alongside her own experience, Ms. Guillory “showcase[s] an exceptional black American who despite his ‘guttural cries’ wrote himself out of the nightmare of niggerization by means of what the literary critic Robert Stepto calls a ‘narrative of ascent’.” She points out that Douglass’ was a contest not just for personal freedom, but for democratization of all black people:

Frederick Douglass is a black American example of de-niggerization—which is one in the same as democratization— someone who “stepped out of nothing and landing on something.”

From her quotation of Dr. Cornel West, democratization is as simple and profound as the “sublime notion that each and every ordinary person has a dignity that warrants his or her voice being heard in shaping the destiny of society.” She draws especially on the scene of Douglass learning to read, and asserts that it was by gaining literacy that he was ultimately able to escape; by extension, so the path to freedom for all oppressed peoples lies in their escape from ignorance. Her personal narrative likewise reflects on education, first hers and then her teaching of others, as the method of her escape from the victimization and violence of her youth. Yet the most affecting part of her essay comes at the beginning, when she describes her frustration with her colleagues:

The consensus among the graduate students was yes, [Douglass] did steal literacy…. I maintained the rest of the class…was projecting white supremacy ideology on Douglass’s absurd situation…. I left that class…angry and resentful not only as I considered the fact that the consensus was Douglass was a thief, but I also grappled with another question: were my contemporaries…niggerizing Frederick Douglass?

I agree with Ms. Guillory, that “one cannot steal something or silence something that exists inherently in him or her not being a brute.” Language and its power is the one clear advantage humans have over all other creatures.[1] To assert that advantage, by whichever means, is nothing more than natural; for one human being to deny it to another is larceny on the grandest scale. As Guitar puts it:

White men want us dead or quiet—which is the same thing as dead. (Song of Solomon, 222)

Jennifer Rieck

Ruth: She’s “alone in this world, and a fucked up world it is too”

Ms. Rieck argues effectively for Ruth-as-slave. The mother and wife of the Macon Deads displays more than just a passing resemblance to Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass. Drawing heavily on descriptive elements from Song of Solomon, Ms. Rieck draws distinct parallels between Ruth’s comparatively well-to-do life and person with those of the meanest of slaves. Ms. Rieck especially dwells on Ruth as mother. She pointedly quotes Douglass, that slave children “follow the condition of their mothers,” and explicates how Ruth, having no mother, “lacks direction in life” and becomes a misguided kind of motherly force:

Because Ruth grows up without her mother, she is deficient in these qualities [of motherhood]. She grows up starved for love and attention, and the resulting factor is that her love becomes obsessive, heavy, and stifling.

Ruth’s son bears an epithet derived directly from that obsessive love, which leads me to feel that Ms. Rieck could have said more. That Ruth is enslaved to her home and her past is clear. But the entire novel can be read as a modern kind of slave narrative, and Ruth has more influence than the passive object to which her family reduces her. Ms. Rieck could have elaborated how Milkman may have “followed the condition of his mother,” as his struggle for identity bears many similarities to Douglass’. Finally the essay touches very briefly at the end on Ruth as a “double minority” due to the “lemony” color of her skin, which could have been explored further.

essay

Secret Choice, Silent Voice
THE POWER OF THE DARK

…I communicated the great work laid out for me to do, to four in whom I had the greatest confidence…

--The Confessions of Nat Turner[1]

               The literature of black Americans, particularly as relates to the “peculiar institution” of slavery, seems to follow a pattern: a disenfranchised person realizes their social status; they suffer under the yoke of oppression; they find some tool which they can use to combat oppression—usually education; they exploit that tool to escape; they make their way in free society. James Olney lists the conventions of slave narratives in a formal schema, but in comparing the texts again we find that he has left out a dominanting characteristic, perhaps because it is quite obvious: all the protagonists operate in secret. The master of course cannot know the slave’s plan to escape, if the slave is to succeed. When we reflect on this basic fact, profound ironies become clear: acquiesence to submission masks a bold assertion to liberty; humble silence disguises a defiant cry against oppression. This essay will explore, among a small body of texts by black American authors, the use of conspiracy as the method by which the subjugated assert freedom from their subjugators, and the implications of assimilation which that freedom entails. As an ancillary, the essay will also comment on narrative technique which reinforces the primacy of secrecy.

               First we must call attention to the fact that secrecy is often synonymous with darkness, shadow, night, etc. The color connection of such words to black skin is immediately apparent. The multiplicity of color language being a topic that would multiply the length of this essay, here let “dark” stand as a pun of which the essay is throughout conscious: that “the power of the dark” is first the exploitation of stealth, and second the bravery and faculty possessed by black Americans who exploited that stealth to make a better life for themselves and their fellow human beings.

The most conspicuous portrayals of the conspiracy to freedom are contained within the reflective narratives of the former slaves themselves. Ironic tension tends to appear first through the unwitting agency of a white person, which instigates or assists in the escape from bondage. In her Incidents, Harriet Jacobs (as “Linda Brent”) submits to the lusts of a white man, Mr. Sands, and bears his child in an effort to shield herself against her cruel master Dr. Flint:

Of a man who was not my master I could ask to have my children well supported; and in this case, I felt confident I should obtain the boon. I also felt quite sure that they would be made free. With all these thoughts revolving in my mind, and seeing no other way of escaping the doom I so much dreaded, I made a headlong plunge.

This scheme, like most of Jacobs’ narration, is conceived entirely within her own mind. She tells no one until the act is complete, sparing the advice even of her “good grandmother,” the protector and maternal surrogate who had previously had “high words with my master about me.”

Years after her children are born, Jacobs escapes, and hides in a shed “added to my grandmother’s house.” It is in this cramped, bug-infested place that her concealment leaves the confines of her brain and takes physical form; so hidden is she that her own children remain unaware of her proximity:

There was joy and there was sadness in the sound. It made my tears flow. How I longed to speak to them! I was eager to look on their faces; but there was no hole, no crack, through which I could peep.

Yet she in concealing herself has made a bold choice to be free, even in this tiny shed, rather than endure slavery in a fine home, “though white people considered it an easy [lot].” In fact, though “it must all be done in darkness,” she has the opportunity to speak to her loved ones, who would “chat with me at the opening” as slavery would have never allowed. She now has a chance to use her tongue freely, if clandestinely. After sympathetic whites buy Jacobs’ freedom, she extends her voice into the Incidents, making a powerful appeal on behalf of enslaved women.

Frederick Douglass’ Narrative likewise demonstrates the power inherent in secrecy. He too has white agents to assist: first in the case of Mrs. and Mr. Auld, the one who taught him “the A, B, C” and the other who, in remonstrating his wife’s endeavor, reveals to Douglass “the white man’s power to enslave the black man,” which is the cultivation of ignorance. Even as Auld, “strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction,” in the private smithy of his brain Douglass works out the “pathway from slavery to freedom”: he must educate himself.

A pair of Irish laborers strike the spark to Douglass’ actual flight, white men who “advised me to run away to the north,” so that “from that time I resolved to run away.” Thus committed to the enterprise, Douglass keeps his counsel:

I pretended not to be interested in what they said, and treated them as if I did not understand them; for I feared they might be treacherous.

Douglass seeks about securing his education via guile and opportunity, never letting on his true aims. He learns to write first by observing the use of letters to mark ship timbers, then by playing games with “boys who I knew could write,” daring each that “I could write as well as he…and ask him to beat that. …it is quite possible I should never have gotten [writing lessons] in any other way.”

As he grows into a man, Douglass makes motions toward transforming intellectual into physical liberty. His power manifests outwardly the first time when he trounces the cruel Mr. Covey. Again deception serves Douglass, albeit with an irony even tenser than that already noted: Covey’s own “forte consisted in his power to deceive.” Douglass doubtfully surmises Covey “suffered [Douglass] to go unpunished” in order to save his reputation as a renowned “slave-breaker.”In fact, he is “never again what might be called fairly whipped…[he has] several fights, but [is] never whipped.” Thus a white man’s pride conceals Douglass from harm, advances his liberty.

For his first actual attempt at escape, Douglass enters into conspiracy with fellow slaves, having “bent myself to devising ways and means for our escape.” Terrified of discovery, the conspirators “[try] to conceal our feelings,” but are betrayed, though they “own [up to] nothing”:

We found their evidence against us to be the testimony of one person; our master would not tell who it was; but we came to a unanimous decision among ourselves as to who our informant was.

Total covertness, even from other slaves, is paramount to Douglass’ ambition. That clandestine approach in fact enters his Narrative’s text, even years after coming to New York City: he reveals no details of his successful flight. The mystery is kept with the intent of safeguarding means to liberty, for fear of “induc[ing] greater vigilance on the part of slaveholders.” In shadowing his methods he frustrates the oppressors, and extends the potential of freedom to their human chattel.

               These silent, despondent machinations of Douglass and Jacobs—their choices to reject abjection—resulted in their claiming a voice in public discourse. Jacobs wrote with the express aim of “arous[ing] the women of the North to a realizing sense of the conditions of two millions of women at the South.” Douglass became a strident abolitionist following his escape. Now it can be taken as further irony that, as was implied by the conscious or unconscious assistance given them by white persons, in order to pursue their goals the authors passed from the blatant absurdity of slavery into the subtle absurdity of assimilation: they wore the clothes and played the politics of the race that had enslaved them. Yet theirs was a special kind of assimilation: integration. Like DuBois’ gold-watch-and-chain and Dr. King’s suits, the assumption of the trappings and intellectualism of the dominant culture was with the distinct political end of showing that culture the seriousness of their effort. They were interested neither in wiping out all memory of their past nor in total Africanization of their future. The purpose of integration was, and still is, to prove that barriers such as skin-color and gender are entirely artificial, and in consequence to eliminate the stratification of opportunity.[2] But for integration to work all sides must be willing to come to terms: the dominators to relinquish their domination and attitude of superiority, and the dominated to forgive their former oppressors when required—for all sides, in effect, to accept equal humanity. In illustration I turn now to Song of Solomon, a modernist, modernized version of the slave narrative throughout which threads the tension between white and black peoples as irreconcilable entities, most notably manifested in the secret society of the Seven Days.

               Textual manifestation of secrecy’s importance is ubiquitous in Solomon. Similar to Douglass’ narrative reticence regarding his plans, Morrison develops the Days’ enigmatic qualities on a textual level that amplifies Guitar’s revelation in Chapter 6, and engages the reader to personally experience the intensity of that mystery.  The group appears on page one, in the suicide of insurance agent Robert Smith, whose deadly work as a Day became too terrible for him to handle. Another Day, Porter, later attempts the same, providing clues about the Days’ existence which are not apparent on first read: he announces “he gotta kill him somebody before morning,” and laments:

“I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it. Just like Mr. Smith. He couldn’t carry it. It’s too heavy. …Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy? ... If it killed Him, what You think it’s gonna do to me?”

These scenes and others resonate intensely as Guitar fills in the gaps for Milkman and the reader. Particularly germane to the preceding quotation is Guitar’s affirmation that:

“What I’m doing ain’t about hating white people. It’s about loving us. About loving you [Milkman]. My whole life is love.”

This and such reverberations impart the insinuating presence of the Seven Days as it shadows the entire novel. The reader, going over the text again and again, cannot but be haunted by Morrison’s subtlety.

               So much for narrative technique. Delving into the functions of, and Guitar’s justifications for, the Seven Days, it is clear that concealment is intended as the great strength of the group:

“The beauty of what we do is its secrecy, its smallness. The fact that nobody needs the unnatural satisfaction of talking about it. Telling about it. We don’t discuss it among ourselves, the details.”

Yet Guitar dissembles even to himself. In Nietzchean[3] fashion he has become exactly what he seeks to destroy, and all his apologies for the indifference and goodwill of the Days belie, not retaliation against injustice, but a vicious rebellion against “the sense of powerlessness in American society.”[4] However justified that sense may be, Guitar’s efforts are meaningless and counterproductive, a manifestation of what Cornel West refers to as “the nihilistic threat.”[5] Most ironically, in their quest to emancipate power from the dominating race, the Days have in fact assimilated into themselves the worst elements of that which they aim to destroy: the Days’ “preoccupation with white supremacy…allow[s] white people to serve as [their] primary point of reference.”[6]

               To begin, the Seven Days obliviously fashion their convictions along the model of white supremacists’.[7] Most readily apparent is Guitar’s racial rhetoric, which tries to distinguish a “natural” race from an “unnatural” one. In effect Guitar only reiterates the dehumanizing effects of such distinctions. For centuries it had been the practice of whites to consider blacks savages and so to treat them savagely, all the while maintaining notions of civilization. Guitar exhibits the exact same discontinuity: he projects savageness onto whites and in response, justifies murdering them as “a strong effort of the will” which could only be possessed by more “reasonable” race which does not “just get up and find somebody white to slice up.” Echoing social eugenics, Guitar describes the Days’ philosophical aim to “keep the numbers [of white and black dead] the same.” He even accuses whites of being host to a “disease they have…in their blood, in the structure of their chromosomes,” while admitting that he has no way of proving it. Driving home the Seven Days’ ludicrous ontology of race is their handshake, a gesture the likes of which “Milkman had never seen before.” This cannot but call to mind the Freemasons and other secret societies founded by white intellectuals.

               Putting aside the philosophical irony of the Seven Days we come to their methodological irony: the organization’s secrecy is, far from Guitar’s claim, its ultimate weakness.  It stands in direct opposition to the successful secrecies of the slave narratives. However much the Days stand for “a world where one day white people will think before they lynch,” it is in fact utterly ineffectual. Milkman makes it clear:

“Guitar, none of that shit is going to change how I live or how any other Negro lives. What you’re doing is crazy. And something else: it’s a habit. …You can off anybody you don’t like.”

The Days’ secrecy affirms only the power to kill, to make “the earth...soggy with…blood,” and to allow a few bitter men the petty thrill of revenge without accountability. However much Guitar pretends to be “reasonable” or to “hate doing it,” or talks of arbitrary “ratios,” he accomplishes neither benefit to the people he professes to love nor any lasting change in the “unnatural” race. When Guitar later attains the abiding and entirely wrong certainty that Milkman has double-crossed him, we encounter a damning narrative comment on the Days’ failure: not only does Guitar’s conviction fail him factually to the point of pursuing violence against his lifelong friend, it also leads him to corruption of the Days’ abiding precept that “we don’t kill Negros.”

               The lesson we take from the Seven Days, vis-à-vis the slave narratives, is twofold. First, secrecy attributes power only in that it is the means to the acquiring of a voice in the social discourse. Second, integration between the oppressors and oppressed is necessary to affect change in that discourse. This not to say that identity or culture must by any means be forsaken or compromised; that is not at all the point. Douglass and Jacobs came through swamp and darkness with the understanding that it was not a war of blood or skin to be fought, but a battle of ideology, of discourse. Its resolution, like all dicursive struggles, is to advent a new ideology, one to

…replace racial reasoning with moral reasoning, to understand the black freedom struggle not as an affair of skin pigmentation and racial phenotype but rather as a matter of ethical principles and wise politics… [8]

In essence, an ideology of humanity. The alternative can only be recursive brutality both internal and external, the perpetuation of “the nihilistic threat” as the proponents of each clashing discourse dehumanize not only their opponents but themselves. In order that

…on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood….

all sides of the racial debate, of any debate seeking an end to oppression, have the responsibility to speak out and speak clearly, but most of all to speak together.

Bibliography of external sources
Nat Turner. Ed. Eric Foner. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971. Print.

Nietzche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Tr. Marion Faber. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.

West, Cornel. Race Matters. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001. Print.

research plan

For my project I wish to present at the April conference a paper researching America’s fear of its own past: how and why America revises its history to preserve a national narrative which denies responsibility for, and even exalts the perpetrators of, its history of oppression. In many ways the narrative seems to me in all corners an extension of the Lost Cause of the South: a romanticization of the underdog, when the underdog so posited is in fact of a character that has dominated government since the nation’s founding. The long struggle of the various feminist movements and the ongoing battle for queer rights indicate that the motivation for the narrative is not strictly racial or religious. In sum, the narrative rests upon the advocation of a supposedly-embattled way of life which is if not entirely fictional then at least excessively dramatized, and goes toward the marginalization of social elements that stand in opposition to that fiction, whether politically or by the mere fact of their existence. Granted, social marginalization occurs in just about every culture to some degree, but it is particularly fascinating in America, which takes “of the people” as its ideal and foundation.

In the interest of time the paper will not be entirely comprehensive—perhaps that will be a project for a graduate thesis—and so will focus on a few issues and events which I feel are particularly indicative of the problem. This will include but not be limited to: the prevailing myths of the Lost Cause including the veneration of Confederate figures and icons, sketches of the literature and history of progressive social movements running counter to such myths, and historical and educational revision such as the current debates on the Texas Board of Education which have the aim of preserving those myths under attack.