Waldstreicher’s analysis on the importance of print and advertising as a reflection of slave self-refashioning completely complicated my idea of what slavery was like in the Mid-Atlantic region of colonial America. Historical accounts of slavery typically focus on the 19th century South so it was refreshing to at least get a glimpse of the “peculiar institution” at work in the North … Or does the idea of the “peculiar institution” merit a shared connotation of slavery in the North at all? The ease at which slaves seemed able to escape from their masters and even re-fashion their identities based on physical appearance, linguistic capabilities and specialized skills to avoid being recaptured seems very unique to this time period and region. Further, Waldstreicher’s analysis does not account for any of the same dehumanizing and violent methods of punishment used against runaway slaves in the antebellum South. Waldstreicher began to touch on the reasons for how the region began to change in its fluidity and leniency towards race and class towards the end of the eighteenth century but I began to question this more and I hope to learn more about this shift.
I found Elsa Brown’s approach to the discussion of feminism being resistant to issues of race and class interesting, as she married the latter two with gender and emphasized that all three facets of identity work in concert with each other. The clever analogy of music derived from her racially blanketed examples of classical music (White) and jazz music (Black) being compared to linear and non-linear ways of discussing women’s history and feminism provided a lot of insight into the varied experiences that women of different races and classes can have. Putting Brown’s work in conversation with Higginbotham, Higginbotham works against this notion of “single womanhood” that has normalized the white middle class experience in the greater context of discussing the state of women in America.
Elsa Brown’s discussion of the Anita Hill case provoked me to think about the war declared on Black women by society at large and from within the Black community itself. The curse of sexual that has been bestowed upon both Black men and women continues to be a daunting force in the context of American society. However, Hill’s case has proved, as shown by Brown, that not only were Black men more privileged and even apt to exploiting race and gender over Black women as White men were historically able to do within the context of slavery, but that Anita Hill could ultimately not even get the support of feminists who had long ago resisted the politics that came with race and class.
I also thought Brown's use of the Anita Hill case was really well placed. It made me think about particularly about the state of Black women's sexual identity today, something that connects really well with Higginbotham. Higginbotham's connection between violence and Black sexual identity in the past fits in so well with Brown's (semi-current) example of Anita Hill and how extremely ingrained sexual stereotypes of Black people have become in society and how easily they have been exploited. When we discussed the Anita Hill case in my African American history class, it came up that the case would have almost certainly been completely different if Anita Hill had been white because Clarence Thomas would have been likely caught up in, as Brown puts it, "racial hysteria" (305)and would have been much less believed. Using Higginbotham and Brown's analyses of American conceptions of Black sexuality, I would tend to agree with this argument.
ReplyDeleteVery well done! I really like your observation of the differences in the slave regime from the late 18th century Atlantic World to the 19th century South. You've nicely taken note of the greater fluidity and flexibility in the late 18th century in contrast to the hardened, racialized slave system that we are more familiar with in the 19th century. I also really liked the connections that you've drawn between Higginbotham and Barkley Brown's work.
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