"REMEMBERING 400 YEARS"

“REMEMBERING 400 YEARS”

            This is the anniversary of a HUGE week in American history, perhaps the biggest one with the exceptions of 1776 and 1865.  Four hundred years ago, about this time in August, a Portuguese ship under the flag of the British sailed up the River in the colony of Virginia.  Among its cargo was a group of Africans, people who would be sold as slaves – the first recorded presence of Africans as slaves in English territory.  It is difficult to underestimate the chilling importance of this event.  I’ve read many articles on this event, and no one put it better than Lerone Bennett did in his 1962 book “Before Mayflower”:

            “A year before the arrival of the celebrated Mayflower, 113 years before the birth of George Washington, 244 years before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, this ship sailed into the harbor at Jamestown, Virginia, and dropped anchor into the muddy waters of history.  It was clear to the men who received this ‘Dutch man of War’ that she was no ordinary vessel.  What seems unusual today is that no one sensed how extraordinary she really was.  For few ships, before or since, have unloaded a more momentous cargo……The history of Black America began.” 

            This event is remembered as a powerful beginning, and we must remember that it was not only the beginning of Black America but also white America.  “Race” was developing at this time, but it had not yet congealed into the white supremacy that we know now.  It would take 40 more years for race and slavery to be welded together to cement the American identity, when the colony of Virginia began to pass laws saying who was “white,” and who was “black” in the 1660’s.  The importance of this change was that “white” people could not be born into slavery, but “black” people could.  Thus, the development of the idea of “race” in North America is the fundamental building block for the caste system of slavery in our history.  The idea of “white supremacy” took hold in American life.  For more on this, see Nell Painter’s excellent book  “The History of White People.”

            The ancestral lineage was also changed in Virginia at this time to alter the English structures, where the identity of the child was determined by the paternal line.  Virginia changed it so that the identity of the child was determined by the maternal line.  Why this change?  Two primary reasons:  first,  because so many “white” men and masters were forcing “black” women to have sex with them, and second, the children born from these unions needed to be classified as “black” and thus as “other” and also as “slaves.”  It would become known as the “one drop of blood system,” and a few states still have these laws on their books.  This system would be written into the Constitution, and it is still there in the infamous “three-fifths clause.”  This system would continue legally until 1965 (not 1865), when the Voting Rights Act divorced “race” and other categories from the right to vote.  Despite the hard legal and protest work and sacrifice that led to the Voting Rights Act, the cultural power of white supremacy still is deep and resilient.  

            This blog cannot begin to touch the depths of this history, and if you are unfamiliar with it, please consult some of the books that I have mentioned, or contact me, and I’ll give you more references.  I want to dwell briefly on several implications of this 400^th anniversary of the arrival of African people to be sold as slaves in the English colonies in what is now known as North America.  First, to pick up Lerone Bennett’s theme, we must marvel at the remarkable resilience of those designated as “other” in American history, especially those of African descent, but also those natives who were here when the English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese arrived.  Land stolen, massacres, Middle passage, labor stolen, families torn apart, rape, lynching – all that and more.  As Maya Angelou once put it:  “But still, like dust, I'll rise.” Many articles and studies in white America have looked at the dysfunction of Native and African-American families, and I’ve always thought that we should look at it the other way.  How did they do it?  How did those classified as “other” survive the horrible treatment and the systematic attempts to strip their humanity? 

            Yet, I also realize why we in the “white” community don’t do such studies.  To do so would be to admit a fundamental reality that most of us who are classified as “white” spend most of our lives seeking to deny:  white supremacy and race are at the heart of our identity as individuals and as a nation.  We are in “deep denial,” as my friend David Billings put it in his fine book by the same title.  We refuse to admit how much the power of white supremacy has shaped our individual and collective identities.  The landing of that ship in Jamestown 400 years ago was part of the beginning of a huge river of white supremacy that continues to flow in our hearts and in nation.  I say this not to beat anybody up or to make anyone feel guilt or shame.  I say it because it is a fundamental reality that shapes all of our lives.  It is similar to dealing with addiction.  Until those of us classified as “white” recognize this and admit our captivity to white supremacy, we will not be able to take steps toward health.  As June Jordan once put it, it’s time to act:  we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.