Occupy These…! Slavery and Abuse by Metaphor
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A Black Agenda Radio commentary by editor and columnist Jared Ball
Young white demonstrators should be advised not to complain of being “enslaved” to student loans and such, any more than they would speak of a “Holocaust” of unemployment. Such metaphors of slavery are more than merely inaccurate – they may reveal dark facts about the speaker. But privilege does not brook criticism from the “quarters.” “Former Black Liberation Army soldier Asanti Alston recalled his friend’s experience at an occupation of being shouted down as ‘divisive’ for trying to focus attention on Black poverty and mass incarceration.” Privilege wants the conversation all to itself, like Empire.
Occupy These…! Slavery and Abuse by Metaphor
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by editor and columnist Jared Ball
“The use of Black suffering as a mechanism of White transcendence is as old as race itself.”
Of these recent occupations Bryan Bullock asked recently, “if Wall Street didn’t get a bailout, would there have been a bailout for the hood?” And Kenyon Farrow described the “race problem” of these occupations and responded quite critically to the repeated use by White occupationists of the metaphor of slavery. Both have added themselves to a growing number of those whose views of these occupations are justifiably cynical. When Farrow described this abuse by metaphor he was also responding to a long history of literal Black suffering becoming metaphorical propaganda for White self-interest. So yes, violence, as H. Rap Brown once said, may indeed be “as American as cherry pie,” but the use of Black suffering as a mechanism of White transcendence is as old as race itself and even predates the America for whom violence would become so essential.
Hearing of and seeing the White-held signs calling for an end of “our” enslavement by Wall Street is, in part, why more and more are looking to challenge the language and the focus of these White Occupy Wall Streeters. The metaphor of an often misused metaphor demands it. As Patricia Bradley has documented, this metaphor of slavery became the leading tool of propaganda used by the White middle and upper classes to shape the public opinion of White colonists against England. In one fell swoop their propaganda worked to aid in solidifying the status of enslavement to only Black people while only publicly discussing slavery as something forced upon themselves by the British. Chief among these propagandists was the slave-owning Samuel Adams whose image, now cleansed with the help of a beer brand, brings new levels of appreciation for the Dave Chapelle Samuel Jackson beer parody. “Yes they deserve to die! And I hope they burn in hell!”
“White middle-class settlers today decry their own semi-step downward toward those darker people they themselves enslave and with whom they want nothing to do.”
So the growing number of darker critical voices of the occupations have centuries of metaphorical abuse to add to the physical and are correctly noting the similarities. During his recent talk at Hampshire College former Black Liberation Army soldier Asanti Alston recalled his friend’s experience at an occupation of being shouted down as “divisive” for trying to focus attention on Black poverty and mass incarceration. “Empire gets defensive,” he said, it has no time for critiques of racism. It is this kind of increasing tension being reported in smaller darker circles that reminds of this history of abuse by metaphor. White colonists not wanting to be reduced to the conditions of those they themselves enslaved adopted the denunciations of slavery by the British in precisely the same way White middle-class settlers today decry their own semi-step downward toward those darker people they themselves enslave and with whom they want nothing to do. They don’t want to end slavery either, they just don’t want to be forced any closer to those truly defined, permanently, as the real enslaved.
So, in response, there are those now calling for an Occupy the Hood movement while others define their efforts as Hip-Hop Occupies in a Rise to Decolonize. In fact, this group’s goal is to “embrace the term ‘occupation’ as it has been reclaimed by militant workers of color from Latin America (Oaxaca, Buenos Aires, South Korea, China, among other places) to describe their occupation of factories, schools and neighborhoods, to strike back against oppressive forces.” Further, the Hip-Hop Occupies collective says that, “we fully endorse the ‘Decolonize’ framework as a necessary expansion…” That, “In the face of brutality in the legacy of capitalism, a system that relied upon the enslavement of African and Caribbean peoples, the genocide and displacement of Indigenous Peoples, and the violent seizure of lands for colonial profit, we embody a vision of intersectional social justice and self-determination.”
These are part, like the work of the Black Is Back Coalition, of still-not-dead embers of a global majority’s non-alignment with even liberal elements of the West. These are the signs of what may yet prove to be the most (only?) redeeming value of these occupations; a radical, global and organized response led by the colonized to what can only be the incompleteness of “movements” led by Whites and liberals. For as Alston also said, this “monster” called the “American way” and “democracy” must fall. And its metaphors too.
For Black Agenda Radio I’m Jared Ball. On the web go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
Dr. Jared A. Ball is an associate professor of communication studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore and is the author of I Mix What I Like! A Mixtape Manifesto (AK Press). He can be found online at: IMIXWHATILIKE.COM.
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This is a little muddled
While I share some sympathy with the idea that privileged white kids are employing some hyperbole in complaining that their student debt is slavery, there is much to support that view as well: we are the only country that imposes massive, undischargeable debt upon students--of all colors and stripes--who now can not find employment that pays enough to get them out of their parent's basement, let alone support themselves and pay off 50,000-100,000 in usurious loans.
Frankly, I felt the same sense of unreality when I watched the video of an upper middle class black student on his knees at a Wall Street demo wailing for the police to take him to jail because the bank had foreclosed on his parents home-and they had two masters degrees! They did all the right things! Son, in the hood, you don't pass go (to college), or get $200, you go straight to jail. But hey, that's the experience he knows.
I am not one of the privileged college kids, nor have I ever earned enough to have been foreclosed upon, but I see a larger pattern of debt bondage, if that term is better, that is being waged against the entire population by the FIRE sector.
If it brings togerther working class and upper middle income people, black, latino and whites, in unity atgainst a common enemy, I'm for it.
BTW, I see alot of non-white faces at the Occupy's around the country. Where it goes depends on the participation of everyone. Homeless people are playing a role also. There is more here to support then to criticise, unless we fall into the trap of identity politics. It's worked so well in the past, its how we got Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rica and Obama.
Here's the point you're missing Mr. Ball.
Two points really. One is that it is precisely because of the horrific and inhuman nature of chattel slavery that it is often invoked in comparison to capitalism or other evils. People are certainly not trying to belittle it or minimize chattel slavery by the comparison but using the term because of the visceral reaction it evokes. There don't need to be separate Occupy movements for African-Americans. Rather more African-Americans need to overcome their reflexive defense of Obama and realize that he's no friend to the African-American community, that they have vastly more in common with the Occupy movements than they do with Obama or anyone else in the bourgeoisie, and join the Occupy movements. The reason you see so many more white faces in the crowds than black faces isn't because the Occupy movement seeks to exclude blacks but because so many African-Americans are choosing to grin and bear it and pretend that Obama cares about them and their problems rather than risk being perceived as a "race traitor" by joining the occupations in denunciation of this third Bush-Cheney term dressed up with more melanin. Regarding student loans, I wouldn't know about being "enslaved" by student loan debt but from what I hear it's a mess. (Though I for one have heard much more comparison of capitalism to slavery than student loans and slavery. From the tone of your article however I take it that you wouldn't want capitalism compared to slavery either.)
The second point you're missing Mr. Ball is that it is really a rather good comparison, chattel slavery and capitalist wage slavery. Capitalism essentially is slavery. And you might not want to hear it but chattel slavery even had a couple of advantages over wage slavery, in that the slavemaster had an economic obligation to keep his slaves fed, clothed and with a roof over their heads in order for them to be healthy enough for him to continue to exploit them. With wage slavery no such guarantee is made, the wage slave is left to fend for himself and if he or she is too sick or weak to work, no problem, he gets replaced by another wage slave waiting in the wings with a job application.
The usual arguments against this comparison don't really hold water. That someone isn't bound by threat of death or a whipping to continue being employed somewhere for instance. They are actually bound by other coercion, less obvious but still very real. Someone who complains about his low wage is invariably told "If you don't like it go work somewhere else", the manager/business owner knowing very well that the worker is not going to be able to go across town and do the same job for a fair wage with benefits because businesses in an area always know what the prevailing wage is and don't pay a penny above it. Plenty of people are bound by lack of other opportunities for employment anyway regardless of wage. If this is the only job someone can find after applying in dozens of places if not hundreds of places over the last several months, then they may as well be held in place with a whip and a shotgun because they just as surely aren't going anywhere else.
Let's face it: capitalism is a horrid, exploitative economic model. It literally could not function without the mass exploitation of tens of millions of people every single day, tens of millions of people getting paid significantly less than a living wage, because their bosses know they can get away with it. They have a pliant puppet government that answers to them, the ownership class, and keeps absurdly low minimum wage laws and business owner-coddling labor laws in effect that give someone no more than a slap on the wrist for firing a worker who talks about unionization. Capitalism is a system that benefits the tiny sliver of the population that is already over-priviliged and, whether you like the use of the term or not, enslaves the rest of us in varying degrees due to our own lack of capital. Whether it is someone who is an overworked, underpaid paralegal or someone who is ringing up customers for $7.25/hour or someone who is waiting tables for $2/hour plus tips, capitalism makes slaves of us all. We are but the tiny cogs in the great big wheel of commerce and have literally no recourse for raising our wages to make them approximate a living wage, no leverage when it comes to gaining benefits like health coverage and no incentive whatsoever to work harder, do a better job etc. other than the fear of being fired, which means most people in this country are going to do the bare minimum necessary to get by without getting fired because there is no economic incentive whatsoever for them to do otherwise. I could not imagine a more embittering, soul-crushing, dream-destroying economic system. That is what is meant when it is compared to chattel slavery. The tiny bourgeois class stands like overseers and plantation owners over the rest of us, forced to sell our labor piecemeal for far less than it is worth, just enough for us to keep body and soul together so we can wake up the next morning to repeat the slavery all over again. Capitalism very much deserves the comparison that is being made. Capitalism is slavery.
Great article.
Thank you.
No jobs. Foreclosures.
No jobs. Foreclosures. Gutting of Soc Sec/Medicare/Medicaid. Prison Industrial Complex. Homelessness. Poverty. Uninsured/underinsured. Assault on public education and public workers. Civil liberties under attack. Will civil rights gains of the 60s be next?
It appears black people have bigger problems than white OWSers "misappropriating" the term slavery. When did the words slavery and Holocaust get copyrighted by blacks and Jews? I must have missed that news.
As Misters Ford and Dixon wrote, black people need to become involved in the Occupy movement. The sins of Wall Street - and its political errand boys/girls - have wreaked as much havoc on the black masses as slavery. Sitting on the sidelines nikpicking about who used what word or playing hands off because white folks started the occupying gets you nowhere. That's the problem - doing and saying nothing as problems fester and ruin not just a few communities, but several generations. The white people, be they Tea Party or OWS, take action. Yes, both movements have their flaws and are prone to co-option. But at least they got up and did something. What are the black people doing? Other than slapping an Obama 2012 sticker on their cars?
Obama won't save you. He's busy saving his corporate and bankster meal tickets. Jesse? Al? Maxine? Tavis? Conyers? Rangel? Oprah? What have they done for you lately? Further, they get their graft from the same place as Obama.
The sticks and stones of an increasingly fascist State rains down upon black broke asses everywhere. Words used are the least of our problems. To paraphrase James Brown, it's past time to get on up, get into it, and get involved.
Much as I appreciate
the point this article is making, what strikes me more is the divide and conquer factionalism that continues to hobble the rightful rise of a Populist Majority, just as it has done for over 100 years. Racism has been at the core of much of this factionalism, in both overt and covert forms, but also at the core there has been an urban/rural cultural divide, which usually is cloaked in ideology.
I've thought about this a lot recently, as I've watched different factions expressing what amount to nearly identical concerns, but talking past each other, at best. At best. An example I've found particularly striking is the various forms of left wing and right wing concern over fascist checkpoint style behavior by authorities.
The betes noires for the populist right wing, in this regard, are the TSA workers who now routinely abuse the rights of upper middle class Americans as they travel. Righties are right to outraged over this, but they don't seem to care AT ALL about the fascistic checkpoint-style abuse of mostly black inner city resident who are stopped, interrogated and searched on the streets of cities like NYC. Then again, I don't recall seeing any concern over TSA abuses here at Black Agenda Report, by way of example. WHY ARE WE SO UNWILLING TO SEE THAT THESE CONCERNS ARE THE SAME?
How can we possibly ever assert our right to wield authority as We The People as long as we remain unable to see that many or most of our concerns are fundamentally the same?
It's not always that easy to see how close our concerns are. Right wing populists and left wing populists, for example, tend to have seemingly opposed views on the role of property in society. But even where the differences that we factionalize over seem so marked, they may be more due to complementary view points than to opposition, and they may be more the products of cultural habit than of genuine ideological opposition.
If we cannot ever get to the point where a middle-aged white middle class person being roughed up at a TSA checkpoint and a black kid being roughed up by a cop stop on the city street see that they are facing the same enemy, a system that crushes and exploits most people, call it what you will (enslavement, crony capitalism, whatever), we will never be free. It really is that simple.
The continued blindness is truly sickening at times. Right wing worriers compain about Fema Camps, but don't seem to care about the prison industrial complex that is crushing black America. Yet lefties won't even mention Fema camps, preferring to dismiss them as a right wing paranoid fantasy. Lefties complain about the treatment of immigrants by border police, while righties complain about border police stopping and terrorizing citizens far away from border checkpoints. Neither side sees that they are facing the same enemy. This kind of willful blindness to shared concerned is relentless. Right wing populists didn't like it when Obama murdered Gaddafi, but the murder of Troy Davis didn't bother them. The left is rightly incensed over the murder of Davis, but they don't seem concerned over the murder of Gaddafi.
Brave people need to build bridges. I'm not saying that we should pretend that differences don't exist, but that we MUST try to overcome them. We must start to talk to each other. If discussing the different resonances and contexts evoked by the word "slavery" is a step towards that, then that is great.
BAR Has Done Some Commentary on TSA Scanners, etc...
NOTE Glen Ford's Wed 11/24/2010 Commentary: 'If the Airport is a Police State, What is the Ghetto?' [ www.blackagendareport.com/content/if-airport-police-state-what-ghetto ] which begins: [It is right to howl at the indignities inflicted on airline passengers – but hypocritical, if the howls come from folks who applaud or remain silent while police in big cities across the country subject hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino males to arbitrary stop and frisks. “As a Black male who is often perceived as Latino or Middle-Eastern, I expect to get stopped and questioned, pulled from the crowd and patted down”...- Yes – federal search policies at airports are a sign of a growing police state. But the police state has long been in effect in Black America – so long, it is experienced as routine...]
TSA Naked Body Scanners are the hi-tech equivalent of strip-searches so many Black & Brown Men [& also Women] have been subjected to by Officers of the State [IE: Police of the State = Police-State] for Decades {centuries}! Can any one remember how many Black & Brown Women were routinely strip-searched [including body-cavity searched] at US international airports - under the guise that African & Carribean Women were all 'Drug Mules'- in the decade(s) prior to 9-11??!! TSA Naked-body scanners are simply a sterile hi-tech way to strip-search EVERYONE [which just so happen to mainly be whites] at US airports! But if those whites that are crying foul about TSA Naked Body Scanners NOW - where half as out-raged about those Black Women who were so often routinely strip-searched for dubious reasons by airport security THEN- Maybe we would NOT be even having to discuss these TSA Scanners & Man-handlers?!!
And as recently as Wed, 10/19/2011 this article by Mike Pirsch was posted here at BAR entitled- 'America is a Fascist State Because IT IS Racist!' Some key excerpts include:
[" 'White Americans seldom see fascism in their behavior and political decisions, but that’s largely because they also don’t recognize racism, in themselves and fellow whites. The American brand of fascism is “fertilized” by racism, an evil ideology that is embedded in the national mythology. Americans are taught they are a nation of immigrants. “What is not mentioned is the genocide committed by the immigrants.” Black is the color of criminality, just as it was the color of slavery. “Criminal justice is as much a strategy of political neutralization as it is a channel of instinctive racism”... - America is a fascist state. The roots of fascism are growing deeper. Only by recognizing the fertilizer which feeds fascism can we kill the roots and eradicate fascism- the corporate ownership or corporate control of government is fascism, - Fascism is corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. Beginning with the claim that corporations are people thus allowing corporations to spend as much money as they wish to control their government constitutes but one of the roots of fascism we need to destroy. The wealthy elite individually or through corporate contributions provide most if not all the funding for both the National Democratic Party and National Republican Party. This single ownership shatters the myth of a two-party system...- I can associate at least 10 of the defining characteristics of fascism with the rampant racism in our country. We have been fed the deceit that racism is a thing of the past. The media then informs us subtly which groups we must fear and hate...- When we discovered the Indigenous people were not about to submit to a lifetime of slavery, we began to kidnap Africans and bring them to America to be sold like cattle and subjected to more than 300 years of slavery. How many generations is that – 10-15-20? As a nation we still refuse to acknowledge our wrong doings and apologize for our shameful offenses...- The Indigenous people were hunted mercilessly until they could no longer resist due to hunger, sickness and sheer exhaustion from facing the most modern weaponry of the time. Money was given to {white} “settlers” for killing Indigenous people. Then the Indigenous people were placed in open air prisons; tortured for speaking their own languages; tortured for practicing their traditions as their religious ceremonies were outlawed...- The kidnapped Africans have never had the same privileges afforded to all other {white} immigrant groups. I do not claim other immigrant groups had it easy, -BUT- In comparison with Indigenous people and the kidnapped Africans their lives were a bed of roses with few thorns...- For the past 120 years Blacks have been the most important progressive political force in the nation...- The Civil Rights Movement led by young Blacks made possible the anti-war movement; feminist movement; environmental movement;.. Without the courageous leadership (of young Black activists {NOTE: Malcolm & MLK where Both Just 39 when they died & Fred Hampton was just 21) none of these would have been possible. The absence of any movement today is due to the fascist backlash to their leadership. Remember, “none so fitted to break the chains as they who wear them”... - Thus it was necessary to wage war against young Blacks that continues even today....- The FBI organized assassinations of Black and American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders; framed leaders of both races resulting in long term imprisonment of the leaders (many are still in prison today); and destroyed the Black Panther Party and AIM through COINTELPRO (still active today). This began the period whereby it is a crime to be young and Black. A crime which all Blacks are meant to suffer the consequences...- Fascists began their efforts to destroy critical thinking as a fundamental part of education in reaction to the leadership skills demonstrated so effectively by young Blacks in the period of the Civil Rights Movement...- The United States government has used the import of “illegal” drugs for years to subjugate Black Americans. This tactic has been explained thoroughly in Alfred McCoy’s “The Politics of Heroin”(1972 and 1991) and Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and The Crack Cocaine Explosion” (2003)...- The reality is that substantially more Whites use drugs than Blacks...- Racism plays a key role in demonizing those who should be leading the movement for reclaiming democracy and killing fascism. Since the 1970’s our prison population has increased by over 500%; we have over 2.2 million people in prison of whom over 900,000 are black. The United States is 5% of the world’s population and holds 25% of the world’s prisoners. This is another root of fascism that absolutely has to be destroyed. Most of the 500% increase is due to the war on Blacks or what the media calls the drug war. In fact most of Black prisoners have been convicted of simple marijuana possession...- Corporate media deceivers along with the corrupt political class have combined to fertilize the strongest root of fascism which is racism...- Our enemy is the wealthy elite but we have been conned into the dark abyss of racism...- If we are to poison the roots of fascism we must start with racism...' " ]
Until enough [as in most] white folk understand these facts [or at least seriously consider & study them - a good starting point is this article] the white OWS Streeters are going to be seriously [if not woefully] lacking. Slavery was BIG BIZ [about the exploitation of labor] yet santioned by the US Gov't [many / most of the US' founding fathers were slave owners], - The extermination of the Native Americans was BIG BIZ [about seizing land & resouces] yet santioned by the US Gov't [Many of the US' founding fathers were also known as 'Injun' Fighters], - Aparthied was BIG BIZ [about both exploitating labor & seizing land & resouces] santioned by Gov't; - the Crimalized {in}Justice System & Prison Industry is about BIG BIZ working in conjunction w the US Gov't -YET- They were/are all Instutions of RACISM! Often {white} so-called political 'leftists' argue that class [or gender] exploitation is more pertainent than racism - when in fact the two can be attempted to be separated ONLY in the case of working class / poor whites being exploited by other affluent whites. But trying to separate Class Exploitation from RACISM as practiced by the Power elites amongst non-whites is LUDICROUS! Plus racism has been / still is used by the Power Elites as a control tool to distract too many working class / poor whites from focusing in on those very same Elites - because Black & Brown folk make such 'convenient' scape-goats! In an interview Glen Ford asks Kevin Alexander this question [I para-quote]: 'Is the OWS Movement about disappointment relative to their presumed entitlement to 'white priviledge' or is it about justice & equity for all - Is it about whites feeling like they're being treated like the 'new niggas', or is it about eliminating the system that treats anyone -especially Blacks & Browns like Niggers...'
AND I go back to the OJ case & this is not to defend OJ - just to make a point... As so many white folk [including most so-called 'liberals'] villified OJ- they also villified the mainly Black Woman Jury & most Blacks who thought OJ was innocent or at-least agreed w the jury that OJ was NOT Proven Guilty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. YET How many of these same whites wanted [& even now want] to give Mark Furhman a pass by saying 'Furhman's racism was of Absolutely NO Significance to OJ's case [HUH?!]'. Or ask why so many whites were in an uproar about OJ's acquittal but were almost 'Oh Well / Ho-Hum' about Robert Blake's acquittal - they'll probably respond 'Robert Who?? Who's that??'...
TRIVIALIZING HISTORY THROUGH METAPHOR
I have to disagree with the concensus that many posters seem to want to impose on the rest of us, that race based chattel slavery was somehow equivalent to the hardships that many Whites (and others) are experiencing because of the current economic crisis. I think that such thinking encourages a crass trivialization of history, and of its consequences among people who are already dangerously ahistorical. Race based chattel slavery was not a "choice" like deciding to attend a college that one cannot actually afford, refinancing a house to tap the equity, or remaining in a dead-end job because one doesn't have the skill sets or the desire to to move to a place where one's opportunities are better. Chattel slavery was hereditary, the off-spring of enslaved people were automatically and permanently enslaved unless they could somehow purchase their freedom or flee. Unlike the White protestors who claim to be enslaved, there were laws which made fleeing illegal, and which empowered anyone to apprehend escapees, and return them to slavery. Chattlel slavery also made it open season for White men on Black women of any age, including young girls and children. As far as I know, the state as of yet, does not allow men of any race to sexually assault family members of Whites in the occupy movements. I think that the author was right on the mark in mentioning how Whites who supported chattel slavery for Blacks, during the Revolution, had no problem accusing the British of doing the same to them. Just because Blacks don't have a "patent" on the use of slavery as a metaphor doesns't make it cool for those whose people have never actually experienced it to apply it willy-nilly just for its shock value. As it has been stated in the article, most of them would never even consider to use the Holocaust in the same manner. If all metaphors are fair game, then thinking people should ask why this is the case.