MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (June 29, 2021) — I must begin by saying that I began reading Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House as a blank—vacuous may be more accurate—slate. Maybe it is the result of fatigue, maybe it’s a skill developed through nearly six decades of living, more than three decades of sobriety, and several periods of finding meaning in Eastern philosophies like Taoism and Buddhism, but I cannot dredge up anything in the form of expectations embarking upon her memoir. If the assignment had been to read one of Walter Moseley’s Easy Rawlins novels—like Devil in a Blue Dress—I would have an easier time coming up with expectations.
I recently watched—more accurately, listened to—the documentary series Enslaved by Simcha Jacobovici (creator/director/executive producer) and Samuel L. Jackson,[1] Latanya Richardson Jackson, Rob Lee, Yaron Niski, and Eli Selden (executive producers). I was busy working on newspaper stuff (my day job), so wasn’t giving the series the attention it deserved, but I was jarred to a stop at one scene. I don’t clearly remember the context, but I believe Samuel L. Jackson and historian Afua Hirsch were at a former slave port on the west coast of Africa, possibly in what is now Senegal. Hirsch—a descendant of a Dutch slave trader and an African slave—remarked about how the treatment of the slaves makes one sad.
But not for this.
Jackson said it made him angry (Jacobovici 2020).[2]
Jackson’s comment is, I think, relevant to any modern reading of Keckley’s memoir, for what shocked me most about her account is the dearth of anger—and abundance of undeserved charity toward those who enslaved her—that she expressed. Personally, I cannot reconcile her coerced servitude and unforgivable abuse with anything that might resemble a “bright side” as she calls it in her preface (Keckley 1868, p. xi). The only light from her experiences originated within her, but that light was concealed by her dark skin such that the whites oppressing her and other Africans could deny themselves a glimpse of their shared humanity.
A few lines down in the preface she gives a more fleshed-out explanation for her charity toward those who enslaved her:
I have kind, true-hearted friends in the South as well as in the North, and I would not wound those Southern friends by sweeping condemnation, simply because I was once a slave. They were not so much responsible for the curse under which I was born, as the God of nature and the fathers who framed the Constitution for the United States. The law descended to them, and it was but natural that they should recognize it, since it manifestly was their interest to do so (Keckley 1868, pp. xi-xii).
In my mind, her statement above is the yin to the white supremacist’s yang when one claims, “I’m not racist. Some of my best friends are black.”
I find myself more in Jackson’s camp on this (angry), despite the internal conflict stemming from the fact that many of my white ancestors, including those in New York and New England, owned slaves and that some of the southern ancestors fought for the Confederacy. Some of my white relatives want to believe our ancestors were benevolent to the slaves. But the fact that our slave-owning ancestors treated others as property seems to prima facie evidence against them possessing anything resembling benevolence, at least toward anyone with reasonably recent origins (on an evolutionary time frame) on the African continent.
Personally, I identify more with my slave ancestors, some of whom migrated to Canada before the Civil War—presumably via the Underground Railroad. I don’t know their reasons for moving there, but I am certain they had to be escaping slavery. As much as I love Canada (I’ve been to every border province from New Brunswick west to British Columbia), I doubt I would have chosen to live there in the 1850s with its short summers, long winters, and bloodthirsty swarms of black flies and mosquitoes vicious enough to drive one mad.[3]
Growing up during both the Vietnam Era, I knew what it was like to be a despised minority—Asian American —in a white dominated society where the majority, mistakenly taking me for one of them given that I can pass as white,[4] freely shared their feelings about those not privileged enough to be born as white as they were.
Samuel L. Jackson is 13 years older than I am. He grew up when Jim Crow seemed unassailable. I grew up in Jimbo’s[5] waning years (I was 6 years old, or nearly so, when Loving v. Virginia finally struck down the nation’s anti-miscegenation laws). My immersion in intense racism was prolonged through the 1970s as a result of the lingering conflicts in Southeast Asia along with festering white resentment about being forced to treat minorities as equals (in word if not in actual deed). I strongly identify with Jackson’s anger.
Nevertheless, I am also sympathetic with Keckley’s desire to maintain a conciliatory tone in her memoir. True, I could look at it through a purely twenty-first century lens and dismiss it as a form of Uncle Tom-ism. Yet I believe the context of the time in which she wrote it must be considered.
Keckley might have purchased her freedom before the Civil War. She—and all slaves—might have been emancipated as a result of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. But African Americans of the time would have found life in a white-dominated society a hostile work (and living) environment. Many still do. Keckley certainly found it hostile in the reaction to her book once it was published (Gates and Smith 2014, p. 310). The hostility African Americans like her faced then springs from the same source of the hostility I faced growing up and, unfortunately, still to some extent face today. The utterances of a certain former president who shall not be named here, but who did a damned effective job of fanning the complementary flames of fascism and racism during his campaign for and term in office from 2015 to 2021, and the rampant approval of those utterances from a large number of whites in this country, brings back—in me, at least—long-dormant feelings of wariness about my welcome in this society.[6]
In such an environment, to have the gall to speak out while being a member of a despised “other” can place your life—as well as the lives of your family and friends—at risk.[7] The ever-present danger of racially motivated violence was oppressive to me as I grew up, and I learned then to avoid the risk of being a target of it by swallowing my anger. It was necessary for me to survive. As a result, I think I understand why Keckley and others in her position struck such a conciliatory tone in their writing. Better to be a “good darkie” than to be strung up and castrated from a tree, at least for that time.
For me, that time has passed. I am damned angry, so I can relate to the feelings Samuel L. Jackson expressed in Enslaved. Don’t expect us to be worried about white feelings when whites cared not one whit about our feelings for hundreds of years. We are here. We have a place at the American table—a prominent place. And white Americans better damned well get used to it.
One can argue that Keckley sets the better example, but I suspect that, had she felt free to more fully express herself as some of us do today, she might have been far less understanding and tolerant of the white man’s (and woman’s) “burden.”
Editors Note: This piece was originally written for an African American literature class at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and submitted on June 29, 2021.
References
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Valerie A Smith, eds. 2014. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Third ed. 2 vols. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Jacobovici, Simcha. 2020. Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. London and Toronto: Cornelia Street Productions and Associated Producers.
Keckley, Elizabeth. 1868. Behind the scenes: Or, Thirty years a slave and four years in the White House. New York: G.W. Carleton & Co.
Labor, Earle, Robert C. Leitz, III, and I. Milo Shepard, eds. 1991. Short Stories of Jack London: Authorized One-Volume Edition. New York: Collier Books.
[2] I do not remember which episode the exchange occurred. I think it was the first, though.
[3] As nearly happened to me on an expedition to northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan in 1994. I remember reading a Jack London short story—no clue which one, though I think it was included in Labor et al. (1991)—before the expedition about mosquitoes so thick that they drove moose (or caribou) to drown themselves in ponds for relief. I dismissed it as literary license … until I was nearly driven mad myself in the boreal forests of Prince Albert National Park on my first day of fieldwork there.
[4] An ex-friend of mine was shocked that I identified and was sympathetic with minorities. “You’re white!” he wrote in a message. True, my skin leans toward the ruddy end of the white spectrum, but many of my ancestors would never pass (or fail, depending on your perspective) the paper bag test.
[5] I wrote “Jimmy’s” at first, but couldn’t resist the chance to play off “Sambo.”
[6] My place in this society should be assured. My ancestors, including the African and Asian ones, contributed more to the founding and development of this nation than those of many of the whites still worshipping that former and current president. My welcome here, however, seems in doubt.
[7] We don’t even have to speak. We just have to be present to be at risk, as my mom and I were in the 1960s in Louisiana.
When suitably inspired I will write something, maybe about a breaking story in science, maybe about my career as a scientist (specifically, a biogeographer). I may wage war against the forces of ignorance from the dubious bully pulpit of this blog. Or I may just tell some war story from my past in which I should have ended up dead as a result of my own stupidity.
Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House: A Reaction
Posted by AbyssWriter on 6/29/21 • Categorized as African American Literature,Commentary,Literary Criticism,Race,Slavery,Women's Literature
MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (June 29, 2021) — I must begin by saying that I began reading Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House as a blank—vacuous may be more accurate—slate. Maybe it is the result of fatigue, maybe it’s a skill developed through nearly six decades of living, more than three decades of sobriety, and several periods of finding meaning in Eastern philosophies like Taoism and Buddhism, but I cannot dredge up anything in the form of expectations embarking upon her memoir. If the assignment had been to read one of Walter Moseley’s Easy Rawlins novels—like Devil in a Blue Dress—I would have an easier time coming up with expectations.
I recently watched—more accurately, listened to—the documentary series Enslaved by Simcha Jacobovici (creator/director/executive producer) and Samuel L. Jackson,[1] Latanya Richardson Jackson, Rob Lee, Yaron Niski, and Eli Selden (executive producers). I was busy working on newspaper stuff (my day job), so wasn’t giving the series the attention it deserved, but I was jarred to a stop at one scene. I don’t clearly remember the context, but I believe Samuel L. Jackson and historian Afua Hirsch were at a former slave port on the west coast of Africa, possibly in what is now Senegal. Hirsch—a descendant of a Dutch slave trader and an African slave—remarked about how the treatment of the slaves makes one sad.
But not for this.
Jackson said it made him angry (Jacobovici 2020).[2]
Jackson’s comment is, I think, relevant to any modern reading of Keckley’s memoir, for what shocked me most about her account is the dearth of anger—and abundance of undeserved charity toward those who enslaved her—that she expressed. Personally, I cannot reconcile her coerced servitude and unforgivable abuse with anything that might resemble a “bright side” as she calls it in her preface (Keckley 1868, p. xi). The only light from her experiences originated within her, but that light was concealed by her dark skin such that the whites oppressing her and other Africans could deny themselves a glimpse of their shared humanity.
A few lines down in the preface she gives a more fleshed-out explanation for her charity toward those who enslaved her:
In my mind, her statement above is the yin to the white supremacist’s yang when one claims, “I’m not racist. Some of my best friends are black.”
I find myself more in Jackson’s camp on this (angry), despite the internal conflict stemming from the fact that many of my white ancestors, including those in New York and New England, owned slaves and that some of the southern ancestors fought for the Confederacy. Some of my white relatives want to believe our ancestors were benevolent to the slaves. But the fact that our slave-owning ancestors treated others as property seems to prima facie evidence against them possessing anything resembling benevolence, at least toward anyone with reasonably recent origins (on an evolutionary time frame) on the African continent.
Personally, I identify more with my slave ancestors, some of whom migrated to Canada before the Civil War—presumably via the Underground Railroad. I don’t know their reasons for moving there, but I am certain they had to be escaping slavery. As much as I love Canada (I’ve been to every border province from New Brunswick west to British Columbia), I doubt I would have chosen to live there in the 1850s with its short summers, long winters, and bloodthirsty swarms of black flies and mosquitoes vicious enough to drive one mad.[3]
Growing up during both the Vietnam Era, I knew what it was like to be a despised minority—Asian American —in a white dominated society where the majority, mistakenly taking me for one of them given that I can pass as white,[4] freely shared their feelings about those not privileged enough to be born as white as they were.
Samuel L. Jackson is 13 years older than I am. He grew up when Jim Crow seemed unassailable. I grew up in Jimbo’s[5] waning years (I was 6 years old, or nearly so, when Loving v. Virginia finally struck down the nation’s anti-miscegenation laws). My immersion in intense racism was prolonged through the 1970s as a result of the lingering conflicts in Southeast Asia along with festering white resentment about being forced to treat minorities as equals (in word if not in actual deed). I strongly identify with Jackson’s anger.
Nevertheless, I am also sympathetic with Keckley’s desire to maintain a conciliatory tone in her memoir. True, I could look at it through a purely twenty-first century lens and dismiss it as a form of Uncle Tom-ism. Yet I believe the context of the time in which she wrote it must be considered.
Keckley might have purchased her freedom before the Civil War. She—and all slaves—might have been emancipated as a result of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. But African Americans of the time would have found life in a white-dominated society a hostile work (and living) environment. Many still do. Keckley certainly found it hostile in the reaction to her book once it was published (Gates and Smith 2014, p. 310). The hostility African Americans like her faced then springs from the same source of the hostility I faced growing up and, unfortunately, still to some extent face today. The utterances of a certain former president who shall not be named here, but who did a damned effective job of fanning the complementary flames of fascism and racism during his campaign for and term in office from 2015 to 2021, and the rampant approval of those utterances from a large number of whites in this country, brings back—in me, at least—long-dormant feelings of wariness about my welcome in this society.[6]
In such an environment, to have the gall to speak out while being a member of a despised “other” can place your life—as well as the lives of your family and friends—at risk.[7] The ever-present danger of racially motivated violence was oppressive to me as I grew up, and I learned then to avoid the risk of being a target of it by swallowing my anger. It was necessary for me to survive. As a result, I think I understand why Keckley and others in her position struck such a conciliatory tone in their writing. Better to be a “good darkie” than to be strung up and castrated from a tree, at least for that time.
For me, that time has passed. I am damned angry, so I can relate to the feelings Samuel L. Jackson expressed in Enslaved. Don’t expect us to be worried about white feelings when whites cared not one whit about our feelings for hundreds of years. We are here. We have a place at the American table—a prominent place. And white Americans better damned well get used to it.
One can argue that Keckley sets the better example, but I suspect that, had she felt free to more fully express herself as some of us do today, she might have been far less understanding and tolerant of the white man’s (and woman’s) “burden.”
Editors Note: This piece was originally written for an African American literature class at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and submitted on June 29, 2021.
References
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Valerie A Smith, eds. 2014. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Third ed. 2 vols. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Jacobovici, Simcha. 2020. Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. London and Toronto: Cornelia Street Productions and Associated Producers.
Keckley, Elizabeth. 1868. Behind the scenes: Or, Thirty years a slave and four years in the White House. New York: G.W. Carleton & Co.
Labor, Earle, Robert C. Leitz, III, and I. Milo Shepard, eds. 1991. Short Stories of Jack London: Authorized One-Volume Edition. New York: Collier Books.
[1] Yes, the one you’re thinking of.
[2] I do not remember which episode the exchange occurred. I think it was the first, though.
[3] As nearly happened to me on an expedition to northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan in 1994. I remember reading a Jack London short story—no clue which one, though I think it was included in Labor et al. (1991)—before the expedition about mosquitoes so thick that they drove moose (or caribou) to drown themselves in ponds for relief. I dismissed it as literary license … until I was nearly driven mad myself in the boreal forests of Prince Albert National Park on my first day of fieldwork there.
[4] An ex-friend of mine was shocked that I identified and was sympathetic with minorities. “You’re white!” he wrote in a message. True, my skin leans toward the ruddy end of the white spectrum, but many of my ancestors would never pass (or fail, depending on your perspective) the paper bag test.
[5] I wrote “Jimmy’s” at first, but couldn’t resist the chance to play off “Sambo.”
[6] My place in this society should be assured. My ancestors, including the African and Asian ones, contributed more to the founding and development of this nation than those of many of the whites still worshipping that former and current president. My welcome here, however, seems in doubt.
[7] We don’t even have to speak. We just have to be present to be at risk, as my mom and I were in the 1960s in Louisiana.
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