The following day, I attended a workshop about preventing gender violence, facilitated by Katz. There, he posed a question to all of the men in the room: “Men, what things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?” Not one man, including myself, could quickly answer the question. Finally, one man raised his hand and said, “Nothing.” Then Katz asked the women, “What things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?” Nearly all of the women in the room raised their hand. One by one, each woman testified:
“I don’t make eye contact with men when I walk down the street,” said one.
“I don’t put my drink down at parties,” said another.
“I use the buddy system when I go to parties.”
“I cross the street when I see a group of guys walking in my direction.”
“I use my keys as a potential weapon.”
“I carry mace or pepper spray.”
“I watch what I wear.”
- From “Why I Am A Black Male Feminist” by Byron Hurt.
Via Racialicious.
But much of my reading over the past few months has led me to think that I actually understated the underlying reasons for a pervasive system of white supremacy. More specifically, it’s become clear that to truly understand one of the most profligate and profitable slave society ever erected in the history of man, you have to understand the presumptions of the society itself. Weighing the Old South against the presumptions that undergird modern America tells you something about the war of ideas. But I don’t know how much it helps you understand that original question—How could anyone own a slave? More tantalizing—How could I have owned a slave?
For those purposes, I’ve found it enlightening to contrast the Old South with our modern presumptions of individual rights. From what I gather, by the 19th century there was a Lincolnite view of the world that held that people were entitled to go as far as their individual efforts would take them. And then there was a somewhat conflicting view that people were, by nature, born into certain slots and it was their God-authored duty to play their position. I think that while both of these views existed in the North and the South, and the definition of “people” was often problematic, in the South the latter was more deeply entrenched. Indeed the notion of playing your position was the whole point of the society.
So in the Old South, all white men were expected to aspire to be gentlemen, and all white women were expected to aspire to be ladies. Black people were expected to aspire to give all their labor to their masters, and to stay right with God. (The two were very often linked.) A gentleman was expected to lord over an estate, supervise his slaves and superintend their Christian enlightenment, and—from the battlefield to the horse track—bring honor to his family name. A lady, as the historian Steven Stowe writes, was expected to be “ornamental,” to be “mild, loving and beautiful.”
This was the society as God had ordered it, and as sure as the natural kingdom is ordered, so too was the kingdom of people. Science is embryonic in this era—everything from personal beauty, to the shape of one’s head is believed to indicate intelligence. The term “good breeding” was used as interchangeable for “good manners.” What I’m driving at is the notion of individuality, that you could be both a woman and an individual person, with equal and individual ambitions, hadn’t really been absorbed. Your birth marked your estate, and your lot in life was to till that estate to the best of your abilities.
[…]
Whereas the North put forth black sailors immediately, and black troops within two years of the War, the South couldn’t bring itself to even attempt to match such an effort. It’s not that the North was an enlightened racial Utopia. It’s that the North was more malleable, and ultimately wasn’t built on the notion that the proper place for blacks is as property. To call the South a “slave society,” almost understates the matter—it was a petrified society, a world whose glory was built on individuals being jammed into pre-ordained roles, regardless of whether they fit or not.
As a progressive, it’s rather natural for me to think about the South in terms of power and oppression. But I don’t think a power-based analysis really allows you to see the whole horror of the thing, to understand how you, in a different time, could have been as evil as anyone else. When you do see the whole of, you almost marvel at the sick beauty of the thing—like, as Magic once said, watching Jordan run up and down the court and forgetting you play for the Lakers.
I was reading a piece on vacation resorts in Louisiana at Lake Ponchartrain earlier this week. These joints were outfitted with spas, baths, race tracks, fishing, hunting, river-boats—the whole nine. And much of it was destroyed during the War. It’s like the entire Confederacy was a land-bound Titanic.
It’s obviously important to understand who truly built the great ship, and why it was doomed. But once you understand that, you have to push deeper. You almost have to forget who you are and start thinking about what you might have been. But if you’re going to go there, you have to go there. If this feels safe, comfortable, or affirming, you’ve done something wrong.
Kiki hunted in her purse for her wallet. Warren Crane stood beside her, with his hefty head, too large for that neatly muscular blue-collar New Jersey body, his beefy sailor arms crossed and a whimsical look on his face, like that of an audience member waiting for the comedian to get on stage. When you are no longer in the sexual universe — when you are supposedly too old, or too big, or simply no longer thought of in that way — apparently a whole new range of male reactions to you come into play. One of them is humor. But then, thought Kiki, they were brought up that way, these white American boys: I’m the Aunt Jemima on the cookie boxes of their childhoods, the pair of thick ankles Tom and Jerry played around. Of course they find me funny. And yet I could cross the river to Boston and barely be left alone for five minutes at a time. Only last week a young brother hall her age had trailed Kiki up and down Newbury for an hour and would not relent until she said he could take her out some time; she gave him a fake number.
‘You need a loan, Keeks?’ asked Warren. ‘Sister, I could spare you a dime.’
Kiki laughed. She found her wallet at last. Money dealt with, she said goodbye to the trader.
‘That’s pretty,’ said Warren, looking down her and then up her again. ‘As if you needed to get any prettier.’
And this is another thing they do. They flirt with you violently because there is no possibility of being taken seriously.
There are few facts in my humble history to which I look back with more satisfaction than to the fact, recorded in the history of the woman-suffrage movement, that I was sufficiently enlightened at that early day, and when only a few years from slavery, to support your resolution for woman suffrage. I have done very little in this world in which to glory except this one act—and I certainly glory in that. When I ran away from slavery, it was for myself; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of woman, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act.
From a speech to the International Council of Women by Frederick Douglass.
The full speech and more information about Douglass’s role in the women’s suffrage movement can be found here.
So imagine yourself, in love with someone, on your honeymoon or pregnant, when suddenly this guy just goes ballistic, often for very little reason, and hits you. For a lot of women, this is profoundly shocking and disorienting. There are things that are comprehensible parts of the world, even if they’re rare, like having your car stolen; and then there are things that are unexpected in a completely different sense, like having your car turn into an elephant before your eyes: things that make you wonder whether you’re completely crazy. Being beaten up by someone who apparently loves you is one of those things.
What this means is that precisely when a woman needs as much confidence in her own judgment as she can muster, the rug is completely pulled out from under her. And it’s not just that she questions her judgment because she got involved with this guy in the first place; she questions her judgment because something so completely alien to the world she thinks she knows has just happened.
Under the circumstances, it is very, very hard to say: well, OK, I am married and/or pregnant, I am in this serious relationship, but I will nonetheless decide to leave, now, because I think I have to, and I trust my judgment. Trusting your judgment at that moment is like trusting your sense of balance when someone has just poured a fifth of vodka down your throat.
