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The Meaning of Faith in the Black Mind in Slavery

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The Meaning of Faith in the Black Mind in Slavery The Meaning of Faith in the Black Mind in Slavery MANNING MARABLE I In L'tre et le neant, Jean Paul Sartrediscussed the existentialist limitsof man'sfreedom and the abilityof a humanbeing to defineand create the essenceof anotherperson. In the oppressivesociety, "the Other holds a secret-the secretof what I am." In the Americanex- perience,Blacks continually found themselvesin the positionof being characterized,their African culturenegated, and their spiritualityre- defined. During slavery,the Black man sought continuallyto "lay claim," as Sartresuggests, "to this being which I am ... or, more exactly,I am the projectof the recoveryof my being." The slave's religion was often the only link between the individualBlack slave and that personwhom he sought to be. The Black man's spirituality createda collectivepride and racial solidaritywhich defied the in- doctrinationof the slavemasters. Marxisthistorian Eugene D. Genovesehas attemptedto define the essenceof that unique spiritof Black people who struggledto main- tain their humanityin an inhumaneenvironment. His Roll, Jordan, Roll: The Worldthe SlavesMade (New York:Pantheon Books, 1974) is a masterpieceof Americanhistoriography, a work which will un- doubtedlyreplace Kenneth M. Stampp'sThe PeculiarInstitution as Manning Marable is Associate Professor of Southern and Black American History and Politics and Chairpersonof the Department of Political Science at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama. 'Jean Paul Sartre, L'etre et le neant, or, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenome- nological Ontology (New York: PhilosophicalLibrary, 1956), passim. 248 THE MEANING OF FAITH the most influentialand authoritativesource on African-Americanslave societiesand Southernculture. Genovese has transcendedthe sterile, surplus-valuetheoretical concepts of his firstmajor work, The Political Economyof Slavery.He weavesa sensitiveretelling of the life of the mind of an oppressedclass and casteof Americans.Genovese's analysis of Black antebellum Christianityreceives extended treatmentand providesthe basisfor his entirecultural critique of servilesociety. The notionsof faith andbelief in a spiritualsalvation created an ethosamong Blacksof self-integrityand collectiveworth duringbondage. Genovese reviewsthe social institutionsof the slave communityand their inter- actionwith SouthernWhite cultureas he attemptsto explainthe mean- ing of faith within the Black experience.Genovese fails to unite the meaning of slave consciousnessin the frameworkthat he constructs within his general explanationof Southernsociety. Yet within his failurelie the seedsfor a more completeunderstanding of the nature of Blackfaith and the meaningof Blackexistence. Genovese provides a comprehensivecultural evaluationof the totality of slave life. His approachto Southernhistory has always mirroredthe work of Ulrich B. Phillips,the firsthistorian who viewed slaveryas a complex way of life. Employinga wide range of source materialswith scholarlyprecision, Genovese succeeds in destroyingthe long-heldbelief that excessiveprofits were at the heartof the peculiar institution'sraison d'etre. The complex, ambiguousrelationships be- tween the Blackdriver in the cottonfields and the White planter,the tendernessand bittersweethatred of a Blackmammy for her enslaver's children, wove a complicatedcaste and class system patternwhich perpetuateditself evenunder the worstof financialconditions. Discard- ing Phillips' crude racism, Genoveseargues that Blacks understood theiroppressed conditions from a varietyof perspectives.They fashioned for themselvesan autonomousfamily structure,lifestyle, and general sense of well-being which defied the day-to-daybrutality of the enslavementprocess. Discriminating Blacks recognized that a master could be oppressivelyexploitative or "debestes' massa in de worl',"and was usuallyboth at once.Even in the expansivefrontier slave economies of Mississippiand Texas,Genovese notes, one findssubstantial evidence ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW 249 of numerousBlacks who servedin leadershippositions which involved the maintenanceof plantations. Genovese'smajor contributionto slave theory in the American South,the conceptof "paternalism,"finds its originsin the writingsof GeorgW. F. Hegel and AntonioGramsci. In Phenomenologyof Mind, Hegel suggestedthat the existenceof the master was inextricably relatedto the being of the slave. Ideally,the slave was the mindless force lumberingthrough the materialworld, whereasthe masterwas the intellect,the mind of the slave.Yet to be a master,Hegel noted, one must obtainthe recognitionand consentof the slave.Thus, a spirit of reciprocityand recognitionof humanity must exist between the owner and his human chattle.For Genovese,this ethos of reciprocity, "paternalism,"existed in Georgia'scotton fields and Louisiana'srice swampsbetween Blacks and Whites. Masters assumed their right to con- trol and exploitthe laborpower of Blackswithout feelings of excessive guilt but acceptedthe responsibilitiesof supplyingfood and clothing for Black infants, providedmedical care for the elderly, and gave limited freedomto adult slavesto controlmost aspectsof their social institutions.Slaves acknowledged the legitimacyof their masters'rule over their existencewith greatreservations, Genovese states. A conflict- ing senseof love andhatred between the enslavedand the mastercreated a beautiful and often violent society. Thus plantationpaternalism "affordeda fragilebridge across the intolerablecontradictions inherent in a societybased on racism,slavery, and class exploitation...." Marxistphilosopher Antonio Gramscidirects Genovese through a maze of antebellumdocuments which expressboth the planter'sand slave'spoints of view toward a comprehensiveexplanation of Black consciousnessand culturein the South.Gramsci was the firstMarxist to argue that culturalhegemony, the dominationof the thoughtof lead- ing intellectuals,such as educatorsand clergymen,over rival ideologies of oppressiveclasses, was a vital componentof bourgeoisclass rule. Gramsci'sinsistence that upper class ideological control over civil society broughtabout bourgeois economic hegemony parallels Genovese's thesis that the planterideology dominatedthe poor White and slave Black 250 THE MEANING OF FAITH consciousness.2Genovese has long insisted that the planter dominated the intellectual contours of Southern life and thereby, in Gramscian fashion, turned all dissent away from a general political or economic review of the legitimacy of slavery as the basic mode of production within society. This hegemonic domination of the planter over all Southerners,and especially over Black slaves, could have led to the creation of a con- servative, brain-washed, agrarian proletariat. Sociologist Orlando Pat- terson argues with Genovese that such was the case in the American South. Paternalism,he declares, "succeededastonishingly well in weld- ing together all the elements of the system, especially masters and slaves."3 Such criticism is not too far from Stanley Elkins' controversial judgment that a unique "Sambo" type probably emerged from the American plantation: Is it possibleto deal with "Sambo"as a type? The characteristicsthat have been claimed for the type came principallyfrom Southernlore. Sambo, the typical plantationslave, was docile but irresponsible,loyal but lazy, humble but chronicallygiven to lying and stealing; his be- haviorwas full of infantile sillinessand his talk inflatedwith childish exaggeration.His relationshipwith his masterwas one of utter depen- 2Antonio Gramsci was the Italian Communist Party's leading theoretician during the period immediately after the First World War and during Benito Mussolini's regime. A Sicilian, Gramsci was acutely aware of the dimensions of culture and caste within the political economy of his bourgeois society. Although Gramsci has been ignored among Western Marxists, his writings are perhaps the most valuable of any historical materialiston the nature of cultural institutions within societies, on working class consciousness, and on the political dimensions of education and religion. Hegelian in spirit, Gramsci's Prison Notebooks are a monumental piece of social criticism. Genovese has been profoundly influenced by Gramsci for at least ten years; Genovese's early writings do not show Gramsci'scultural formulations and suffer as a result. Stanley Elkins has observed that "Gramsci'sthought provides Genovese with a way of bringing the slave fully into the equation without repudiating his earlier convictions either about the planter class's hegemony over Southern society at large or about the master's patriarchalrole vis-a-vis his black dependents." For Genovese's assessment of Gramsci, see "On Antonio Gramsci," Red and Black (New York: Vintage Books, 1971). 3 Orlando Patterson, "The Peculiar Institution Again," review of Roll, Jordan,Roll, in New Republic,November 9, 1974, pp. 37-38. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW 251 dence and childlike attachment:it was indeed the very key to his being.4 Unlike Elkins,Gramsci's and Genovese'ssympathies remained with the oppressed.Genovese insists that there was roomwithin the dialectic of paternalismfor slaveculture to surviveand even prosper.The inde- pendenceand semi-autonomyof the slavequarters gave birthto a new Americanconsciousness, a sense of being which was in many ways "pre-political"and "nationalistic."This Black consciousnesswas pro- foundly conservative,partially rooted in the accommodationisttactics of "houseniggers" and "Uncle Toms,"but it providedthe enslaved with the ideology of
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