Opinion

Advertisement

Subscriber-only Newsletter

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

One of the points I tried to make in my Friday column about the new Florida curriculum on the history of slavery is that the context of a statement can have a radical effect on its meaning.

To be clear, there are legitimate objections to make to the particular phrasing. As I noted in my piece, to say that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” is to make several untenable assumptions about the experiences of most enslaved Africans as well as to occlude the essential quality of life under slavery, which is that neither your person nor your labor was your own.

But the basic idea that “slaves developed skills” isn’t an illegitimate one. And although it has been deployed in efforts to minimize the fundamental injustice of American slavery, it has also been used in defense of the essential humanity of the enslaved. For example, at the same time that white supremacist authors were writing slavery apologia for student instruction, scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois were taking note of the skills and agency of enslaved Africans for a very different purpose.

It must not be assumed, however, that the labor of the Negro has been simply the muscle-straining unintelligent work of the lowest grade. On the contrary he has appeared both as personal servant, skilled laborer and inventor. That the Negroes of colonial times were not all ignorant savages is shown by the advertisements concerning them. Continually runaway slaves are described as speaking very good English, sometimes as speaking not only English but Dutch and French. Some could read and write and play musical instruments. Others were blacksmiths, lime burners, bricklayers and cobblers. Others were noted as having considerable sums of money. In the early days in the South the whole conduct of the house was in the hands of the Negro house servant; as butler, cook, nurse, valet and maid, the Negro conducted family life.

Likewise, in his account of colonial slavery, the historian and activist Carter G. Woodson provides a catalog of “the evidences of mental development of the Negroes of that day.”

In offering slaves for sale and advertising for fugitives, masters spoke of their virtues as well as their shortcomings. Judging from what they said about them in these advertisements, one must conclude that many of the 18th-century slaves had taken over modern civilization and had made themselves useful and skilled laborers, with a knowledge of the modern languages, the fundamentals of mathematics and science and acquaintance with some of the professions.

The difference between these accounts and those of the slavery apologists, however, is that Du Bois, Woodson and their contemporaries never implied or suggested that chattel slavery was anything less than a crime. Whereas apologists dismissed or disparaged the efforts, radical and otherwise, to end slavery, Du Bois, Woodson and others gave them pride of place in their histories and narratives about the peculiar institution. And in the same way that slavery apologia served a specific ideological purpose, the emphasis on the skills and agency of the enslaved by Black scholars was meant to challenge, in Woodson’s famous words, “the miseducation of the Negro.”

This is all to say that what might appear to be little more than a semantic dispute is, in actuality, a much more fundamental conflict about what the facts of our history actually mean not just for the past but also for the present.

My Tuesday column was on the group No Labels and the fantasy of politics without partisanship.

For now, though, I want to highlight the fact that there’s no way to realize this long-running fantasy of politics without partisanship. Organized conflict is an unavoidable part of democratically structured political life for the simple reason that politics is about governing and governing is about choices.

My Friday column was, as I was just saying, on the new Florida curriculum on slavery and what the conflict says about historical memory.

You might say that these are minor, semantic differences. But in history the same ideas can be used to very different effect. And it is exactly these questions of wording and emphasis that mark one of the differences between a modern, more truthful depiction of American slavery and an older, tendentious approach that either de-emphasized or ignored outright the basic injustice of human bondage in favor of a gloss that placed a more pleasant sheen on an otherwise horrific institution.

And the latest episode of my podcast with John Ganz was on the 1995 film “Strange Days.”

Sara Herschander on child care as an organizing tool for Dissent.

Allyson McCabe on Sinead O’Connor for The Los Angeles Times.

Rebecca Solnit on climate change for The Guardian.

Jeanne Theoharis speaks with the legal scholar Margaret Burnham on her book, “By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners,” for Boston Review.

Isabela Dias on the Republican attack on birthright citizenship for Mother Jones.

This is a mural I saw in downtown Cincinnati during a recent visit. I liked it a lot and so I’m sharing it with you.

I apologize ahead of time for the fact that this recipe is a little time-consuming. But if, like me, you’re a fiend for Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavors, then you owe it to yourself to give this a try. It is the perfect addition to a spread of salads, breads and grilled proteins (kebabs, kofte and the like) and honestly isn’t that difficult to make. Again, it’s just time-consuming. Then again, so is everything worth doing — or eating, for that matter.

Recipe from New York Times Cooking.

Ingredients

2 large red bell peppers, halved lengthwise, stems and seeds removed

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling

2 large eggplants, pierced all over with a fork

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons tomato paste

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes or ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes, plus extra to serve

2 large ripe plum tomatoes (about 9 ounces), roughly chopped then puréed

¼ cup finely chopped parsley leaves

¼ cup finely chopped cilantro leaves, plus extra to serve

½ teaspoon granulated sugar

Fine sea salt and black pepper

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Scant ¼ cup tahini

Pitas, for serving

Directions

Heat the oven to 450 degrees.

Place the halved bell peppers on a parchment-lined baking sheet, skin side up, and drizzle lightly with oil. Place the eggplants on a separate lined baking sheet. Transfer both baking sheets to the oven, setting the peppers on the top shelf. Roast the peppers for 25 to 30 minutes, until charred and softened, and the eggplants for about 50 minutes, until completely collapsed and softened through the middle.

Once cool enough to handle, peel and discard the skin of the peppers and finely chop the flesh; set aside.

Peel the eggplants, discarding the skins and stems, and place the flesh into a sieve set over a bowl. Leave to drain for at least 20 minutes, pushing down to squeeze out and discard any extra liquid. Roughly chop the eggplants.

Meanwhile, heat the ¼ cup oil in a medium skillet over medium-high. Once hot, add about three-quarters of the garlic plus the tomato paste, cumin, paprika and Aleppo pepper flakes; cook for about 1 minute, stirring occasionally, until fragrant. Add the blitzed tomatoes, parsley, cilantro, sugar and ¾ teaspoon salt. Bring to a simmer then turn the heat down to medium and cook for about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened and the oil has separated.

Add the chopped peppers and eggplants and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes. Off the heat, stir in 1 tablespoon lemon juice; set aside to cool slightly.

Meanwhile, make the tahini sauce: In a small bowl, whisk together the tahini with the remaining garlic, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, ⅛ teaspoon salt and 3 tablespoons water until easily pourable. Add a splash of more water if necessary.

Transfer the zaalouk to a wide, shallow bowl and drizzle with the tahini sauce. Sprinkle with extra Aleppo and cilantro and serve warm or at room temperature, with pitas to mop it all up.

Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington. @jbouie

Advertisement