Sat 28 Jun, 2008
Washington Post on “Traces of the Trade”
Comments (7) Filed under: Traces of the TradeTags: Guilt, Media coverage, Washington D.C.
On the front page of today’s Style section, the Washington Post runs a feature story on Traces of the Trade, headlined “A Family Discovers Its History of Shackles and Shame.”
The article, by Ellen Maguire, runs in advance of the Washington-area broadcast of the film on Sunday on WETA, and features interviews with Katrina Browne, the director, and Juanita Brown, a co-producer.
Maguire describes the result of Katrina’s collaboration with Juanita as “part history lesson, part encounter session,” and notes that they have tried to offer viewers “a window into the awkward and painful consciousness-raising” of an established American family.
Maguire does a sensitive and balanced job of discussing their motivations in making the film, and their rationale for approaching the project as they did, while simultaneously referring to several of the more controversial aspects of their approach.
The article discusses the historical and contemporary basis for raising issues of race in a documentary, and outlines the reasons why this history is relevant to all Americans. It also discusses Katrina’s personal approach to race, revealing that Katrina had initially repressed the knowledge that she was descended from slave traders, in a personal parallel to Northern amnesia about slavery, and that she believes that whites today need forgiveness from blacks. Katrina is also quoted as saying,”I work around the clock, and I can only wonder if there is a piece of white guilt that I have not let go of.”
The article quotes at length from the most controversial aspect of Juanita’s participation in the film, the hotel room scene where she unexpectedly finds herself talking on camera to Elly about race. Here is a brief portion:
… I’m angry at white people. I think white people have been cowards and have chosen to give up their integrity and their humanity ….
Not content to leave readers with this aspect of Juanita’s attitude towards issues of race, however, Maguire also personalizes Juanita with several anecdotes. She writes about Juanita’s concerns about participating in the project (“I was also very aware that I could be seen as the Uncle Tom or the mammy or the mascot”) and her emotions as the only black American during our visits to Ghana and Cuba (“To go through the slave pavilions [in Ghana], that is a very difficult thing, and I learned that I am not as indestructible as I think. The grief that comes up . . . it would have been nice to have had an African American ally”).
Juanita has powerful moments in the article. She is quoted in the film, for instance, delivering a line which she knew was clichéd but nevertheless was essential: “Anybody who’s alive or who’s paying attention should be pissed off.”
Juanita also offers an amazing rejoinder to anyone who argues that these issues belong in the past:
My mother talks about one of her cousins, a former slave. He had scars on his ankles and wrists where the shackles used to be. He ate from a trough. To people who tell me, “Get over it, it’s ancient history,” I say, “I can touch the hand of my mother who touched a slave.”
Inheriting the Trade says:
[…] My cousin James does a terrific job of encapsulating the highlights in his blog, Impertinent Questions. […]
johnperna says:
The big problem with collective guilt is that it punishes the innocent. We now hear that some of the descendents of the slave traders are supporting the idea of reparations. Tom DeWolf and Katrina Browne of the DeWolf family are examples. Are they offering to pay these reparations from their own family funds, or do the want someone else to pay? If there was any thought of justice in all of this, then the source of the reparations would be limited to nothing other than the assets that were inherited from slave traders and slave masters. In 1812, the DeWolfs owned more ships than the United States Navy. In 1837, former U.S. Senator James DeWolf died as the second richest man in America. Would the descendents of the slave traders and slave masters volunteer to exchange their financial portfolios for the financial portfolios of the descendents of the slaves? The descendents of the slave traders and of the slave masters might learn a lot from the conversations that they could have with the descendents of the slaves, while they wait together in the food stamp and welfare offices. Would it not be simple common sense that those who benefited from slavery should be the only ones to compensate those who were injured by slavery? Let’s see if we understand this correctly. The slave traders and of the slave masters benefited from slavery. The descendents of the slave traders now want to benefit again by making a film, or writing a book, condemning slave traders. No one is volunteering to make any sacrifice of their own assets to compensate those who were injured by slavery.
James says:
John, I agree with you about collective guilt, which is why it’s a terrible concept.
I haven’t heard either Tom or Katrina talk about supporting reparations, at least not as that term is commonly used. They speak of “repair,” and they define it quite differently. I’m certain, though, that neither of them could be planning to pay reparations from their own funds, as neither of them is wealthy — nor have they earned any money from slavery or the slave trade, at least not any more than you or I have.
Whether or not it would be appropriate to seize any remaining slave-trade and slavery money for reparations, there isn’t likely to be any left — at least not any money made directly from those businesses. While the entire U.S. economy owes a great deal to the investment of slave trade and slavery profits in its early industrialization, the fortunes of those directly involved were generally dissipated many generations ago. That’s certainly true of James D’Wolf’s fortune.
You wrote, though:
Would it not be simple common sense that those who benefited from slavery should be the only ones to compensate those who were injured by slavery?
It would be, John. And all Americans have benefited enormously from slavery, since slavery contributed so heavily to the rise of the U.S. economy to be the premiere economy in the world. Our standard of living owes a great deal to that important aspect of our early economy. My strong objections to reparations do not involve the issue of who benefited, since clearly we all did.
johnperna says:
James wrote:
John, I agree with you about collective guilt, which is why it’s a terrible concept.
Then James wrote:
You wrote, though:
Would it not be simple common sense that those who benefited from slavery should be the only ones to compensate those who were injured by slavery?
It would be, John. And all Americans have benefited enormously from slavery, since slavery contributed so heavily to the rise of the U.S. economy to be the premiere economy in the world.
I respond:
Collective benefit works the same way as collective guilt. “Everyone owes everyone” is that same as no one owes anyone.
James says:
John writes:
Collective benefit works the same way as collective guilt. “Everyone owes everyone” is that same as no one owes anyone.
John, I said that all Americans have benefited, to one degree or another, from slavery. Not that everyone owes everyone.
Do you really believe that everyone in the United States has benefited equally from slavery? Or are you saying that as long as everyone has received some benefit, no matter the size, no one can complain about their losses, no matter how much larger?
More concretely, do you really believe that because everyone has reaped some of the economic benefits of slavery, we should be unconcerned that millions of our citizens are still feeling the economic impact of the enslavement of their ancestors? The economic facts are striking: the descendants of slaves, for instance, have scarcely more of the wealth of this nation than their formerly enslaved ancestors had. To take another example, black homeownership rates aren’t simply much lower than those of whites; they’re advancing so slowly, even in this enlightened age of equal opportunity, than blacks and whites won’t reach parity at this rate for thousands of years.
johnperna says:
You wrote:
Do you really believe that everyone in the United States has benefited equally from slavery?
Now you are going back to the concept of INDIVIDUAL guilt and INDIVIDUAL benefit
James says:
Actually, John, I never left the concept of treating everyone as an individual. It was you who raised the subject of collective guilt (possibly in response to something in the Washington Post article, but you didn’t say).