Kirk Johnson makes an excellent point about the implicit assumption that kidnapped Africans lacked skills — as well as literacy, culture, religion, etc. — a wrong assumption we have inherited from the enslavers’ justifications of their own brutality (as biographers of Phillis Wheatley now note, perhaps the reason she “achieved” literacy in English so quickly after being enslaved in Boston was because she was already literate when stolen from her family and home).   

When I was in graduate school many years ago, I came across a very clever and snarky cultural critic who noted that although American corporations were happy to use happy slave stereotypes of “Aunt Jemima” to sell pancake mix and “Uncle Ben” to sell rice, no corporation had used Nat Turner to sell hunting knives.  This reminds us to consider which “skills” the Florida curriculum intends to highlight.  Enslaved people planned and executed armed insurrections throughout the period of legal slavery.  What a skill set THAT took! Can we anticipate the Social Studies curriculum that will cover it? 

-Lois

Lois Leveen, PhD
Portland OR 97214
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Latest article:  Imperfect Justice in the Imperfect Archive: Uncovering Extrajudicial Black Resistance in Richmond’s Civil War Court Records <https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2023/02/imperfect-justice-in-the-imperfect-archive-uncovering-extrajudicial-black-resistance-in-richmonds-civil-war-court-records/ <https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2023/02/imperfect-justice-in-the-imperfect-archive-uncovering-extrajudicial-black-resistance-in-richmonds-civil-war-court-records/>>


> On Aug 15, 2023, at 8:24 AM, Johnson, Kirk N. <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> 
> I think there's another layer of racism/bigotry embedded in the "enslaved persons acquired valuable skills in slavery" discourse that gets overlooked (understandably, given the callousness of the sentiment)--the implicit assumption that back in Africa, those skills were unattainable. I'd wager that a lot of the people making these comments are quite ignorant of how widespread metalworking was in West African societies, for example.
> 



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