...brings to mind, with a smile, what we discussed here a few months  
ago about how Southerners will often lay on the drawl and the dumb  
act for the 'benefit' of visiting northern brethren. I once read an  
account by a surviving Kamikaze pilot, he spoke of how they would get  
back at especially obnoxious officers by doing things like rubbing  
their dandruff into the officers' rice before delivering it to their  
table. And there is the well-known "spitting into a customer's food."  
People have ways of practicing subterfuge and sabotage to get back at  
those who they feel are treating them unjustly. I suppose this  
interviewing would be doubly hard for a slave who, in his/her youth,  
lived a life where they had been taught to please others, it kept  
their lives as pleasant as they could be by doing this; it no doubt  
became second-nature after awhile, and was probably still very much a  
factor in these slave interviews. As you say, the truth probably lies  
in between the rosy and the propaganda accounts.

Nancy

-------
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.

--Daniel Boone



On Mar 1, 2007, at 7:38 AM, Kevin Joel Berland wrote:

> Please understand that the WPA slavery interviews do not exist in a  
> vacuum.
> There are plenty of earlier accounts of slavery that clearly and  
> explicitly
> establish the cruelty and dehumanization of the institution.  That  
> there were
> exceptions, situations in which slaves lived in relative comfort,  
> is certain.
> This does not in any way diminish the general trend.  Read the four  
> slave
> narratives collected in paperback by Professor Gates, for  
> instance.  In
> Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs you can readily see that the
> circumstances experienced by slaves in different households  
> varied.  That some
> slaves were treated humanely (or less inhumanely) does not alter  
> the over-all
> picture: slavery was cruel and dehumanizing.  What's more, as  
> Douglass points
> out, slavery dehumanized the slaveholder as well.
>
> The shortcomings of the WPA interviews are summarized in the  
> articles linked in
> an earlier post and in earlier discussions by (if I may) Juretta  
> and my
> esteemed co-Kevin, and others.  I would add that it might be useful  
> to consider
> the circumstances of the interviews in light of now recognized  
> standards of
> testing and interviewing.  There is always an effect on answers  
> caused by the
> testing/interviewing environment.  Anthropologists and ethnologists  
> have long
> struggled with a problem attendant upon observing cultures: one can  
> never be
> certain how much behavior and talk are influenced by the presence  
> of an
> observer (this is akin to the Heisenberg effect).  Sociologists,  
> too, are wary
> of this problem, and so they struggle to make interview questions and
> environments as neutral as possible.  It is easy to see how leading  
> questions,
> encouragement, and the expectations of the interviewee may  
> condition the
> responses.  The WPA interviewers were for the most part not  
> professionals, and
> even for those who were the standards of interviewing were not  
> nearly as
> careful as they are now (for the most part).  It is important to  
> recognize that
> the WPA interviews, though they contain much of value, are not  
> objective
> evidence.  (In the interest of fairness, it should be emphasized  
> that the great
> published slave narratives are polemical, created to move white  
> readers to
> oppose slavery, and thus they cannot be considered objective  
> evidence, either,
> without acknowledging the conditions under which they were created).
>
> These comments are meant to address the implicit suggestion that  
> genuine voices
> of ex-slaves are being silenced by those in authority who do not  
> agree with
> what the ex-slaves say about the conditions of slavery.  This is  
> not the case.
>
>
> Cheers -- KJB (the other Kevin)
>
> On Thu, 01 Mar 2007 07:02:50 -0500  Discussion of research and  
> writing about
> Virginia history
> <[log in to unmask]><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>
>> Has anyone done an analysis of the positive recollections versus the
>> negative recollections in these narratives?  I would also be  
>> curious what
> that
>> would
>> disclose.  Perhaps it would indicate something that no one wants  to
>> admit....that slavery in fact was not all that dehumanizing or  
>> cruel as far
> as
>> the
>> actual participants were concerned.
>>
>> I assume these are first hand narratives with actual  former  
>> slaves.  I think
>> it is interesting that some of you want to  argue with the first hand
>> recollections of the actual participants in slavery as  to whether  
>> they knew
>> what
>> they were talking about in describing their actual  experience.
>>
>>
>> JD South
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