III. Shirley On The James
I came to Virginia determined to see a few things and finish a few things. I have spoken of what I needed to see--plantations, battlefields, memorials. But the finishing belonged to Edmund Morgan's landmark study of the origins of slavery in Virginia, American Slavery, American Freedom. This is a hard book, and I'd actually put it down until a few commenters demanded that I finish. I managed this feat on my second day down South, a warm Friday afternoon, after viewing primary evidence.
Shirley Plantation on the James is majestic. All the ancient detail--the smokehouse, the outdoor kitchen, the flying staircase--is there. Until you stand in front the big house, staring out at the approaching main path of gravel and dirt, until you observe the trees on each side standing green guard, until you note that, though the path connects to a bigger path, it seems to disappear into nothing, devoured by the woods, you really have no sense of the magic inherent in a Southern Road. Back home, a road gets from Jamaica to East New York. But in this deeper home of mine, from the aspect of the slave, a Road is a star-ship, a tesseract from half-man to man.
I came, again, with my gaggle of family. Pops, my brother Damani, and sister Kris were in meetings all morning. So I piled a pack of nephews into the minivan, qued up Thriller on the Ipod, and led a two-car caravan up I-64. Once there, I gave a modified "don't embarrass me in front of white folks" speech, ("Don't disgrace your ancestors.") My nephew Christian (left with the Nike cap) had rode with his mother (my sister Kelly) and father. He walked over, having missed the lecture, and made a joke. "Come on Christian," said one of the kids " This is serious!"
Inside we got the grand-tour and at every stop the kids riddled our guide with questions. I had that love-hate thing again--deep admiration for the family who'd preserved the place for 11 generations, and the heir who still lived in the house. And then anger for the slaves, and anger for the Native Americans.
That afternoon, I fell asleep reading Morgan, then woke up and finished the book. What follows is dirty. Our history buffs, I am sure, will jump in and make corrections. As always, I'm counting on it.
Anyway, Morgan talks about Virginia being settled by men who'd often import servants. The basic deal was, I, the planter, pay for your transport from England, and you agree to work my tobacco fields for, say, five years. It was a decent business, in large measure because the servants weren't expected to live for very long.
But Virginia was too successful. Tobacco became big business. The people mastered the land. The mortality rate plunged, and servants began, not only out-living their contracts, but snatching up land and becoming planters themselves. Tobacco flooded the market, the price dropped, and the old planters were pissed. They fought back by passing laws to extend the contracts. They tried to raise the price of land. They tried to relegate when, and how much, tobacco could be sold. All met with moderate success, but what they really needed was a life-bonded labor force permanently barred from competition. With that in hand, they could cut the cost of business, and assure any Virginian the right to compete.
You know what this is. Slave-trading skyrocketed, and the dream of American White Supremacy--the dream of American White Godhood--was born. This is what the Confederates mean when they talk about preserving a way of life. The point isn't slavery. The point is the right of all men, however narrowly defined, to have a shot at divinity.
What followed, by Morgan's explaining, broke my heart. To assure a life-bonded workforce, sex between whites and blacks had to be effectively outlawed. When black people and white people met in the colonies, they commenced to do what people do--namely, fuck like jack-rabbits. There was prejudice, but not a deeply-held sense that one's skin-color necessarily marked you as the God-ordained lesser. Virginia's lawmakers put a stop to this--passing anti-sex laws, and harshly punishing those violators (especially white women.) There's actually a scene in the book where they try to pass one of these laws, and white people in Norfolk petition them to stop. The petition ultimately fails.
It's hard to read these accounts--especially of couples parted by the state, of white petitioners saying "Please, don't do this."--and not be struck by their unnatural aspect of state-mandated racism. It's even harder to not be struck by the burden this put on generations of white America. One loses a portion of their humanity, even as they strip it from someone else.
And yet you can't spend time in Virginia and not note how different things are today. Whites and blacks in the South have always been culturally close, and it's really in evidence these days. I felt less distance between me and white Virginians, then between me and the white people I see in here in New York every day. And there are black people everywhere--at least in the Richmond area--eating at the same restaurants, working the same service jobs, partying at the same cheesy resorts.
I don't say this to note the obvious, but to ask a deeper question. Did the dream of White Supremacy really die? And was it ever really "White" to begin with? Or is it expanding to include more people, to exploit other people, to better exploit other resources?
My first night in Williamsburg, we went to Wal-Mart. We don't have Wal-Mart in New York, and though I've read about, and even written about, Wal-Mart, it is humbling to see a "store" where you can buy groceries and tires, rifles and lotion. It was more than a store. You could get a massage and a facial. There was a park bench, and kids running everywhere. And good God, it was all so cheap.
There's something about our country in there, something bone-deep, harking back to the Originals. Something about mini-mansions and hamburgers on demand, something about standardized eateries with playgrounds, music when you want it, cars built on military technology. And then this--video gamers shit-talking each other across the broad American expanse, with no concern of what race. One wonders whether the Civil Rights pioneers defeated white supremacy, or if technology did it for them. One wonders whether white supremacy is in the process of cutting its losses and then getting bigger. We have mastered the land for all, and one senses that the Dream is now so powerful, so potent, so technological innovative that it can be extended to the very people it was built upon--hence Baldwin's integration into the burning house.
There's always a price, no? I am not an economist or a scientist. Still, I have garnered, in my 33 years, some basic understanding of the laws of nature. Someone, somewhere is paying for these 99 cent cheeseburgers. If not the people, then the land we've enslaved. I'm tempted to recoil in horror at the thought. And then I wonder how it could go any other way. And then I know the stupid uselessness of all my anger. And then I come to understand religion and its hold on humanity. None of us are clean. No matter which part of Shirley you're from.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
There's a Wal-Mart just on the other side of the Queens - Long Island boundary, actually. I think that's the Wal-Mart where the stampede happened last Christmas.
But as to the development of slavery in Virginia, when does the book say the sky-rocketing happened? Or, how long after 1619 did this occur?
Yes, it is located in Green Acres Mall in Nassau County. I was there this past Saturday. Not a fun experience -- too many people, pushing and pulling, to get at those cheap items.
Damn, man. That's some pretty amazing essaying.
I came here to say exactly that.
This has been my favorite post so far, just wanted to say that. I'll have to read this over a couple times before I come back with more substance though. But again, this was a great read.
The banning of interracial sex to protect the business interests of the slaveholders reminds me of how the Catholic church banned priests from marrying for financial reasons as well. If a priest was married, the land he lived on (the church) would pass to his heirs. If he were single, the Catholic church would retain the assets.
You've put me in mind of The Great Gatsby. As a cultural whole America has adopted a spirit of carelessness that we can ill-afford in the long run. The very newness of so much of our country and culture, the suburbs and city centers,fast food and our car culture, they all promote an encapsulating amnesia that makes us forget the bones our present was built upon. I think it's harder to forget in a place like England, France or Japan, with barrows on the horizon at Stonhenge, Roman aqueducts and cathedrals to Light, and torii gates and temples on the hillsides. For most of us it's much harder to visit the Snake Mounds in Ohio or Cahokia and feel that same historical connection with the land. I'm glad you're making the connection here. It's so important to the present that we don't lose sight of what was or how things came to be.
A great read is "Nature's Metropolis" by William Cronin if you haven't come across it yet. It's a study of Chicago, told through the fate of 3 commodities in the 19th century: wheat, meat, and timber. It really helped me understand what the commodification of things means and the practical effects of economies of scale. A great "how did we start to get there" book for the questions you are raising in this post.
I think there's definitely something to what you're saying in that first paragraph.
Not to be too pedantic, but it's William Cronon. Sorry about that, its just I think Cronon is one of the most important historians of the American West today. The man wrote the award-winning "Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England" while still in graduate school. That's damn impressive.
As for the evolution of white supremacy and white ideology (which was very different in the US vs. Latin America), I would look at Stanley Elkins' "Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life." While the book is quite dated (originally published in 1959) and therefore occasionally uses infuriating terminology and assumptions, it's a great exploration of the evolution of the "peculiar institution" in the US and why it took on the role that it did.
Good catch, thanks. Bill certainly deserves to have his last name spelled correctly. He's earned that much!
Wal-Mart's an interesting phenomenon. Sam Walton's a little hard to take for my Yankee tastes, but credit where credit is due for their solar panels.
I was going to mention Cronon -- IIRC Changes in the Land was written in graduate school _alongside his dissertation_.
Nature's Metropolis was brilliant... though "Chicago and the Great West" makes for a very different window to examine American History than "Norfolk and the Tidewater" or "River of Empire: New Orleans and the Mississippi watershed." Unfortunate, because it's a little more difficult to make the connection between the environmental history and the history of race and racism.
White, "Your Misfortune and None of My Own" probably hits that point better, as does Donald Worster "RiverS of Empire."
Re: paragraph 1.
To riff off of Battlestar Galactica, who ripped off of GW Bush (they were both talking about being the President): being American means never having to say you're sorry. (They said "explain yourself." But it's the same thing.)
THAT's American exceptionalism, the way it plays out in our national speech. Sure, there's a liberalized, reconstructed version that talks about national shame and expiation (The line Pres. Obama uses on the Constitution's founding original sin, the whole string of interpretation that says America's moral history runs from slavery through the Civil War through Lincoln and straight to MLK, with Civil Rights for African Americans echoed each time by a growing women's movement), but the knee-jerk American Dream is precisely not about where you came from, but about how this is a country where you're allowed to forget your past and be something new. It's powerfully liberating, if you're a former European serf in the 19th century, or the right kind of someone born in poverty right here and dreaming of building something new. But there's a reason so much of this country's literature finds the cracks in that story: just because you say your past isn't there, doesn't mean it won't come back and bite you. The clean slate is an illusion, and in so many cases it's a crime against conscience as well as against history. The past came back and bit Gatsby; it bit Huck Finn; it bit the South over and over and over; it bit every Faulkner character; it bit the Democratic Party mid-century (and mid-19th century!); it bit LA and Hollywood to the core, in their own way; I hope desperately that it doesn't bite us in the way you're fearing in this post. TNC, you're more right than you even let on: none of us can get out of our own damn skin.
"Did the dream of White Supremacy really die? And was it ever really "White" to begin with? "
I strongly suggest you Google "Buchanan, Pat" for an resounding answer to both of these questions - No! and Yes!
I'm a native (and white) Virginian who's seen the changes you talk about in that first paragraph. The questions in the second paragraph aren't ones I've considered though. Those two paragraphs could be the introduction for a very good book. If you're looking for another project...
"I felt less distance between me and white Virginians, then between me and the white people I see in here in New York every day".
This really struck me. i have mentioned before how seperate the races live here in Pittsburgh, and it occured to me that you, TNC, and some of the other commenters here are the only black people that I really know-- whose opinions I hear, and who respond to my ideas. The few interactions i have with blacks at work are pleasant, but at no time do we sit down, have a good discussion, and talk about the important issues of the world. i feel really sorry for myself and my kids in this respect, as i don't see this changing any time soon.
(Let me clarify-- there is no open hostility between blacks and white here. More like everyone has decided to go to their own corners and do their own thing.
I remember at a potluck at an office I used to work at, one of the black guys brought tuna salad. This was something I could never have imagined in my life. When I commented on it, all the black folks looked at me like I had 2 heads. "But you _always_ have tuna salad at a party!" )
Great essay Ta-Nehisi. You’ve really hit on something re: Wal-Mart. Specifically, the baked-in idea that being American means not having to live by the usual laws of physics, nature or history. not exactly a sustainable business model.
Yes, yes, there is something to it...
Good stuff on Wal-Mart, "someone, somewhere is paying..."
That is pretty much what goes through my mind every time I walk into one of the "big box" stores that are rammed full of everything you can imagine. Who buys this stuff? How do they sell it all? And where do people store it?
It all spawns larger homes with larger closets, rented storage units, flea markets and garage sales.
And for this we destroy the land and the water, we exploit third world labor markets, we put our own people out of work, and we torture animals.
When I walk into a big box store, and see how cheap the goods are compared to a mom-and-pop, I think less about how people store their 36-pack of paper towels (as a New Yorker, such storage options are beyond my capacity for imagination), and more about how little the manufacturer's employees must have been paid in order for the company to make a profit at such a low cost. Someone, somewhere is paying--by not getting paid.
When that Huffy bike is inexplicably selling for $80 (or any product that seems to sell at a loss), the parties paying are usually the local government, and the workers who produced it.
Huffy's plant in Ohio closed this past decade, after Wal-Mart used their market share to put them in a corner and demand they sell bikes at a cost that they could only afford if the plant was relocated to China. They did that. The Ohio workers stop being "paid," and so did Huffy in a few ways (they actually gave up intellectual rights to some designs by moving overseas and also having competitors manufacture their bikes to meet Wal-Mart delivery demands/deadlines.)
The local govt in Ohio carried the burden for those newly unemployed workers (unemployment, medicaid, social services, etc.) Realistically, tax dollars subsidize Wal-Mart's low prices this way. It is the natural course of business, but with Wal-Mart's market share, they can irregularly jar a community by forcing an entire business to relocate at the drop of a hat.
Tax payers also subsidize Wal-Mart with all the ridiculous tax breaks, free infrastructure, etc. their stores get. We also cover their healthcare costs, because most of their workers qualify for public assistance (and Wal-Mart educates them on how to collect it.
It's a myth that WM's prices are just market economics embodied. Their market share let's them bully suppliers into selling at a loss sometimes, and they collect tons of subsidies. If they have a net negative effect on wages.. then the low prices are a temporary illusion, because they're dropping slower than your buying power is.
You are reminding me of that new Toni Morrison book where she explores the beginnings of slavery and the label "white". And the time before a distinction was made between indentured servants. I need to read that. You also remind me of how much I dislike Williamsburg. It creeps me out. I applaud you because at least you are puruing truth. The folks I know go down there for the cheap time-shares.
An excellent post. Morgan's book is one of the main reasons why I think Bacon's Rebellion needs to be taught in every schoolroom in America - because those indentured whites and enslaved blacks, and freemen of both colors, who did the same kind of work sometimes side by side, who liked to get drunk together, who would run away from abusive masters together, and who slept together came within an inch of overthrowing the planter aristocracy.
And so much of what comes after, that artificial creation of supremacy, is all about preventing Bacon's Rebellion from ever happening again. And you see it again and again throughout southern history - an enormous amount of the political violence directed against Southern Republicans during Reconstruction was aimed at obliterating an institution where blacks would vote for white men and where whites would vote for black men, where whites and blacks would go to the same meetings and conventions (even if they wouldn't socialize together or bring the family); one of the most harrowing books I ever read was Letwin's The Challenge of Interracial Unionism (another candidate for your book list), which shows generation after generation these poor whites and poor blacks trying to grope through the darkness and find some way to better their condition and each time (with the Greenbackers, the Populists, the Knights of Labor, the IWW, the UMW) getting slapped down by the hand of white supremacy.
Also, I would second Cronin's Metrpolis - one of the most important books on how the market was constructed in America.
This is a really thought-provoking point: "White supremacy as capitalist conspiracy." However, it strikes me as too easy. A lot of poor white people were receptive to the idea. TNC has described them as just being happy to be superior to somebody, regardless of their material standing.
It reminds me of Michael Kazin's takedown of Howard Zinn in Dissent.
"Howard Zinn's History Lessons"
http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=385
Well yeah. I'm not saying it's just a conspiracy - there was certainly racism, etc. before Bacon's Rebellion, and poor whites made the choice to buy into it. However, I think it would have been a lot harder to establish as comprehensive a slave society without a powerful class pushing the process along.
I think TNC's point is quite right - and that both can be true at the same time as Schloss1 notes.
P.S. I just read about Bacon's Rebellion on Wikipedia. It's the uplifting story of poor whites and poor blacks united in a cause ... to slaughter innocent Native Americans. Jeez, even the "good" stories are brutal!
Reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.
Yep. It's a hell of a story, and it shows how complex the frontier was.
Nice post. I always get that icky feeling on the few occasions I'm brought (against my will) to a Wal-Mart. Now I see how it's a link on the plantation's same chain of exploitation. I think you could go even further and say that this insidious desire to have (for cheap) extends deeply into our culture. You see it in New York sometimes, but it's most evident in the suburbs, where there's still all this land to pave over and build superstores of every kind. It's capitalism spiked with New World colonialist drive--a very potent combo.
On another note, what was the reaction of your son and nephews to Shirley? Kids make some of the most honest and stunning statements sometimes, so just wondering if there was some wise nugget to share.
great post; lots to think about and chew over.
but i felt like i got lost about here:
"I don't say this to note the obvious, but to ask a deeper question. Did the dream of White Supremacy really die? And was it ever really "White" to begin with? Or is it expanding to include more people, to exploit other people, to better exploit other resources?"
on first reading, i couldn't make anything of this or what followed. on fourth reading, i am inclined to understand it the way taliesin does: you are coming to think that the enslavement of blacks by whites is just part of a larger human tendency to strive for the most desirable lifestyle for oneself by exploiting whatever resources it takes to secure it. humans strove for human supremacy before whites ever strove for white supremacy.
that's why the antebellum striving for planter's divinity is similar to the current striving for cheaper cheeseburgers, and why (on the other hand) the exploitation of blacks is similar to the exploitation of nature.
is that sorta right?
because if so, then i want to say:
the similarities are there, no doubt, but the differences are bigger.
when i chop down a tree to build a fire, i'm engaging in exploitation for the sake of my comforts. and when i beat my slave to stoke the furnace, i'm engaging in exploitation for the sake of my comforts.
you're probably right that there's something deep in human beings that it always going to engage in exploitation for the sake of comfort. you may even be right that there's something like a human right to do it.
but dammit, there's a difference between exploiting trees and exploiting human beings.
and there's no human right to exploit other humans.
a line has been crossed when people go from exploiting trees to exploiting people. i don't know where it is--some people will tell you it got crossed before the cheeseburger, and some will say even before the cheese--but i know that it's been crossed by the time we exploit other humans.
and there's nothing inevitable, natural, or sacred about humans exploiting humans.
it's not that you don't know this stuff, obviously. i think maybe you are just exploring the human condition and the psychology of the exploiter, which is a worthwhile thing to do. and from within that psychology, my slaves are no different from my trees; just more property for me to use. but that's exactly why that psychology is pathological and deceived; it treats things as similar that are fundamentally different.
there are similarities, no doubt, and there are things to be learned by dwelling on the similarities. but the differences are bigger. and any ecological perspective that denies that the differences are bigger--any ecological perspective that makes exploiting trees as great a sin as exploiting humans--has gone several steps too far to keep my allegiance.
I think the connection becomes clearer if you think of this essay being titled "The Old Dominion."
And Wal-Mart isn't just about trees; it's about foreign sweatshops and nuked downtowns. We need those trees, though.
Yes, this. Humans are still being exploited. They're just being exploited on the other side of the world, where we can't see them. And there are lots of humans being exploited in the domestic agriculture industry, from chicken butchers working long hours without breaks while elbow deep in entrails, to immigrant laborers picking produce up and down the Central Valley. For that matter, WalMart itself is not exactly known for enlightened management practices. All of which is largely invisible to urban/suburban consumers.
It's the desire for an underclass.
Or the fear of being in one?
So White Supremacy didn't exist until Virginia? Really? I think "born" is too imprecise. This makes me wonder about the intellectual history of white supremacy. What's the exact timeline here? I'm reminded of White Man's Burden and Manifest Destiny. But when did it occur to people that, "Hey, it's OK to enslave these people. They're inferior. They're not really human."
To what extent are we living with that legacy, and to what extent are people just viscerally hostile to the Other? I think the ideas follow the feelings.
Did anyone see "Prom Night in Mississippi" on HBO? The parents who want to preserve the white prom refuse to be filmed making their arguments. They know they're backwards and wrong, that there's no rational justification for their stance, but they do it anyway. At least that's progress!
Remember, he is talking about "American White Supremacy" and "American White Godhood" - the first word in there is as important as the rest. This is set in the 17th century, and we are talking about within 50 years or so of the first English settlements on North America. So, in that context, I think "born" is a perfectly acceptable word.
Did racism exist before Virginia? Of course. But White Man's Burden and Manifest Destiny are a century later than this plantation.
I think the thing that sickens me in contemplating American Slavery/American Freedom is how damn intentional it was. These elite planters knew exactly what they were doing. I guess I always wanted to think of slavery and white supremacy and all of this crap as being something that evolved accidentally because people never really thought about the logical conclusions of their actions.
Thank you the reply.
It's just amazing to me that the elite planters' scheme to separate whites and blacks was so effective that it's taken root for over 300 years. Did they create it out of whole cloth? Was it like a Hollywood pitch meeting? I guess I have to read the book.
I suppose if 45% of people think Obama's health plan calls for death panels, and that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, anything's possible.
What Curtis said. They did not create it out of wholecloth--the notions were out there. But as Curtis said the American part is as important as what follows.
Schloss1, you might like Lies My Teacher Told Me. History doesn't just move in a straight line-- it goes forward and backward and sideways, and suddenly something's status quo that's totally new. And again, we're talking about the American variation on some very old ideas.
of course it was intentional. my reading of history leads me to think that all centers of power were built upon slave labor, in one form or another; these men were following a blueprint older than even their 'civilizations'. human tendencies towards domination and subjugation are frighteningly fluid, not manifesting in one tribe or geography or ideology. we are always striving to be dry and warm and clean and our justifications for denying others the spoils we seek are often as tired as the minds offering them. it's hard to stroke your better nature when the lesser is raging about how hungry and sore and scared you are.
slavery was not created by whites or blacks, the English or the Egyptians...I can't even be sure it was created, although it is scary to think that it continues to evolve with us even now. whatever the justifications- economic, divine, perceived genetic differences- the song remains the same: we do it to ourselves. and that's why it really hurts.
Sadly, I think that idea has been around, among all races and cultures, since day dot.
I think the idea of "white supremacy" began in The Crusades, because, up 'til then, there hadn't been any kind of mass exposure to an ethnically different group of people for whites to feel superior to. And, in this case, the "superiority" was rooted in a feeling of "inferiority" when whites encountered Moors and Arabs who were in so many ways - science, technology, literacy - clearly their superiors.
The notion of whiteness and Christianity and destiny all got mixed up in a potion that we're still trying to sweat out of our systems today.
Typically, I wouldn't reply to myself, but, the second I pushed the "send" button I could see that in terms of holes-filled-with-ness, I'd just penned a colander.
So, I still think the strain of "white supremacy" under discussion had its origins in the Crusades, which represented the first time that whites from Western Europe, now united across linguistic and geographic barriers by a common religion, confronted non-whites with a different and more sophisticated culture.
(This is still full of holes, but it is now a little less egregious.)
I'm going to second this and roll it ahead 400 years to the 1400s.
Today, Spaniards, across what we here in the US think of as a broad range of ethnicities, use the phrase 'No seas tan Moro' (don't be such a Moor) to express the concept, Hey, you're being stupid.
I looked back at it in literary use, because I'm that kind of geek, and this insult dates to the period in which a diverse group of Christian fiefdoms banded together to expel a Muslim occupier and in so doing invented Spain.
Still in use today and used by all kinds of people with Spanish national identity--even those who are themselves ethnically connected to the Muslims not the Castilians. And no Spaniard considers this a racial slur. It's an insider-outsider thing.
Point being, white supremacy is a specific version of a universal human urge: This notion that we find out who 'we' are--and explain why our better-off position is a just one--by standing on 'their' necks.
Whiteness was invented by Crusaders in Jerusalem and Valencia, brought to London and exported to this continent for economic exploitation's sake. Whiteness in our American version is either/or because of the plantation; in Brasil, class determines color and I don't know why. Someone who knows, pitch in.
Another thought about this human tendency: If you haven't dug into '1491' and its explanations of why 'Indians' responded to 'Europeans' as they did, each fitting the other into his existing frame of reference, it's powerful.
Really nice stuff man, moving. I wasn't ready to be moved at the start of a work day, but here I am.
"Don't disgrace your ancestors" ... I'm reminded of something I heard from a friend recently -- she was headed for the Mississippi delta for a reporting project, and was likely to be the first white person many of the people she encountered would have interacted with. She found it interesting that more than one person gave "be a credit to your race" advice before she left California.
Another excellent, thoughtful post, TNC. There will be more on the Virginia trip, yes?
"she was headed for the Mississippi delta for a reporting project, and was likely to be the first white person many of the people she encountered would have interacted with..."
Huh? With all due respect, it sounds like the folks dispensing advice have some odd ideas about the denizens of the Delta. It's Mississippi- not the Amazon.
I'm not saying they wouldn't have *seen* a white person -- but the places she went were not places white folks usually went. As she traveled, people knew she was coming and called their neighbors out to see her when she arrived.
White visitors to Shirley (and other plantations) often get the "owah *suhvants* were just lahk they wuh family heah in Vuginyuh" spiel.
Fat freaking chance.
I think the irony there is on the word "lahk." Staggeringly often, the "suhvants" WERE just slightly browner children/siblings/cousins, though not openly acknowledged as such.
When I went to Monticello the difference between the 'main' tour of the house and the 'plantation life' tour-- which talked quite explicitly about slavery-- was pretty obvious.
That was a great turn of phrase, Ta-Nehisi -- like something out of a Stephen Crane poem.
As for the end of your essay, you don't need to be an economist to realize that economics isn't zero-sum -- in fact, it's usually the opposite. Yeah, Henry Ford got ridiculously rich by figuring out how to make cars a product that the vast middle class could afford instead of just a few rich people. But he didn't make middle class people poorer in the process -- he made lots of them much better off, by giving them good-paying jobs (and, of course, cars they can afford).
Similarly, when someone buys your book at Barnes & Noble, you haven't taken money out of their pockets or exploited them -- you've given them something of value for their money, and in the process helped support jobs for publishers, bookstore cashiers, guys who work in the pulp and printing business, etc., etc. It's not zero sum. It's the opposite. You created value with your book and you made a lot of people better off.
How's it feel to be a capitalist?
Oh, and BTW: Not all Wal-Marts are like the one you visited. The one nearest me, in Saddle Brook, NJ, is a zoo. No facials to be had there. We never go there anymore, after one horrible visit.
Kudos to this comment. Wal-mart is not perfect, but so many people have a knee-jerk negative reaction to it, when it actually creates a lot of jobs and helps a lot of people. Look at the elderly/ mentally handicapped people they employ as greeters- would those people seriously be able to find jobs anywhere else? Maybe in some places, but not in my town. I worked at Legal Aid a few years ago (legal services for the poverty population) and my clients all knew that a job at wal-mart was a plum deal, and a ticket off of welfare. It's a behemoth company and therefore everything it does has a huge impact, either positive or negative, and that means it's good for people to keep a close eye on its policies. That said, I don't think it's a given that the 99 cent hamburger, per se, is a bad thing.
Meh, it's not meant to be a knee-jerk negative response. I'd hope that the ambiguity of a 99 cent hamburger comes through in this post. This isn't supposed to be a polemic against Wal-Mart.
Thank you for pointing this out. I grew up in Arkansas, the home of Wal-Mart, and although they are known for some shady practices, their absence would be much worse for the communities they serve. Their wages are usually significantly better than other rural, universally praised "Mom & Pop" stores, and they have a much better selection of products.
I would also like to point out that, because of the US economic downturn, many Chinese workers in sweatshops were laid off and had to go back to their rural farms. They could no longer send remittances to their parents and other relatives and could no longer even dream of the possibility of climbing the Chinese Tiger onto a good life for their potential descendants in Shanghai. Sure, forced labor is still a major problem in China, but globalization is doing a good job of eradicating poverty there. It is also giving the Chinese many tools in order to lead their own social movements...like the web and text messaging. Overall, the exploitation of workers in China is a good thing.
Having worked in one of the largest factories producing electronics in China for export to the west, I find it much harder to simply take the negative aspects and balance them against the positive outcomes of cheap manufacturing in China. The new recruits arrived by their hundreds every day, lined up outside my office window with their belongings bound up in twine, or carried in large shopping bags. Most of them looked about 17-18, and when asked many would tell you that this was their first trip away from home. They went through a process of being issued with colour-coded uniforms indicating the department they worked in, and for the first few weeks were put through military-style drill to build team spirit and make them more obedient. Company accomodation consisted of tightly-packed bunks and lockers, sleeping dozens to a room. They moved out as soon as they could. They worked long hours, for little pay, and were strictly punished for minor infractions.
That said, they kept coming, and most were able to save enough to send money home to support their families. Many learned new skills, gained promotions, or moved to other companies.
Really fascinating writing. I'm struck by the fact that there really is something much deeper and longer lasting to the wounds that slavery inflicted on this nation. In some ways reading you is frustrating because it feels like the stories one hears about ethnic tension in the former Yugoslavia. People in America can't comprehend how people still hold grudges about who killed who 800 years ago. You are giving me some insight into the phenomenon.
I have always thought that what makes America unique is our ability to put the past behind us an move on. Almost no one holds any resentment towards the Japanese any longer for attacking Pearl Harbor. Reading posts like this one are a struggle for me because it seems there is something fundamentally different about the African-American experience in this country.
Well, bear in mind that Ta-Nehisi has been immersing himself deep in the study of slavery and the Civil War. The attack on Pear Harbor -- a naval base on, essentially, an American colony in the middle of the Pacific -- isn't an apposite comparison. A better example might be to consider the grandson of a survivor of the Bataan death march, or the grandson of a survivor of the Rape of Nanking. If such a person immersed himself in the details of those atrocities, the past might resonate with him in a similar way as it does with Ta-Nehisi.
I'm just glad you used the word "apposite".
If such a person immersed himself in the details of those atrocities, the past might resonate with him in a similar way as it does with Ta-Nehisi.
My great-great grandparents were slaves. For me, slavery isn't just a history lesson--it's part of my family tree. I think this is what many fail to understand (or empathize with) when it comes to African-Americans: slavery was personal. I have a picture of my great-great-great grandmother Martha who was a slave. I don't have to immerse myself in the study of slavery in order for it to resonate with me. All I have to do is look at her picture and wonder about her life, and the lives of her children and grandchildren. Slavery had a very big hand in making my family today the way it is.
This excellent essay creates a bridge between what many Americans would like African-Americans to "just get over" and the reasons why we can't and shouldn't. "Getting over it" would mean denying our history--and the lessons that can be learned from it by ALL Americans.
Yes, you've said it all in this sentence. Compared to other racial/ethnic groups in America, the African-American experience IS extremely different. (Of course, it goes without saying that every individual group's history is unique, etc., etc.)
In some ways, The "wounds that slavery inflicted on this nation" are still raw for blacks -- and whites.
It is hard for me (an American born black woman) to forget about the impact that slavery had on black people (or to "put the past behind...and move on" as you say) when, in fact, in many ways, we are still feeling that impact. Discrimination, the high rate of black poverty, and the wide gaps that exist between blacks and whites in wealth and education (among other social ills) are largely the result of the legacy of slavery, disenfranchisement and segregation.
While I have not immersed myself in the study of slavery like TNC (as Davein mentions below), I know my history. It is a history that fascinates, repeals, angers and empowers me. And a history that I will never let myself forget.
Our past explains who (and what) we are today.
I can't move on, especially since the country itself has not truly moved on.
I have always thought that what makes America unique is our ability to put the past behind us an move on.
I'm not sure what "America" you're talking about, considering Woodstock retrospectives, people still complaining about who 'lost' Vietnam, and the whole cult around the "lost Southern dream" this blog has been talking about for months.
I have always thought that what makes America unique is our ability to put the past behind us an move on. Almost no one holds any resentment towards the Japanese any longer for attacking Pearl Harbor.
Have you met any Japanese Americans, especially those whose parents, grand parents, and great grandparents who were denied their rights, interned, and in some cases deported as a result of the U.S' reaction to Pearl Harbor? There are definitely some understandable feelings of bitterness and betrayal there, and while I think redress and acknowledgment have helped somewhat, I think that sense of injustice is still there.
Once indentured whites and black slaves managed to get free, they still had lots of sex, laws or no. Sex between white former indentured servants and free blacks (and Native Americans, and gypsy indentured servants, and Turkish settlers) in southern Appalachia was one of the major origins of the Melungeons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melungeons
Incidentally,
If you guys are interested in a fact-based film about the south, see if you can find this one, Conrack. I stumbled upon it late at night a few months ago, and got sucked into it. It's based on the novelist Pat Conroy's memoir of working as a teacher on an island off the coast of South Carolina, where a community of poor blacks has lived for generations, and some of them have never even been to the mainland. "Conrack" was the islanders mispronunciation of Conroy's name.
Conroy's memoir ("The Water is Wide") was actually the first book my freshman intro to education professor assigned. Not only is it an interesting look at the South, it is also a rather scathing indictment of the structure of public education in the US. Good on both counts
I didn't read the book, but I think your point about public education is a little too broad to accurately characterize the themes dramatized in the movie. The movie's interesting, though, in that it shows (in broad strokes) the same debates about educating poor black students have been going on for decades -- e.g., discipline versus engagement, etc. Few advocate the corporal punishment dished out back then, but Conroy tried to teach the kids by entertaining them (with movies, games, etc.) and engaging them, and the powers that be in the school system -- whether the black woman who was his local boss, or the white bureaucrat on the mainland -- focused on discipline. Take the belts away, and those characters are closer to the KIPP schools than Conroy's approach was.
There's also the element of available talent, which, coincidentally, ties in with my comment about Ford up-thread. Before Ford introduced the assembly line, cars were made by, essentially, craftsmen or artists. Highly talented people. Talented people in any field are generally rare. Conroy's craftsman's approach to teaching may have been effective because he was so talented, but it may not be easily replicable for an average teacher. Assembly lines have their faults, but one advantage of them is that they enable mass production by a lot of average people, which is important when there aren't enough talented people.
I'm reminded of a great line from Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny, about how the Navy was "a system designed by geniuses to be run by idiots". So the occasional genius Navy officer chafed against the regs, but those regs and systems were set up because the organization was never going to be run by all geniuses.
I'd forgotten that line from The Caine Mutiny. That one has wide application.
"Whites and blacks in the South have always been culturally close, and it's really in evidence these days."
Soul food is Southern food whether it's breaded, deep fried, or slow cooked with salt pork. The white slave owners gave the slaves the meat scraps and they came up with barbeque ribs. The old negro spirituals became part of Southern gospel, bluegrass, and country music. And the Southern dialect is colorful and nuanced no matter who's doing the talking. And maybe it's this shared culture that makes certain Southern whites so uncomfortable.
Not to mention the banjo-- you wonder how many "Hee Haw" viewers knew that African slaves brought the instrument to this country (building them from memory). See Bela Fleck's new album for a "return" of sorts.
Powerful stuff.
Especially,
It seems that someone always gets shit on. Everywhere, no matter who a person is someone eats, cleans, and has to deal with shit so that other people don't have too. Whether it was slaves in the antebellum south, serfs in medieval Europe, little kids working in Indonesia to make sneakers that someone in this country get beat up for stepping on, some people get a raw deal, and that raw deal in turn enables other people to be free, to pursue art, to build, and to have "culture." That doesn't make it right, and that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to change it, but that also means that all of us are guilty. I liked what you said about understanding religion. In a sense that's the timelessness of the phrase "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god." It's often tempting to disagree to believe that people are perfectible, to believe that paradise, whether on earth, or in heaven is attainable, but sometimes I think we delude ourselves when we do so.
The old aristocracies were founded on human labor. No matter where a person went before the industrial revolution most people ate shit so that other people could study the Confucian classics, or build cathedrals, or serve as Brahmin. In our world the machine iis replacing, sometimes working in conjunction with, human labor. The pie has gotten bigger, but only because the majority of people, at least in the developed world, no longer have to employ themselves in subsistence agriculture. Yet even so, most of us rarely think about where our coffee comes from, or our bananas, or our clothes. Some of us, know and wonder if it will ever change. Others are willing to go to the developing world to volunteer while ignoring places in this country that are almost as bad.
Thanks for bringing this to light. I think too often we seek to gain the moral high ground to climb up the ladder of self-righteousness, or sophistication, so we may look down our noses at those less high on the ladder of "perfection" than we. In extremely evangelical circles like the ones I grew up around as a child, this shows itself when people who go to church 4 times a week (yes they exist) look down on those who only go once a week, and those who only go once a week look down on those who go once a month or on major holidays. Having escaped the prison of my upbringing, I see the same tendency among people I go to school with. People who buy organic look down on people who don't. Those who have had the privilege of good teachers and great schools, thumb their nose at people like myself who have had to seek their education from books, because the schools were poor and the good teachers were few and far between. I've been guilty of it, when I used to resent people who had things I never did, and subscribe to the belief that "them what ain't been poor have no right to tell them that have how to live." Or, when I used to resent having to work and not being able to devote all my energy to school. I've even seen vestiges of it here, like yesterday when you said that “My right to be wrong is sacred. My right to be a nigger is reserved.”
To be fair, these tendencies are universal to all of us. The part of us that wishes to be altrusitic, and believe that no-one is perfect, is constantly at war with the part of us that reserves the right to feel self-rightous. Our better nature, and our worse nature are both intrinsically part of the same human animal. If there is any truth in the Christian tradition that bore me up, it lies in recognizing the dual nature of mankind. On the one hand that we have the capacity to reach for the divine, and transcend the banality of our existance, but on the other hand, we also have the capacity to ignore our divinity, and reach for our banality.
Thanks a bunch, as always for having this blog.
"It seems that someone always gets shit on. Everywhere, no matter who a person is someone eats, cleans, and has to deal with shit so that other people don't have too."
I disagree, for reasons I mentioned up-thread -- but this is a hilarious explication of your point of view. I think I mentioned the Yes Men before on an open thread (I know I've posted about them on my blog). I disagree with their (surprisingly puerile, for obviously bright guys) politics, but they can be comedic geniuses at times, and funny is funny (their new movie wasn't as good though). The "Reburger" is one of their funnier pranks. It's too bad that this video cuts off as early as it does, because you miss an indignant question by an Indian college student who doesn't realize these guys aren't serious.
Thanks Dave,
I agree with you generally, that the level of shit that a person has to eat varies depending on the society, but there are always degrees of distinction. We should try to maintain a standard of living that means that everyone gets as big of a share of the pie as possible, but some people I think will always be aware that they have less.
I think it's important though to understand that just because a person has less that doesn't mean that they are less.
The reburger thing is funny though, thanks.
Incredibly offensive, but still sort of funny. Like Jackass. Or Richard Pryor at his best. Offensive, but makes a point. We do do similar things only it's not so obvious when we do. I don't like beets, never have, and the amount of stuff that nobody really wants to eat at the foodbank is always surprising. One does learn to use it though out of deperation.
"Incredibly offensive, but still sort of funny."
It's OK to laugh at something funny, Sorn. Often the funniest stuff is at least mildly offensive. If you haven't seen it yet, check out the Yes Men's "Management Leisure Suit" video, which I posted elsewhere recently. Their preamble to the stunt part actually references slavery.
You're welcome Sorn,
I hate to disagree with someone who wants to agree with me, but I think you agree more with the Yes Men's point, which I think is puerile and wrong. Americans used to tell their kids to finish their meals because "people are starving in China". Average people are eating a hell of a lot better in China today, and it's almost all because of capitalism and global trade. Not to say that there aren't challenges with globalism (I've discussed these on my blog), but people in the poorer countries have arguably gained the most from global trade (whether working class Americans have is legitimate question).
I don't think anyone here is arguing that a person's moral worth is equal to their material worth.
Dave, the point didn't have anything to do with being anti-trade, or anti-globalism, or any number of things, such as local sustainability, or fair trade coffee, or organic bannanas. It's complicated hence:
I think too often we seek to gain the moral high ground to climb up the ladder of self-righteousness, or sophistication, so we may look down our noses at those less high on the ladder of "perfection" than we.Sorn,
I find it difficult to engage in discussion with you without upsetting you in some way, however unintentional. I'm sorry about that, but I think there is some sort of communication problem between us. I'll try to write more clearly in the future, and perhaps you can try to read more closely as well.
hmm.
upset? I don't mean to come off as overly sensitive, or upset.
If I did, apologies. Because of my upbringing I have a tendency to apologize too much or seek to empathize too much, at the same time that I also have a tendency to be a bit contrary and defensive, but also willing to change my opinions given time. I'm trying to work past those tendencies. I don't mean to come off as an overly sensitive person, but when you grow up in an environment where an apology means the difference between a severe beating and being ignored you learn to apologize. Part of living life as a minority, and then leaving to the wider world and finding that people who have blond hair and blue eyes don't normally apologize. I often find it hard to understand why people so often get the wrong impression of what I am trying to convey. There are standard cultural markers and ways of communicating that I am trying to learn, that I haven't really mastered yet.
I will try to read more closely. I enjoy when people tell me I'm full of crap. Or my position is wrong. It's fun to have to think up arguments and defend a position. I find it helps with clarification, and thought. It also means that I get to think about something from a different point of view. I find that my reasoning is usually both/and. A lot of people are either/or. Arguments in straight lines are prized. I tend to think in smaller circles until I get to a point and then conect all the dots and unstring them in order to make a straight line. So if there is a misunderstanding it is probably on my end.
I enjoy discussing things with you, and hope the feeling is mutual.
As always it's a pleasure.
A good 'un...
No wonder I'm spending more time here and less at blogs where I get the same six links to mini-disasters of the day and the ringing of alarm bells about current politics that I'm already hearing in my head, crowding out thinking about what I truly care about and why. (Not that I'm even close to as fascinated with the Civil War as some folks here, but when it's contextualized and connected the way TNC tends to do it, it's a great example of "long thoughts" and not spending your time distracted by "shiny objects."
"Whites and blacks in the South have always been culturally close, and it's really in evidence these days. I felt less distance between me and white Virginians, then between me and the white people I see in here in New York every day."
Great post TNC. I am not surprised by the lack of distance you felt between you and fellow Virginians. Virginia has a longstanding history of common cause and shared bonds between Blacks and whites. Consider reading, " The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth Century Virginia" by Mechal Sobel (1989). This book illustrates the intermingling of whites and Blacks was not just relagated to intermarriage or regurgitates what we already know about the slave/master paradigm but also in the sharing of spiritual and other cultural bonds that may help to further examine our intertwined histories.
Incidentally, while I think there is some obvious truth about connections between whites and blacks in the South, I'm a little suspicious of comparisons by a not-so-casual visitor in VA to the "inter-anything" vibe in NYC simply because the pace of life and expectations between folks who don't already have some relationship is so different in the Uber-urbs and other parts of the country, most notably the South and Midwest. You might well get some of the same vibe in Des Moines - I love New York and New Yorkers but they tend to brush by you, regardless of race, creed or coolness. In the pre-Civil Rights era, you'd obviously have a whole other story re: casual encounters in VA. With the most overt outlines of that ugliness relegated to the past, I think that what you're feeling is at least partly a generically different way of dealing with strangers that's as inherent to the region as the rather complicated racial template.
Oh man, that picture of the kids at the top dredges up some memories of the pure ecstasy my brother and I used to experience while my dad dragged us around to every damned civil war battlefield/monument you can think of in the states of Virginia and North Carolina during our summer vacations. He'd buy the books at the gift shops and wrap them up for Christmas so we can relive the experience 5 months later. Joy.
I think this is sarcasm, and it's funny, but I love that picture - the sheer thinking on those faces.
These Virginia essays are some of the best stuff you've written, TNC, which is saying a lot. I hope to see some of these thoughts teased out even more in a longform article or book. They also have a particular resonance for me, since I grew up in Williamsburg, VA. There is a lot here to chew on, especially the way class and race are intertwined in this country and the global economy, too. Keep 'em comin.
While your posts are excellent Coates, I have to say, I love the pictures. I don't think you intend it, but each one is telling a story.
[I'm still trying to get over the ' I am your mother' post.]
Nice essay. I lived in VA for six years, in Williamsburg, but I never went to the Shirley plantation. My loss, I guess.
Williamsburg didn't seem fully integrated to me. There were the white churches and the black churches. Apartment complexes were integrated, at least the ones I hung out in, but there was sort of a "black" side of town. Of course, the tourism industry in Williamsburg was huge, and William and Mary was the other game in town.
"a tesseract between half-man and man"...I love that, by the way.
I really like how you've taken the slavery narrative and placed it in a larger narrative. A narrative of control, the establishment and exercise of monopolies, and the use of social norms to perpetuate them. In some sense, skin color is just a convenient marker, a tool in the hands of the would-be gods.
Really, it's about those who want to be so rich that they can do whatever they feel like and not be accountable to any for it. Most of us got over that at age 14 or so.
This is brilliant, and so true. A lot of progress has been made and it's important to note that and to continue on the road to full equality. But more importantly, we have to consider who is paying the price for our current, transracial pursuit of the good life for the masses.
Re: To assure a life-bonded workforce, sex between whites and blacks had to be effectively outlawed.
Except that these laws were honored mainly in the breach, as we all know-- at least by slaveowners and their male kin looking for easy sex.
Re: what they really needed was a life-bonded labor force permanently barred from competition.
The trouble with this account is that slavery began well before that-- the first slaves were brought here in 1619. It was not just dreamed up by profit-seekers of a later generation.
Re: We don't have Wal-Mart in New York
I thought you lived in Washington and grew up in Baltimore? We definitely have Walmart in Baltimore-- there's a Super-walmart right out Washington Blvd, toward Arbutus. Most of West Baltimore shops there, black and white.
Re: If a priest was married, the land he lived on (the church) would pass to his heirs.
This is not true. If the land was the Church's originally it stayed with the Church. If it was family land originally then even when the (unmarried) priest died it went to one of his nephews or cosuins.
Re: Someone, somewhere is paying--by not getting paid.
Those Mom-and-Pop stores were never noted for paying their workers well. Walmart is hardly worse and may even be better in that respect. Mom and Pop could be the biggest skinflints in town.
Re: What's the exact timeline here?
You don't really find much white supremacy until the late 1600s early 1700s. Before that the civilizations of the Old World at least were too similar in terms of technology and social organization. You find a certain chauvinism in all cultures based on notions of cultural superiority (often connected with religion), but racialist theories, no.
Re: So, I still think the strain of "white supremacy" under discussion had its origins in the Crusades, which represented the first time that whites from Western Europe, now united across linguistic and geographic barriers by a common religion, confronted non-whites with a different and more sophisticated culture.
The people of the Middle East were not "non-white", nor conceived as such. They were "infidels" and perhaps thus hated because of their religion, but not racially different. And meanwhile medieval Europe treasured the legend of Prester John, Black king of an wonderous Christian land somewhere in Africa (originally-- later it got relocated to Asia when it became conflated with Marco Polo's tales). Probably an echo of histoical knowledge about Ethiopia. Medieval Europe still treasured the dream of a universal Christendom, embracing all peoples of the world.
One doesn't contradict the other. The fact that murder still happens, isn't evidence that murder is outlawed, or that in outlawing murder we aren't trying to achieve societal goals.
It's really worth quoting people as they've actually written, not by your paraphrasing. The piece doesn't argue that slavery originated a generation later. Indeed, it very specifically says slave-trading skyrocketed. The data on this is clear. There was significantly more interest in slavery in Virginia 1669 than there was in 1619.
Right. Good for Baltimore. I haven't lived there in over 15 years. I haven't lived in Washington in a decade. Forgive me if I haven't stopped in while in town.
Re: It's really worth quoting people as they've actually written
With respect, I only quote by copying and pasting people's exact words (admittedly this may suffer if I do not copy enough of an argument). I do not paraphrase them in my own words. If I had the ability to do the shading of quoted material as you do I would, to make it easier to read.
Re: I haven't lived there in over 15 years. I haven't lived in Washington in a decade.
I haven't visited your site much since last election season. For some reason your site comes up as a banned one at work-- though Meagan, Marc Ambinder, Andrew Sullivan etc. are all OK. You're the only Atlantic blogger the Network-Nazis at work don't want us reading-- though Matt Yglesias's blog is banned too so you are in good company. Anyway, back during election season you talked about Baltimore and DC a lot so I assumed you were still in the area.
Magnificent essay. And you really pinned it about Wal-Mart.
"Someone, somewhere is paying for these 99 cent cheeseburgers. If not the people, then the land we've enslaved. I'm tempted to recoil in horror at the thought. And then I wonder how it could go any other way."
That's just a brilliant piece of writing.
Excellent post.
Slavery, it's said, was America's original sin. But what you're describing is like the dim, dark prehistory of what most of us learn about -- the 3/5ths Compromise, etc.
It feels as primal as the book of Genesis... or (and I don't mean this in a flip way) one of those Tolkien stories from the Silmarillion that takes place long before Frodo et al. come along.
Thank you for this post: it's brilliant like so many of your others. I'm glad that you finished Morgan -- you may have inspired me to finish Weevils in the Wheat, since I was one of the commenters who nagged you and now I feel guilty for the books I left unfinished.
I hope you are able to spend more time developing your notion of the extension of "American White Godhood" -- it deserves both wider airing and more careful definition. As I understand it from reading Morgan, the original beneficiaries of this privilege are younger sons of English landed gentry. They grew up living entirely off their family's tenants' labor, but because of primogeniture they to find ways to regain this state. (And no doubt many of them thought it a cruel injustice to be forced to support themselves, since little in their upbringing equipped them for it.)
Their first attempt in Virginia--copying Cortez and installing themselves as the head of a native feudal peasantry--falls flat. Their second attempt--importing indentured servants--succeeds until those servants become competitors. At this point they attempt to re-create a landlord-tenant society, but the abundance of land and the draconian measures they resort to lead to rebellion. Finally, they strike a deal with their former servants and switch wholesale to race-based hereditary slavery.
But what was that deal? The dream of godhead had to be watered down in order to be extended, and I think it's worth defining how it changed during that first transition if you're going to go on to describe other transitions the same way.
I really don't know the answer, but here's my attempt: privilege formerly defined as not having to work was now defined as not having to work for someone else. It wasn't labor per se that was relegated to slaves--plenty of whites who owned no slaves or even ones who owned only a few did back-breaking labor in the fields--but labor on behalf of another. Whites had a right to the fruits of their labor (or the labor of their slaves), free of rents or indentures. To be white meant not having a boss.
While this 17th-century transition may be tenuous, the resulting attitude is attested in hundreds of 19th-century travelers' accounts of the South. For the most part, they lamented the poverty and backwardness that resulted from opposition to White Labor. Turns out that stigmatizing labor in such a way that wage-based employment is socially impossible is not a recipe for economic prosperity.