Module 15: Recovering the African American Past

Reading: Ferguson, pp. 63-123

Why does Ferguson refer to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century African Americans as pioneers? This is a very striking idea! Why is it so surprising, sort of shocking, to think of African Americans as pioneers? [Because our stereotyped idea of pioneers is a White family in a Conestoga wagon—it shows you how we leave African Americans out of American history].

Do you think African Americans should be referred to as pioneers? In what way were they pioneers? [They worked out a means of living in the New World, producing pots, baskets, houses, carvings, and crops in ways that built on their existing knowledge and tradition, but adapted to the new circumstances that they faced].

In what way were they not pioneers? [They worked under duress].

What point is Ferguson trying to make when he refers to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century African Americans as pioneers? [That African Americans built this country, not only with their labor, but with their knowledge and skills].

The first part of Ferguson's book is devoted to establishing the possibility that Colono ware was manufactured by African Americans in addition to Native Americans. Why is this important? Because it establishes continuity between African and African American culture. In the past, finding such continuities has been very controversial.

During the nineteenth century, Whites made the claim that African culture was an inferior culture with barbarous practices; therefore, African Americans should not be granted equal citizenship (education, voting rights, etc.). The claim was even made that slavery benefited the slaves, because it introduced them to "more advanced" European culture. There's some irony in the example supplied by Ferguson that even abolitionists, believing in the inferiority of African culture, used survivals of African culture (e.g., African housing) found among slaves to show that slavery did not benefit slaves.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, antiracist scholars, including many blacks, replied that African Americans had lost all connection to African culture during their traumatic Middle Passage on slave ships from Africa to the New World and in their subsequent enslavement, and therefore they were worthy of citizenship. This was a "vindicationist strategy," an effort to counter, to undermine, the vicious stereotypes of African Americans perpetrated by the dominant White population. But this was a problematic response because it denied any uniquely African contributions to the United States and American culture. It left unchallenged the premise of White superiority, placing pressure on Blacks to accept White standards of everything: diet, music, speech, beauty, etc. In this case, African Americans tried to qualify for equal treatment by minimizing their differences from Whites, by trying to be like Whites.

In the 1920s-1940s, anthropologist Melville Herskovits challenged catastrophism. Working with African American communities in Haiti, Brazil, Surinam, and Trinidad, he found customs strikingly similar to African customs. He interpreted these customs as "Africanisms" that had survived "acculturation," a process by which African items and practices were replaced by white items and practices. He interpreted these Africanisms as evidence of cultural conservatism, or to put it more bluntly, of backwardness, a lack of education. For example, Wilkie (1995:141) points out that sociologists, anthropologists, and folklorists working in the South often referred to these traditions and beliefs in a derogatory or flippant manner, as superstitions, for example (my beliefs are religion, your beliefs are superstition?). In a sense, Deetz (in Parting Ways) also sees the African traits that he identifies as passive survivals of African culture. This is not a perspective that puts Africanisms in a very good light. It views Africanisms as passive survivals, making no significant contribution to black or white survival. It views Africanisms as evidence of cultural conservatism, backwardness. Are there alternative interpretations for Africanisms?

They can be seen as resistance, an effort by enslaved Africans to deny the claims of Euro-American cultural superiority. For example, in another paper, (1991), Ferguson claims that Colono Ware was used to prepare African foods (a starch food such as millet, rice, or maize served with a vegetable relish which contains meat or fish in small quantities) which was eaten according to African custom (taking a ball of the starchy main dish in one's hands and dipping it into the relish). The uniformity of these vessels, and their lack of decoration, suggests support for egalitarian social relations among enslaved people, a negation of the hierarchical ideals that Whites used to legitimate the institution of slavery. Ferguson concludes that Colono Ware expressed a rejection of the White ideals of individualism and hierarchy, and reinforced relationships of mutual support among enslaved people based on their common heritage and their difference from Whites.

Another explanation for the retention of Africanisms is that they had practical advantages, for example, the construction of mud-walled houses which stayed cool during the day and released their heat at night. Or, all the practical advantages of the African traits that we noted at Parting Ways (the clustering together of families, the smaller houses, etc.). Or, the use of Hoodoo to maintain a sense of control and to preserve family units that were threatened by disintegration.

Despite the possibility for seeing Africanisms as important and useful elements of African American culture, African Americans' ambivalent attitude toward their African heritage ended only with the Black Power movement of the 1960s. The Black Power movement had "Black is Beautiful" as its slogan. This slogan expressed a conscious rejection of White standards pf physical beauty and White conventions in music, dance, language, history-writing, and other aspects of culture. Black ideals were expressed in "Afro" hairdos, in which African American hair was allowed to grow naturally, in dashikis (African-style cotton shirts), and in giving children African first names. As a symbol of Black pride, some African Americans replaced their European last names ("slave names") with new African names (e.g., Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali and Lew Alcindor became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), and a number of African Americans converted to Islam, a religion that they felt was more indigenous to the African continent than Christianity. In some cases, this conversion reflected bitterness toward Christianity, a religion professed by the plantation owners who had kept African Americans in chains.

But Ferguson sees still further significance in Colono Ware. It's not just evidence of African heritage, a means of resistance, and a practical product. Ferguson uses Colono Ware to illustrate the concept of creolization: mutual adjustments in cultural heterogeneous relations (p. xiii). Colono Ware is White and Black and Indian. Even apparently identical items might have been used in different ways, according to different cultural grammars.

The concept of creolization also emphasizes that all groups are involved in cultural exchange. It's not just African American culture that is a creole culture, but American culture is a creole culture. Going back to the question posed by Deetz's book, how did a distinctive American culture emerge, Ferguson would answer that it emerged through the contributions of Europeans, Africans, Native Americans, and all the other groups that have come to the United States. Even if you're "White," if you're American, you are part African by culture.