After our discussion in class about
Hegel, I began to think about the reasoning behind his thoughts. Hegel wrote
this text in the 19th century just a couple years before the civil
war in the Americas. While he disproves the thought of different human species,
he still renounces in the fact that through nature white people are the most
developed form of humans. Hegel describes this process as such, “But decent affords no ground for granting or denying freedom
and dominion to human beings. Man is implicitly rational; herein lies the
possibility of equal justice for all men and the futility of a rigid
distinction between races which have rights and those which have none. The difference
between the races of mankind is still a natural difference, that is, a
difference which, in the first instance, concerns the natural soul.” (39) It
seems that Hegel is searching for any semi-logical way to distinguish between
races.
This thought brought the film
Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino to my attention. Within this movie
Leonardo DiCaprio plays a slave owner by the name of Calvin Candie. The slave
master Calvin Candie has to continually demoralize his slaves in order to
sustain his perceived hierarchy over them. There is even a point in the film
where he goes into detail on why the Negro is born to be submissive through
nature, just like we see in Hegel description. However, in a cast interview for
the movie Leonardo illustrates his experience portraying Calvin Candie and the
thought process behind his actions.
Through this clip and other resources
I am starting to get the feeling that many slave owners like Calvin Candie knew
that natural submission of the Negro was really a hoax. Yet, they also knew how
vital slaves were to sustain the lifestyle that they were living. He had to
pound in the fact that they were not on the same playing field to keep his
position as master. And I am also sure that there a million other false tales for
why Negros are suppose to make good slaves.
One thing that stood out to me in the clip was when Leonardo DiCaprio says his character is "a walking contradiction." It would be very interesting to examine the way slave owners were thinking at the time. Today in light of all the changes and progression made, it is appealing to try to explain away situations by saying it was a hoax or whatever else. In doing so, the harshness of the time is made light of and at the risk of being forgotten. Although we cannot know exactly what people were thinking back then and the mentality behind actions, I think you accurately refer to the tales as false tales that are broken attempts at trying to justify behavior.
ReplyDeleteOkay. I don’t believe that hoax is necessarily the right word to use. I understand where you’re coming from. However, I believe it was more so a form of manipulation. Sure, some slave owners were knowledgeable enough to understand that their slaves were not mere property and naturally submissive, but a vast majority of others truly thought they were the superior beings and slaves were nothing but obedient objects used for labor. Protecting their livelihood was not a hoax for slave owners. They had to do whatever was needed in order to maintain the production of goods and continued success within the industry, thus creating the many ridiculous forms of justification, like the notion that slaves were naturally submissive. Granted, today we may understand it was all a hoax, but I do not believe slave owners saw it that way.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that some people in the South during that time period did have doubts about whether or not black people were less than human, however I'm not sure if it could be called a hoax. There were many efforts going on in various stages of race theory to explain why black people were not human in the same way Europeans were. I haven't seen Django, but in a previous blog post someone wrote about craniometry being mentioned in the film. There were multiple books published at the time using 'science' to explain why Europeans were the most intelligent. They were all shown to be untrue and bias (one author used VERY specific types of measurements to get the results he wanted) because of the society. So basically, I think that a lot of the people were going into their outlook on life with their conclusion (white people were best) and finding any sort of evidence for its truth.
ReplyDeleteI think that everything that Andrea and allyktop have brought up could also lead to one saying that this was a GIANT hoax! All of those measures taken and efforts made were to prove that two types of humans were unequal. The point is, they had to prove something that, as our class has stated, is not a necessary part of human nature (what is necessary is something like the relationship of DiCaprio and Jackson's characters in the movie, as [from Noddings' theory] a one-caring to a cared-for). Therefore, the entire act of creating that inequality as a scientific fact or proven idea, is and was a hoax. So, as Andrea said in her comment, "a lot of the people were going into their outlook on life with their conclusion (white people were best) and finding any sort of evidence for its truth," they must have been part of an elaborate hoax; that is, the hoax of an idea that one race is more developed or subservient than another. I have the idea that this was all Stanton was referring to when he used the word, "hoax," but if I'm mistaken please reply.
ReplyDelete