Misuse of Power

When in 2008 Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, many Americans, and especially African Americans, “saw in him the symbol of their own fight for equal rights or of their own belief in a better future. Many emphasized the fact that America after this election became a new, ‘post-racial’ country” (Sobieraj, Collisions 14). In the last 10 years there have been much research published comparing the lives of African Americans in the past and present. For instance, Sharon Austin tried to compare the 1960s with 1920s in respect to the lives of African Americans. Speaking about the progress that was made in that period, she revealed the situation of African Americans in comparison to other ethnic groups, especially to white citizens, was much worse. Though she tried to mention some “bright spots”, she concluded that “[p]rogress has been made. Just not as much as many of us would like.” Jamila Taylor, the author of the report, “Racism, Inequality, and Health Care for African Americans” tried to look at the condition of health care for black Americans in 2019; “To date, thirty-seven states (including the district of Columbia) have expanded Medicaid …. The states that did not expand Medicaid are largely concentrated in the Southern region of the United States.” As she added, “58 per cent of the African-American population lived in the South as of 2017. They are also more likely to be uninsured, with Texas, Florida, and Georgia being home to the largest shares of uninsured African Americans.”

Those who believe that the civil rights movement remains unfinished may be, in a certain sense, right. There is always much to do to make social and racial conditions better. Thinking about the moment where black Americans are now, one cannot forget the long history of injustice, the injustice black Americans had to face and experience. This monograph is a way to look back at the long history of injustice and misuse of power by those who held that power for centuries. The historical journey begins with slavery¹ and goes through the time of the Invisible Empire, lynching, segregation, the mistreatment of African Americans by the penal system, and up to and including the civil rights movement to the 21^st century.

I have decided to add to this monograph an extended section on lynching from different perspectives, one of the worst atrocities experienced by African Americans in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Some might ask: Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Or, as Sharon Austin, an African American university professor, asked: “Have we gotten our fair share yet?”

What can a man own? Many things but also another man, especially if he/she has absolute power over another. More contemporary commentators on the problem of slavery discuss this institution in the context of power or power relationships. Robert Olwell speaks about “culture of power,” describing slavery as “a system of domination. As such, it relied for its perpetuation upon a continuous, if unequal, dialogue between rulers and ruled, dominators and dominated” (6). Orlando Patterson in his already classic work on slavery, pays similar attention to the relationships of inequality and/or domination, emphasizing that “[a]ll human relationships are structured and defined by the relative power of the interacting persons” and these relationships “range on a continuum from those of marginal asymmetry to those in which one person is capable of exercising, with impunity, total power over another” (1), the latter defining what one understands as slavery. Also, Cheryl Hudson and Eva Namusoke, in their analysis of Roll, Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made, emphasize that Eugene D. Genovese “saw slavery as a continually renegotiated power relationship between master and slave” (31–32). Power, as Olwell claims, was often in the times of slavery “synonymous with brute force” (212). Patterson studying the asymmetry mentioned above sees slavery as “one of the most extreme forms of the relation of domination, approaching the limits of total power from the viewpoint of the master, and of total powerlessness from the viewpoint of the slave” (1). Thus what characterizes this relationship is a huge distance between social, political, cultural and even psychological position of the master and the slave. This position of the slave, the one of the total submission to the master, degrades the slave in all possible respects, wholly marginalizing him/her as a human being. Regarded as property the slave is dehumanized and devoid of any rights that a human being cherishes, his/her condition is that of powerlessness. Even if slaves had any property, rights or privileges, they could be taken away from them in a moment “leaving an isolated man or woman as naked as a beast at an auction. This vulnerability, this sense of being removed from the increments and coherence of historical time, maybe the essence of dehumanization” (Davis 20).

To study slavery today, one must also look at this peculiar institution, taking into account its legal, cultural, social, and political aspects as they appeared at the time slavery existed. The danger and error to define slavery today is to look at it from an entirely contemporary perspective, to define it, as Patterson warns, “in modern legalistic terms” (21). Also, Patterson claims, one should see the issue of slavery rather in a more multifaceted way. To concentrate on one or two characteristic features of slavery can be dangerous, as for instance, focusing on defining the slave in terms of property only can lead to misconceptions and simplifications. What the reader expects from research is a convincing and trustworthy picture of what is examined.

Slavery, or human exploitation, is one of the oldest institutions known in many parts of the world, in ancient times and today. As said before, many definitions of slavery, directly or not touch upon power relationships. For instance, the editors of one of the best companions to slavery, Stanley Engerman, Seymour Drescher and Robert Paquette, introduce slavery to their readers as the institution that “refers to a condition in which individuals are owned by others, who control where they live, at what they work, with how much subsistence they are provided, and where sexual exploitation is permissible. Property rights in slaves and their labor can be bought and sold via market transactions” (5). There are also commentators on the moral aspects of slavery as for instance Horace Mann who claims that “the worst forms of all the crimes a human being can commit – theft, robbery, murder, adultery, incest, sacrilege and whatever else there is that inflicts wide-wasting ruin upon society and brings the souls of men to perdition – the word slavery is the synonym of them all” (qtd. in Connolly 205).

Slavery has been described, defined, researched, and referred to for centuries. Hundreds of years ago it was accepted, approved, and treated as simply one of the social institutions. The Digest of Justinian compiled in the 6^th century B.C. makes it explicit that “all men are either free men or slaves” (qtd. in Engerman et al. 98). It is mentioned in The Bible and in the texts of ancient philosophers and medieval thinkers or jurists. Moreover, several of those texts, especially The Bible, were used to defend the institution later, as in case of North American slavery.