"Seasoning" Our abilities for Profit

Dear friends,

Just as Columbus had initially introduced it with Early American Native peoples, African captives' first introduction to "seasoning" was, more often than not, through violence - then Christianity. In The Black Jacobins, the great C.L.R. James wrote, "All America and West Indies took slaves. When the ship reached the harbour, the cargo came up on deck to be bought. The purchasers examined them for defects, looked at the teeth, pinched the skin, sometimes tasted the perspiration to see if the slave's blood was pure and his health as good as his appearance. Some of the women affected a curiosity, the indulgence of which, with a horse, would have caused them (the purchasers) to be kicked back 20 yards across the deck. But the slave had to stand it. Then in order to restore the dignity which might have been lost by too intimate an examination, the purchaser spat in the face of the slave. Having become the property of his owner, he was branded on both sides of the breast with a hot iron. His duties were explained to him by an interpreter, and a priest instructed him in the first principles of Christianity."

This method of forced acculturation (seasoning) is still very much a part of the North American culture, although manifested in a different way. Now, instead of physical torture being used to make Black people - whether adults or children - assimilate, Eurocentricity and Negrophobia are perpetuated through cultural institutions like the legal, corporate media and educational systems.

The word cultural is used here to describe certain institutions because it is through culture that We transmit behavior and ideas to both present and future generations. However, the first thing that We must understand about culture is: it is largely tied to a people's resources. That is, social status and income as well as materials to produce what people need or desire determine how, why and through what medium folks can express themselves as a distinct group.

The crucial point to be made here is, African peoples who were forced to migrate to the Americas did not lose their cultures. Instead, each cultural group merely took on a different developmental direction. In other words, although they were enslaved, African American captive workers were still people. As a result, Black folks adapted to the new circumstances with which they were presented.

Oddly enough, most North American social theorists have paid little or no attention to the realities mentioned, thus far. Instead, their intellectual energies have been geared towards apologizing for upper class fantasies as they pertain to human progress. However, the real challenge for scholars will be to responsibly analyze societies according to what people actually do to sustain themselves, as opposed to what certain groups think of themselves.

G. Djata Bumpus