O For a Slice of Possum and Yam!

I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten

Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland [1]

 

 

I.

 

I don't know for sure when the utopian fantasy of Dixie first entered my imagination as a child, or why it has remained there ever since. I've never been to the American South and it's unlikely I ever will. But I've always dreamed of doing so ...

 

 

II. 

 

I suspect I first heard of this mytho-cultural region [2] in the classic Laurel and Hardy film Way Out West (1937). 

 

At the end of the movie, their troubles over, Stan and Ollie - accompanied by a young women on a mule - decide to head way down south where the hens are doggone glad to lay / scrambled eggs in the new mown hay ... [3] 

 

I don't know if that's true about the hens, but it illustrates the thing that people in the Southern States pride themselves on and value above all else: hospitality.     

   

III.     

 

Southern hospitality - like much else associated with Dixie - is today sneered at and cast in a negative political light. The courtesy, kindness, and generosity shown to strangers was founded, it is pointed out, on a system of slavery:

 

"African Americans had little place in this initial conceptualization of hospitality beyond the role of servant. Yet, it was the labor and hardships of the enslaved that allowed southern planters to entertain their guests so lavishly and seemingly so effortlessly. Southern hospitality from and for whites was in large part achieved by being inhospitable and inhumane to African Americans." [4] 

 

This (apparent) contradiction is usually presented as evidence of the corruption and hypocrisy of Southern society in the antebellum era, but it could be seen to provide a justification for slavery - if one wished to misinterpret the above somewhat perversely.

 

At any rate, one is reminded of Nietzsche's contention that, contrary to the liberal belief that slavery and suffering are morally objectionable and that society should therefore do everything in its power to eradicate these twin evils, culture requires cruelty ... [5]    

 

 

13-starred variant of the first national flag of

the Confederate States of America (1861-1865)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from I Wish I Was in Dixie (1859), by Dan Emmett (1815-1904). 

      If best remembered today as the composer of this song, Emmett was also founder of the Virginia Minstrels, the first troupe of performers in this tradition. To listen to a contemporary version of Dixie, sung by Bob Dylan, click here.

 

[2] Obviously, Dixie - or, if you prefer, Dixieland - isn't purely a mytho-cultural fantasy. But whilst it refers to the Southern States, there's no agreement about which ones; i.e., there's no clear or official definition of which states constitute the region, although most people would agree that, at the very least, it includes (or at one time included) the eleven states which seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy in 1860-61: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. 

      I have to admit, I like the idea that the location and boundaries of Dixie have, over time, become increasingly subjective and variable. I like also that the origins of the term Dixie are themselves obscure and disputed. 

 

[3] As they set off on their journey, the happy trio break into their version of the Irving Berlin / Ted Snyder song, I Want to Be in Dixie (1912): click here.

 

[4] Derek H. Alderman and E. Arnold Modlin Jr., 'Southern hospitality and the politics of African American belonging: an analysis of North Carolina tourism brochure photographs', Journal of Cultural Geography, Vol. 30, No. 1, (2012), pp. 6-31. The lines quoted are on p. 12. Click here to read as a pdf online.

      For a book-length study of this topic, see: Anthony Szczesiul, The Southern Hospitality Myth: Ethics, Politics, Race, and American Memory, (University of Georgia Press, 2017).      

[5] Nietzsche's thoughts on this topic are explicit and he doesn't shy away from drawing the social and political implications of his view that a high level of culture requires discipline, breeding, and hierarchy; that man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him.

      Of course, the good people of the South, such as Alexander H. Stephens, who vehemently defended the institution of slavery, based their arguments for white supremacy on spurious racial science, the so-called laws of nature, and biblical teaching; not Nietzschean philosophy. Similarly, when it came to being hospitable, they acted in the name of Jesus, not Zarathustra, and their good deeds were a reflection of their Christian beliefs. 

      It's difficult to imagine Nietzsche siding with the Confederacy, therefore, although there are some scholars, such as Martin A. Rhuel - a lecturer in German intellectual history at Cambridge - who would disagree. See his essay 'In defence of slavery: Nietzsche's dangerous thinking', in the Independent (12 January 2018): click here.         

On Atrocious Aspects of African History

Slaves awaiting sacrifice 

The History of Dahomy (1793)

Whisper it quietly, unless you want a torrent of vile abuse, but slavery was not an invention of evil white devils in the 16th century ...

In fact, slavery, in various forms, was widespread in Africa as an indigenous cultural practice long before the British, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Spanish ever set foot on the Dark Continent - and it still continues today in countries including Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, and Sudan (although this is rarely mentioned by those who like to take hammers to statues). 

Thus, when the Atlantic slave trade began, it was able to draw upon the extensive knowledge and experience of pre-existing systems and local slave traders were keen to supply the new external markets with men, women and children; some historians estimate that around 90% of those sold to European traders for export to the New World were initially captured and enslaved by their fellow Africans.

In 2010, the hugely respected literary critic and scholar Henry Louis Gates argued in a controversial opinion piece for The New York Times that "without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders [...] the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred" [1].

It might also be noted that when the Atlantic slave trade ceased in the 19th century - thanks in no small part to the efforts of abolitionists in the UK such as William Wilberforce - many African states reoriented their economies towards legitimate commerce whilst continuing to exploit slave labour.

I suppose for many BLM activists and their allies who wish to oppose racism and make amends for historical evils as they perceive them, this is something of an inconvenient truth. And, equally inconvenient, is the fact that, in addition to slavery, the unsavoury practice of human sacrifice was also common - particularly in West Africa - well into the 19th century.

Thus it is, for example, that in the Kingdom of Dahomey, a large annual festival was held during which enslaved prisoners, who had either been captured on the battlefield or abducted during organised raids, were ceremoniously slaughtered. Usually, around 500 prisoners died each year in this way, but in 1727 it was reported that as many as 4000 were beheaded in order to venerate the spirits of ancestors (decapitation being the traditional method of execution).

The point - as recognised by Gates - is this: we need to dissolve the binary that allows a morally naive and simplistic reading of the past in terms of wicked white perpetrators and innocent black victims.
     

Notes

[1] Henry Louis Gates Jr., 'Ending the Slavery Blame-Game', The New York Times (22 April, 2010): click here to read online.
     
This post was written in response to an iconoclastic supporter of Black Lives Matter, who asserted that my silence on this blog concerning recent events in Minneapolis made me complicit with racism and suggested that I educate myself on black history.