I Want to be Stereotyped, I Want to be Classified

This blog is largely in response to the debate in class today, January 30th, and specifically the clip from Alex Haley's Roots that we watched. In that clip, power was divided along a progression from omnipotent master to the whipped slave, with seven delineations:

1. White male Master
2. White Female Wife of Master (still property, children were not onscreen but would fit into this category)
3. White male overseer
4. Slaves that worked in the house (mostly female, but designated by finer clothes than the fieldhands')
5. Black slave overseer (the one actually doing the whipping)
6. Compliant field slaves (mixed gender, Fiddler is demoted to this position)
7. Noncompliant field slaves (Kunta Kinte)

While the brutality attached to the violence in that scene was certainly jarring, I charge that the same violence exists today, and it is only our position in relation to it which keeps us compliant and ignorant to the larger power structures at play, and in particular those who occupy the roles at the top of this hierarchy. 

Tam's response to my positioning of a racial reversal in the officers involved in the beating of Rodney King was telling. She posited two options; in an idealized world, a black police officer would not beat a black man so savagely. However, her second possibility is closer in line with the truth: it does happen and we just don't hear about it. Is the word deliberately kept out of the public eye? Why does a story which incited racial divisiveness get 24 hour airplay?

So, with our knowledge that such brutality does occur, can we posit the hierarchy of power above and see which roles the players in the Rodney King incident occupy? The King/Kinte relationship is obvious. In Roots the master is easy to identify, both by skin and by action. In King's case, naming a specific person as master is impossible, but identifying the State as the ultimate arbiter of justice in this case gives us a framework through which we can better understand. Even the woman who actually shot the tape, she can be said to mirror the assembly of slaves who are forced to watch Kinte's beating..

It is when we reach the case of the overseer that the truly interesting connections come to life. First, the linguistic connection between overseer and officer: they sound the same, and they both do the same thing. Both are positions designed to keep power concentrated in the hands of the Master/State, by the systematic seizure of the rights of the oppressed. In Roots, a black man nearly beat to death a fellow slave in front of his community, acting on the words of a white master, all of whom are controlled (to different degrees) by the ultimate master. Today, police officers shoot and maim, disenfranchise and arrest a disproportionate number of young black men, in order to keep other oppressed people (oppressed by the state, based on class/race/religion/etc) compliant and nonviolent. 

What would have happened if the slave refused to whip Kinte? What would have happened if the assembled slaves would have rebelled, and stopped Kinte's beating?

What would happen if WE refused to be passive anymore, and actively refused to continue our part in the system of oppression which is inescapable?

In closing, some words from the Teacher


"You need a little clarity?
Check the similarity!
The overseer rode around the plantation
The officer is off patroling all the nation
The overseer could stop you what you're doing
The officer will pull you over just when he's pursuing
The overseer had the right to get ill
And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill
The officer has the right to arrest
And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest!"