Moreover, this outrageous canard was a necessary fiction to salve the conscience of white slave-owners who every Sunday re-convinced themselves that they were doing God’s work in taming this mythical “sub-species” of child-like and servile human.ĭenying education was a vital shackle in this most diabolical oppression. Carefully instilling the belief –- randomly by lash or worse –- that a black person was incapable of self-rule, let alone self-empowerment, was crucial to not only keeping slaves obedient, but also resistant to collaborative liberation (it’s dispiriting to see how little comfort Northup receives from his fellow slaves when he’s left dangling by a rope). Given this backdrop, it was particularly important to win over the hearts and minds of those so oppressed in order that they - like the prisoners in Bentham’s panopticon - would act as their own internal governors. Yah want that? Yah want them black animals to leave us gut like pigs in our own sleep?” This fear of a brutal and well-deserved retribution kept slave-owners on edge, especially when the number of slaves on a plantation was often double that of those charged with keeping them in line. You let it be, it’ll come back to us in the dark a night. This is made clear by the deliriously jealous Mistress Epps when she hectors - in her trashy Lady Macbeth best - the drunk and philandering Master Epps, “Is that how yah are with the niggers? Let every ill thought fester inside ‘em. They did not want educated men and women who knew that they had a divine right to freedom in all things. Southern slave-owners wanted compliant slaves to work their sugar and cotton plantations. And, in this regard, 12 Years A Slave - for all its stilted hagiography about angelic white abolitionists and oddly two-dimensional blacks (save for a show-stealing turn by Alfre Woodard as a slaver’s black wife) –- does make a profound point. However, the more I write about urban education, the more I’ve come to see how historical forces do leave their residue upon the drive to excel in the classroom. McWhorter note, there remains more than a vestige of anti-intellectualism in urban black culture – pro athletes and n-word-spouting rap stars are cool Urkels are not – that must be removed root and branch if the school reform movement afoot at pioneering outliers like the Eagle Academy for Young Men and DC Prep is to have lasting effect. Will opined in last Friday’s Washington Post, the high rate of single black mothers in America’s inner cities is a significant "cultural" factor. ![]() There are many explanations for black academic underachievement in America. That’s all.” - Mistress Epps is sufficiently pleased with Northup’s complaisance that she allows him to travel into Holmesville township to Bartholomew’s general store. After carelessly reading aloud the shopping list of “goods and sundries” that Mary wrote down on paper for him, Northup - renamed Platt after his abduction - obsequiously pleads, before Mistress Epps' piercing inquisition, that though he knows a “a word here or there,” he has “no understanding of the written text.” Even though she doubts his sincerity – “Master bought yah to work. ![]() However, when faced with the distrustful eyes of Mary Epps (played to menacing, if one-note, effect by Sarah Paulson) - the justifiably jealous wife of brutal, and probably bipolar, slaver Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender in a manic tour de force) - he remembers Ray’s admonishment. His faith in writing, persuasion, and the law moves him to hold fast to his educated upbringing as the ultimate remedy to his plight. ![]() Solomon believes that injustice can be undone, not with sword, but with pen.
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