A Unifying Look At the Divisiveness of America's Racial Past and Present

books:

	• Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the DIlemma of Black Patriotism Roger Wilkins Beacon Press, 2002 - 163 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Unifying Look At the Divisiveness of America's Racial Past and Present

The author has written a superb book for people who believe in the complexity of reality and the limits of ideology as an explanatory force.
Few books so profoundly praise the Virginia dynasty of great founding fathers--theorist, landowner, and ocasional influential politician George Mason, civil and military leader extraordinaire George Washington, Declaration of Independence writer, Governor, diplomat, Vice President and President Thomas Jefferson, and constitution writer, federal official, and President James Madison.

Their author demonstrates their teamwork in matters both large and small, from Jefferson scouring the bookstores of Paris for books on constitutional theory for Madison, to Washington listening intently to the advice of Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton, to Madison persistently trying to weave his constitutional vision into a harmonious whole.

Few people who are not experts on their lives will read this book and not come away with an even higher opinion of our founding fathers than they previously held.

Yet, they were slaveowners, and the author of this book is a black civil rights leader. But he profoundly believes that the ideals they advanced were so strong, so valid, so enduring, and so useful on a day to day basis in countless struggles for social justice that their participation in the atrocities of slavery is ultimately far outweighed on the scales of justice.

They were, the author writes, victims of their culture and their time, place and circumstances--just as low income blacks are today. Further, they were men who recognized the moral dilemmas of slavery, and attempted to mitigate them on both a personal and governmental basis. Their moral recognition of the evils they were participating in was repeatedly undermined by both political pressures from their fellow plantation owners and their own recognition of the convenience of slavery to enable them to have the resources, power, and leisure to lead first Virginia and then the embryonic nation.

The author demonstrates extremely well the inherent cruelty of slavery, despite the growing kindnesses and even love that sensitive slaveowners sometimes displayed for their slaves. The growing socialization together of slave and slaveowner as the old African languages and religions faded away, and the ever richer slave owners decided they need personal servants as well as field hands, worked to undermine the legitimacy of slavery in the minds of its greatest benefactors.

Few who read this book will fail to grasp the barbarity of a system that captured innocent people and sent them and their progeny to a hellish life of slavery--if they could indeed survive the period of capture and transportation and orientation to their unwelcome new role. Few who read this book will soon forget the detailed descriptions of the maiming slaves underwent by owners determined to show who was boss, the very common assertion of slaveowner sexual rights to any slave woman, regardless of marital status, the sheer terror that slaves felt about being sold to strangers and stripped of all ties of family and friendship, and the love and sacrifice slave families showed each other.

There are books more detailed about slavery's horrors, but few books so wise and insigtful about them.

The author, in short, canonizes both slaves and slaveowners in different ways, and creates a unified picture of how they lived and worked together despite a system that total degraded the slave in every way, and worked to mock the pretensions of moral purity of the slaveowners.

The author knows that if the United States is ever to have a full climate of racial reconciliantion, dealing with the morally repugnant nature of slavery will have to be a major part of it. He sets forth a detailed synthesis that forms a foundation for permanent understanding and cultivation of good will. There cannot be a much more optimistic portrayal of the transcendence of optimism and patriotism over the facts of unrelenting degradation than the one the author offers here.

No one interested in building an America free of racial hatred and discrimination should fail to read this path-breaking and sometimes spell-binding book.

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Liberty, Slavery, & the Founders - a dilemma examined

`Jefferson's Pillow' is a brief but powerful work which examines the uncomfortable juxtaposition of America's founding ideals of liberty with the reality that many of the founders were slave owners. It examines four of those founders - Jefferson, Washington, Madison, and Mason, along with their rhetoric on liberty and slavery, their own words about the evils of slavery, and their failure to separate themselves from this noxious institution. It also delves into how slavery worked as an institution of power and privilege, and how the repercussions of that system still affect us today.
Wilkins' book stands out because while it tackles a most controversial and difficult subject it never stoops to being merely iconoclastic. Wilkins is not attempting to tear down the founders - indeed he spends a great deal of time establishing their very real brilliance, strengths and virtues. He never looks at them from outside of their own generation and culture, but judges them by the standards of their time and their own words. He recognizes how terribly difficult it would have been for any of these men born to power and privilege to divest themselves of the slaves that were both the source and symbol of that power. Yet he does not absolve them, as he proves through their own words and actions that they were aware of the system's evil, as well as their own inconsistency.
Wilkins attempts to humanize these four founders - to divest them of the marble image of secular saints that has petrified them in myth. He shows them to us as brilliant and principled, but human; able to create a great and enduring country, yet unable to rid themselves of a system they knew to be evil from which they profitted and gained power and privilege. He sums up this failing in the words of yet another founder, Patrick Henry - "Every thinking honest man rejects it [slavery] in speculation, how few in practice? Would any one believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by ye general inconvenience of living without them; I will not, I cannot justify it." Nothing illustrates Wilkins point better than these damning words from the man who is better known for proclaiming, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"
Wilkins writes with elegant and powerful prose, and great passion and intellect. He writes as a proud American who believes that we must honestly face the uncomfortable truth of the blemish slavery gave to our ideals of liberty so as to be better able to deal with its repercussions that still affect us today. His book is balanced, thoughtful, and respectful of its subject, and I believe essential reading for any American patriot. I give it my highest of recommendations.

Theo Logos

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Rewarding America's History of Racist Betrayals

How are Blacks to see themselves as American patriots given this country's history and legacy of racist betrayals? that is the question Roger Wilkins attempts to grapple with in this small volume.

It must be admitted that he proceeds to do so with a high level of literary skill. In a very businesslike fashion he lays out the strengths (mostly in developing the enduring political theories that today underwrite American freedoms) and weaknesses (mostly in their personal lives as slave holders and racist abusers) of the Virginia quartet of Mason, Washington, Madison, and Jefferson.

In the process of fighting against their own metaphorical perceptions of being treated like slaves by what they saw as the onerous policies of colonial England, these giants of American history thought about, mulled over, and were greatly conflicted morally by what they were doing to their own black slaves. But they were too dependent on the wealth and status slavery afforded them to be moved by this deep inherent and I believe fatally moral contradiction.

Wilkins casts such concerns aside as just another example of great men being limited by the social context and class imperatives of their times. However, I think this is too cute a rationalization by a half. After all, during this same period, both Brazil and England were giving up slavery and England was offering freedom to all blacks who fought against the American Revolutionaries. England was also the preeminent symbol of social status in the world at the time while Colonial America was a mere pretender to this throne. The path was wide open to the American Revolutionaries to define their society in any way they pleased. They were well aware that the contribution of slaves to the development of America was monumental. And yet, with conscious and malicious personal forethought they chose a profoundly racist way of life that clearly contradicted their neat and carefully worked out political theories. Those contradictions continue unabated today and are as much a part of the legacy of these men as is the U.S. Constitution itself. That Wilkins finds ways to minimize this fact is in itself very disturbing.

There is another reason this Wilkinsonian rationalization is disturbing and will not work: Each time in American history that there has been an opportunity to correct the defects in the "practice" of the American way of life, the U.S. has chosen to deny and further limit black access to the same freedoms granted whites. Even when they are granted they are often rolled back as was the case with Affirmative Action. In fact, it is difficult NOT to argue that it is precisely this contradiction that best defines America: not the bloated and overly exaggerated emphasis on freedoms granted in practice to whites and later carefully "grandfathered in on paper" to include blacks.

Although Wilkins mentions the betrayal of black revolutionaries at Bunker Hill, he fails to also mention the betrayal of them by the Federal Army of the North after the 200,000 black soldiers proved to be the decisive factor in winning the Civil War. Neither did he mention that black soldiers returning from WW-II were spit upon in their uniforms while the Nazi German prisoners of war were being treated like royalty. Nor did he mention that while the battlefields of Korea were flowing with black blood (as a result of McArthur's strategic debacles), back home in the U.S. these soldiers were being vilified and labeled as cowards. These betrayals have left deep and enduring scars that are still difficult for many black families to deal with. He stakes his claim to Black patriotism on the fact that slaves made monumental contributions to the development of this country even though they go unacknowledged. Isn't failing to acknowledge a group's contribution one of the best ways to dehumanize them?

Even though Professor Wilkin's memory is selective and short, many Blacks and Native American families remain deeply injured and still greatly troubled by America's consistent trail of betraying "in practice" its own highest "written" ideals. After 400 years, we can no loner be fooled, even by the slick pen of an "I have now arrived" Black professor (who taches at George Mason University no less!)).

Wilkin's appeal is that despite all of this, the experiment is finally beginning to work, and thus Blacks should have no problems being unvarnished patriots - his own life being the best example of this truth. Again, I believe being blinded by one's own personal success and being intoxicated with a particular moment in time is a dangerous and short-sighted way to read the tea leaves of American history, and certainly of America's future. The facts have a way of consistently jolting us back to reality by remaining otherwise. Three stars.

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A New Moral Calculus for our Heroes?

Once again, Dr. Wilkins has demonstrated his immense talents for mature, patriotic, deep thinking and eloquent writing. As he did in his autobiographical memoir he has again confronted the "mother" of all American problems; the beast that remains coiled in the nation's bosom: the history and practice of racism, and its companion and handmaiden, racist hypocrisy.

By unraveling the moral and existential ambiguity and complexity these issues set up in the personal lives of our four most revered forefathers (what he refers to as the Virginia quartet), he has peered through the dense jungle of patriotic myths and stared this beast squarely in the eyes.

By bringing more clearly into focus what they were thinking and how they acted on issues of race and slavery, Wilkins has demythologized Washington, Madison, Mason, and Jefferson, and in the process has forever elevated them above the plane of mere racist adulation and rationalization. He has done more. He has in the process "re-humanized" them, and has given us, not less, but more, reasons to revere them. For this feat alone he must be lauded. It is no mean trick to be able to accomplish this.

However, had he stopped there, I would have no qualms with this manuscript. But he tried to do more -- perhaps too much more.

Professor Wilkins' ultimate goal seemed to have been to square the circle between the immense theoretical contributions made by these men in the political sphere on the one hand, and the utter destructive legacy bequeathed to us as a result of their personal weaknesses in the social sphere, on the other.

Just as we still live under the political freedoms provided by the former, we also continue to live under the social destructiveness and scourges of the latter. Just as the Constitution is a direct legagy of these patriots, so to is the racism that we have come to know in everyday practice a direct result of their hypocrisy.

Despite failing at his goal, we must all be grateful to the author for the clarity with which he demonstrated through historical juxtaposition the contradictory (if not fatal) qualities in each of these founding patriots. He did it with grace, without even a hint of malice or bitterness and with great skill and honesty.

My concern is with the calculus he has used to try to revolve these human contradictions, the calculus with which he tried to square the circle: by adding them together. How reasonable it must have seemed to the author that the good in these men should, in the end "be made" to cancel out the bad.

But may I ask: of what good is it to raise the skeleton of slavery from the historical closet if it is only to be re-clothed in a different colored garment of the same old pedigree of exaggerated mythmaking? How easy it is to make such a mistake in a country where we desperately need more genuine heroes worthy of our adulation.

But, if history has taught us anything, it is that moral complexity and existential ambiguity cannot be reduced to a simple additive calculus: The good, even in our most revered heroes, will never quite completely cancel out the bad.

Unless, and until, theory is put into practice the good and the bad forever remain in different orbits. They remain in two different but parallel universes. Greatness is not to be found in the mere careful juxtaposition of good and evil, but in eliminating the latter, the evil.

Although each of these theoretical giants saw the handwriting on the wall: That is, conceptually they each knew that slavery, racism and freedom could not long coexist, and could even possibly serve to destroy this country.

Yet despite this, none among them had the moral courage to face this reality -- if only to possibly head it off. As a result, despite the lovely embroidery that Professor Wilkins has fashioned here, the Virginia quartet will forever remain theoretical giants and moral pigmies. Every American, and especially every Native and Black America must read this book. Five stars.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

An outspoken participant in the civil rights movement, Roger Wilkins served as Assistant Attorney General during the Johnson administration. In 1972 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize along with Bernstein and Herblock for his coverage of Watergate. Yet this black man, who has served the United States so well, feels at times an unwelcome guest here.

In Jefferson's Pillow, Wilkins returns to America's beginnings and the founding fathers who preached and fought for freedom, even though they owned other human beings and legally denied them their humanity. He asserts that the mythic accounts of the American Revolution have ignored slavery and oversimplified history until the heroes, be they the founders or the slaves in their service, are denied any human complexity.

Wilkins offers a thoughtful analysis of this fundamental paradox through his exploration of the lives of George Washington, George Mason, James Madison, and of course Thomas Jefferson. He discusses how class, education, and personality allowed for the institution of slavery, unravels how we as Americans tell different sides of that story, and explores the confounding ability of that narrative to limit who we are and who we can become.

An important intellectual history of America's founding, Jefferson's Pillow will change the way we view our nation and ourselves.

"We are obliged to judge because we are obliged to do better; to probe the flaws of our predecessors is to engage not in vindictive finger-pointing but to resist hubris and complacency in our own time. Wilkins' book has made a mirror of the past in which we glimpse our own shortcomings ?and perhaps even the means for transcending them." ?Philip Connors, In These Times (full review online)

"Wilkins makes a case for his opinions in sentences that enchant and inform. In its persuasive blend of logic and lyricism, Wilkins's language at its most potent is positively . . . Jeffersonian." ?Jabari Asim, Washington Post Book World (full review online)

With a sense of genuine curiosity Wilkins tried to avoid either condemning the founders too easily by modern standards or excusing too easily the contradictions of their slave ownership. Instead, by exploring the culture and atmosphere in which they grew up, he discovered how much slavery was an integral part of the Virginia society that enabled the founders to create the recipe for modern rights, equality and democracy. ?Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune (full article online)

"Wilkins, who describes himself as a 'deeply committed American,' is never less than a patriot here; someone indifferent about America could not write such a thoughtful book. He demythologizes the Founding Fathers, yet expands their greatness by placing it within the context of the times, as well as their flawed humanity." ?Boston Globe

"When the Founding Fathers were deciding whether to risk their lives and fortunes for their ideals, Benjamin Franklin remarked: 'We must all indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall hang separately.' In the years after their bold gamble for freedom, the hangman's noose played a far darker role in our republic, becoming the lynch mob's weapon of choice for denying African-Americans their inalienable rights. Liberty and freedom, repression and racism, these warring yet braided strands form the Gordian knot of the American experience: A land of visionary light entwined in the darkest recesses of human cruelty. Now comes Roger Wilkins like a modern-day Alexander to cut this knot." ?J. Peder Zane, Raleigh News and Observer

"This astonishing book by the 1980s antiapartheid leader Wilkins (a professor of history at George Mason University and Pulitzer-Prize winner) provides a brief, but tremendously incisive demythologizing of four Virginian founders?Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Mason (whose stature Wilkins justly elevates)?and their conflicted attitudes toward race, in the process of humanizing them and deepening our appreciation of the internal struggles involved in achieving their greatness, however flawed or incomplete. (There's nothing forced in this evaluation, as Wilkins acknowledges their enormous contribution to activists such as himself today.) Where others routinely excuse past figures or judge them by present standards, Wilkins exemplifies a subtler, sounder approach. Reaching back to England and Virginia in the 1600s, he briskly illuminates the historical, ideological, and socioeconomic contexts that made a burning concern for freedom not just compatible with slavery, but materially and psychologically dependent on it....His insight recalls James Baldwin, arguably the best we've ever had for appreciating the humanity of even the most flawed among us without yielding an inch of moral principle." ?Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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