Talk:The Slave Community

New article

Just transferred this article from my sandbox to this namespace, been working on it for about a week. Dmoon1 08:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I buy the notion that this was one of the first books (historical biographies) told from the point of view of a slave, if it was published in the 1970s. Am I misunderstanding the claim? Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 03:08, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think you are. It was one of the first history books that offers an interpretation of the history of slavery using mostly sources written by slaves. There were numerous autobiographies written in the 19th century by runaway slaves, and these are what The Slave Community is based on. The fugitive slave narratives are not considered histories. Up until the 1970s, history was interpreted using mostly sources written by white slaveowners. The result was an unbalanced interpretation of history that only favored the voices and opinions of those who owned slaves, not the slaves themselves. Dmoon1 03:14, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, it's a little clearer now - I'm still curious what the "white slaveowner counterparts" to Frederick Douglass and such were...purely from a "common sense" POV, it seems like the average person today can think of 3-4 slvaery books written by slaves/ex-slaves, but I doubt any of them could name one written by a plantation owner. What's the "source" (unrelated to this publishers' claims) that books before the 70s used "white" slaveowner narratives? Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 09:38, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, these aren't the publisher's claims, it historiographic fact (read the section on the historiographical background). The most influential studies of slavery prior to the 1970s were based on white sources, i.e., plantation records; letters, diaries, and journals written by slaveowners; and southern periodicals such as DeBow's Review. Dmoon1 14:59, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Historiography

The second sentence claims it is a historiography, i.e. a book about how history is written. I am sure it has elements of this, most histories do, but if it largely uses slave narratives then it is just a history.--SabreBD (talk) 00:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Straw man

I think this article creates a straw man in its description of what people believed before this book was written. It refers to previous scholarship that suggests African American slaves were docile and submissive "Sambos" who enjoyed the benefits of a paternalistic master-slave relationship on southern plantations. I don't doubt that such scholarship existed, but it is presented here as if this was the mainstream view of slavery until the book was published. Has no one heard of abolitionism?

I think the text that accompanies a later picture puts a similar point but without such overblown claims. It says Blassingame argues that the loyal and devoted slave was not as common as historians previously believed.

Yaris678 (talk) 08:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't matter as i understand it, the point is scientific in that it contradicts (many) earlier historians. and it is about seeing the slave as an equally complex personality as the white, when this somewhat pretentious but straightforward work provoked so many reactions you can tell that was still needed. my only reaction was: why did anyone complain over it? altho the stereotype is not as familiar overhere(in europe), for example dutch runaways in surinam became and stayed an actual indignous populace. we never harboured the illusion anyone would like to be a slave, altho the same argument was made they were 'suit'. also refering earlier failing experiments with native americans, however i think that is more simply explained as culturally acquainted with slavery.(damn now i am a slave, not wtf what now again do these perverts.) 24.132.171.225 (talk) 10:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I am not objecting to the idea that the book contradicted many earlier histories. I am objecting to the idea that these earlier histories formed an orthodoxy, as is necessary for the book to be considered as revisionism. To be fair I should probably have quoted the full sentence: The Slave Community is a revisionist study challenging previous scholarship that suggests African American slaves were docile and submissive "Sambos" who enjoyed the benefits of a paternalistic master-slave relationship on southern plantations. But even without the claim to revisionism, the sentence still could be read to imply that these previous histories were the orthodoxy. As far as I can see, we should make two claims for the value of this book:

1. It developed history through examination of sources written by the enslaved and the formally enslaved, rather than the previous main sources, which were documents written by slave owners, white abolitionists and other white people generally.
2. It contradicted those historians who were interpreting history to imply that African American slaves were docile and submissive "Sambos" who enjoyed the benefits of a paternalistic master-slave relationship on southern plantations.

Yaris678 (talk) 11:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

offensive and pointless language

"there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves other than the Sambo."

that phrase was pointless and offensive, i took out 'other than the sambo', and i think it reads just as well and has lost no information nor meaning. Decora (talk) 13:43, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Decora, that is not the only point in the article where the word sambo is used but you have a good point. I had assumed that sambo was a racial term meant to imply child-like obedience. But I have just clicked on the link to sambo (racial term) and this doesn’t get a mention. Perhaps it would help if we had input from someone who has read the book. Is it a word the author uses? Does he define it to mean child-like obedience? This is implied in the article by the association with words like infantilise but it is never really explained. Yaris678 (talk) 14:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I have got The Slave Community out of the library and yes - sambo is one of three stereotypes Blassingame identifies. This is actually covered in the article in the section on personality types. However, the section is nearly half way through a lengthy article and the word Sambo has been used many times by then. Perhaps the best approach would be to place the section on personality types nearer the top. However, the current section works well in other ways. Perhaps linking the word Sambo to that section, rather than the article sambo (racial term). I would also put the identification of the three stereotypes right at the top of the article. Yaris678 (talk) 18:16, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Done. Yaris678 (talk) 18:29, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Inaccuracy

Article claims that prior to 1972, the "testimony of the enslaved" was ignored. See http://www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/vfssp.html which details the recordings made by the Library of Congress well before that year.John Paul Parks (talk) 04:57, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

That is referring not to archives or primary source publications but to the use of that testimony in academic monographs. Up until the 1960s and early 1970s, the two main sources of "testimon[ies] of the enslaved" were slave narratives, which historians had often ignored because they assumed they were biased through their collecting, editing, and publication by abolitionists, and the WPA interviews with former slaves, which you refer to. The latter were recorded over a half-century after the fact by people who were mostly young children when slavery ended. Also, there was a bias on the part of the interviewee reflected in studies which showed that the stories told downplayed the harshness of slavery when told to a white interviewer and vice versa. Either way, the point holds up in the context of the article, these testimonies were largely ignored by academic historians until this period. Natsteel (talk) 02:16, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

N.B. the sentence was removed on the 5th of March.

I basically agree with Natsteel. I also think the statement is effectively a summary of the third paragraph of the section, which has plenty of sources. Yaris678 (talk) 12:16, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

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WP:URFA/2020

I am reviewing this article as part of WP:URFA/2020, an initiative to review the oldest featured articles to determine if they still meet the featured article criteria. I am concerned that this article might not meet the criteria for the following reasons:

• The "Methodology and sources" section is almost exclusively cited to the book, leading to WP:PRIMARY and WP:OR concerns.
• There are lots of inline citations to the book while there are six possible sources listed in "Further reading". Is it possible to incorporate these sources as inline citations?
• There is a very long criticism section, which is usually frowned upon in Wikipedia articles because of WP:NPOV concerns. Considering the topic of the article, this section might be necessary, but perhaps it does not need to be this long and detailed?

Those are my concerns. Is anyone interested in responding to the above or fixing up the article? Z1720 (talk) 23:16, 14 April 2023 (UTC)