A Theme Of Resistance In “Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl” And “The Confessions Of Nat Turner”
The focus of this week’s readings is of two moving stories of resistance in two vastly different ways to chattel slavery. The pain and suffering that these human beings were subjected to is jarring and the unbelievable trials they put themselves through to change their situation is astounding. One thing that was quite interesting to me was that while reading I could not help but immediately draw parallels to the current social and political climate we currently reside in here in America. While we don’t live in a country where chattel slavery exists, we still have humans being oppressed and treated differently because of the color of their skin or where they come from. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl reminds me of the plight of the Latino people, most of whom are refugees escaping dire situations in their homelands, who attempt to enter our country. And The Confessions of Nat Turner drew up flashes in my mind of rioting and backlash in major cities following the senseless killing of numerous young African American men.
On April 6, 2018 the Attorney General Jeff Sessions enacted a new zero-tolerance policy regarding the illegal entry into the United States by an alien. This policy applies to all adults, attempting to cross, with or without their children. This has resulted in thousands of children being taken from their parents as they await the lumbering US justice system to decide if they want to prosecute and deport these adults back to their homelands. Meanwhile the children are resettled here in the United States with relatives or shelters. As Jacobs says about not knowing the fate of her children, “As soon as she entered, I clung to her, and begged her to let me know whether my children were dead, or whether they were sold”. The amount of anguish and suffering that those under the oppression of chattel slavery very sensibly pushed enslaved persons to varying degrees of action. For Mrs. Jacobs it was running to be away from a man she could not be around for one minute longer. One could very easily see how somebody in a system of extreme oppression could be pushed to a vengeful and violent place.
The two-day saga of Nat Turner’s rebellion is an extremely moving piece of literature. It has been approximated that he and his rebellion killed around 60 white men, women, and children. In his confession, Nat claims that the heavens were sending him messages to “arise and prepare myself, and slay my enemies with their own weapons”. This use of violence as a means of achieving a political goal was what drew me to compare the events of Nat Turner’s rebellion to the protests and rioting following the outcome of several high-profile cases where an unarmed African American is murdered. As Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach states in her sociological essay “The Legitimation of Violence”, “Violence, regardless of whether it is labelled as such, is a common form of individual and collective activity. Some forms of violence, particularly those in-volving collectivities, can operate as effective mechanisms of maintenance and change of society”. Regardless of how one feels about violence, the effectiveness of protesting and rioting cannot be denied. If it were not for the non-stop news cycle of the riots in Baltimore following Freddie Grey’s death, I probably would have never known about how his life was tragically cut short by a false arrest. For even further evidence of the effectiveness of violence when you google “slave rebellions” Nat Turner’s Rebellion is one of the top results.
Studying history and reading passages like this encourages the ability to connect events through time and to take a panoramic view of the world. They also serve to remind us that our problems of our past, especially concerning race, are still extremely pertinent. While researching for this think piece I learned so much about our current affairs, especially concerning the crisis at the border, that I was ignorant to before.
