Dismantling Four Myths About The Middle Passage
[Music]
i
am a romantic
i love love i love affection i love
passion the problem however with
romanticization is that it causes the
truth to oftentimes evaporate into
myths and untruths for instance i’m also
very passionate about the middle passage
and middle passage studies the middle
passage
was that oceanic space between west
africa
and north america the caribbean and
brazil it was the second leg
of the transatlantic slave trade the
most horrendous movement of human beings
in the history of the world
and so when i was in high school
i didn’t learn about the transatlantic
slave trade i didn’t learn about the
middle passage and the truth of the
matter is you probably didn’t
as well and even if you did it was
probably very impotent why
because it’s been romanticized it’s the
horror
of the trade was taken away from our
history books
and so today i’d like to demythologize
four myths about the transatlantic slave
trade the first myth
is africans all look alike the second
africans chose to come to america the
third myth
is
africans in diaspora do not belong here
and the fourth myth is
that the middle passage was not that bad
africans don’t all look alike
i know that because oftentimes even
though i am african-american i have dark
skin and i have dreadlocks
i am oftentimes assumed to be jamaican
or west indian i remember
one time i was going into jamaica and as
i was walking down the runway on my way
to get my luggage i hear this person
hollering in the background
roster yo rasta the assumption was that
because
i have locks then i’m rastafarian
rastafarian is a
rastafarianism is a religion that
has its origins in
jamaica and one of the tenants is
smoking weed and
you guessed it this guy assumed that i
was a rastafarian and wanted to sell me
some weed
so when he approaches me and he makes
the offers i declined it and i say to
him no my brother i don’t need the weed
because
i brought my own well just kidding
i didn’t bring my own and
i’m not rastafarian and all africans
don’t look alike and that’s because
these men and women on slave ships came
from different ethnic groups they were
fulani they were
ashante they were yoruba they were
mandinga
and they all not only did they have
different languages but some of them had
different cultures they were not the
same
and likewise african americans and
people of african descent
are not a monolith we’re not all
just alike number two
africans chose to come to america
there’s no indication that these maybe
two brothers were standing on the west
coast of africa saying you know what i
want to go
to america and be a slave i want to give
up the freedom here i want to forget
all the languages that i speak i want to
see my father’s soul then my mother
abused and my sister
assaulted i want to become the brunt of
all sorts of
racist epithets and jokes that’s not
what happened
our four parents were ripped from their
communities from their villages they
were
stolen and brought here i remember i was
doing an article
on the middle passage and i came across
this narrative about a nine-month-old
baby that was brutalized and murdered on
the ship
the name of the ship was the blackjack
and the captain’s name was marshall
and so the baby is crying because we
don’t really know because it texts us
and tells but we do know this
that while the baby’s crying and and not
eating
the captain begins to beat the baby with
a cat
nine tail now a cat nine tail was
a instrument of punishment was about
maybe nine and a half ten inches long
had nine pieces of leather at the end
and oftentimes they would tie knots in
it
so that when it struck your skin if it
was ripped backward pull your skin off
so imagine now this captain beating this
nine-month-old baby who’s crying at
sea possibly because she’s colicky
and and and he beats this baby with this
cat and ninetale then ties
a three pound log around her neck and he
accidentally dropped the baby the baby’s
neck is broken
and she dies and then the captain calls
the mother and wants the mother to throw
this baby overboard and when she refuses
to throw this baby overboard
the captain flocks the mother and throws
the baby overboard anyway
neither the baby nor the mother chose to
come to america and likewise most of
our ancestors did not choose to come
here myth number three
africans in diaspora don’t belong here
when we hear that statement it’s a dog
whistle is
we live in a culture now where people
are telling other people of color to go
back to the country
from which they came the a priori
assumption behind that
statement is that black people have not
contributed to the american culture when
in fact
we built most of the buildings here if
you if you know anything about harvard
university princeton university yale
university they were built by black
people they couldn’t attend but they
built the buildings
nine of the first presidents of
princeton held slaves while they were in
office the first 13
presidents of the united states
held enslaved people while they were in
office
the transatlantic slave trade
was a horrible experience and so when
these people came here we did contribute
myth number four the middle passage
wasn’t really that bad well slave ships
were torture chambers and oftentimes
because of the fear of the unknown
the fear of the brutality many africans
committed suicide
there are people who jump overboard
as a form of resistance they felt if
they took their own lives that they
self-murdered they would prevent their
captors from using their skills and
talents you may remember
the blockbuster movie the black panther
the
the the the the antagonist eric
killmonger
he makes this statement he’d rather jump
overboard
and die in the sea like his ancestors
rather than be a slave can you imagine
death over slavery that you would rather
take your life than be a slave and yet
that’s what happened
the brutality was so bad that when a
slave ship called to marlborough 100
people were thrown overboard because of
an
insurrection another slip called the
brillante
600 africans were chained to the anchor
and the anchor was dropped
to the bottom of the ocean and these
people died at sea
there’s another ship called the kent
where the captain not only beat and
brutalized 49 people but he shot them he
hanged them
and then mis dismembered their bodies
and threw them in the ocean
that’s what it was like to be on the
slave ship many of these men
and women were whipped so badly that
they
even bled to death some of them were
thrown overboard as
shark bait to prevent insurrections
and yet if we understand it from an
african perspective suicide was
possibly a form of triumph dr derek bell
former professor of law at harvard says
that triumph
is not always in the toppling of a
system
sometimes triumph is in the doing
it’s in the resisting it’s in the
martyrdom
that triumph prevails when
the oppressed take the power back from
the oppressor
so it’s important that you understand
this and you can share this with your
friends one
that africans and african-americans have
fought in every single war
since we’ve been here in 1619. we have
contributed
economically technologically and
spiritually to the growth of this
country
and every other group that came here
from the british to the spanish to the
germans
to the irish they came here on their own
but as for we
for us for us african americans we were
brought here
involuntarily we were stolen from our
homes
and we did not come here by choice
thank you