We begin our discussion by allowing Harriet Jacobs to describe a brief portion of her experiences and interactions in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl – using her own words and writings.
My grandmother had, as much as possible, been a mother to her orphan grandchildren. By perseverance and unwearied industry, she was now mistress of a snug little home, surrounded with the necessaries of life. She would have been happy could her children have shared them with her. There remained but three children and two grandchildren, all slaves. Most earnestly did she strive to make us feel that it was the will of God: that He had seen fit to place us under such circumstances; and though it seemed hard, we ought to pray for contentment.
It was a beautiful faith, coming from a mother who could not call her children her own. But I, and Benjamin, her youngest boy, condemned it. We reasoned that it was much more the will of God that we should be situated as she was. We longed for a home like hers. There we always found sweet balsam for our troubles. She was so loving, so sympathizing! She always met us with a smile, and listened with patience to all our sorrows. She spoke so hopefully, that unconsciously the clouds gave place to sunshine. There was a grand big oven there, too, that baked bread and nice things for the town, and we knew there was always a choice bit in store for us.
But, alas! even the charms of the old oven failed to reconcile us to our hard lot. Benjamin was now a tall, handsome lad, strongly and gracefully made, and with a spirit too bold and daring for a slave. My brother William, now twelve years old, had the same aversion to the word master that he had when he was an urchin of seven years. I was his confidant. He came to me with all his troubles. I remember one instance in particular. It was on a lovely spring morning, and when I marked the sunlight dancing here and there, its beauty seemed to mock my sadness. For my master, whose restless, craving, vicious nature roved about day and night, seeking whom to devour, had just left me, with stinging, scorching words; words that scathed ear and brain like fire. O, how I despised him! I thought how glad I should be, if some day when he walked the earth, it would open and swallow him up, and disencumber the world of a plague.
When he told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in everything; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his, never before had my puny arm felt half so strong.
So deeply was I absorbed in painful reflections afterwards, that I neither saw nor heard the entrance of any one, till the voice of William sounded close beside me. "Linda," said he, "what makes you look so sad?
I love you. O, Linda, isn't this a bad world? Everybody seems so cross and unhappy. I wish I had died when poor father did."
I told him that everybody was not cross, or unhappy; that those who had pleasant homes, and kind friends, and who were not afraid to love them, were happy. But we, who were slave-children, without father or mother, could not expect to be happy. We must be good; perhaps that would bring us contentment.
(http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/jacobs.html#jac25)
Before we can discuss whether American democracy is good or bad in the abstract we must understand whether or not democracy should exist. The current narrative of democracy assistance is one that takes an ahistorical starting point that glosses over its past impurities – what is needed is a radical historicisation of democracy
Hobson ‘9
[Christopher Hobson, a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, UK, “Beyond the End of History: The Need for a `Radical Historicisation' of Democracy in International Relations”, Millennium - Journal of International Studies 2009, http://mil.sagepub.com/] soap
It has been argued that the contingency … unique and rare form of rule.
The history of democracy is a racial one because American democracy is a white democracy. It is not a coincidence that the Declaration of independence was written on the back drop of one of the most brutal denials of human liberty and dignity this world has ever seen. For this reason, Savon and I find it necessary to present the framework for this round as who best performs a methodology for deconstructing civil society. The enslaved black body should be the center of our discussion because it represents the foundation of American democracy.
Slavery created the very possibility for American democracy. The concept of the “white nation” bracketed off the black body from relevance giving a cause for white racialized interventionist messianism. White racialized identity hidden beneath white nationalism of representative democracy is the condition of possibility for US interventionism. The cultural paranoia and consensus building based off of this paranoia of whiteness is what fuels our messianism in other countries.
Martinot 2003 [Steve, lecturer at San Francisco State University in the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs, “The Cultural Roots of Interventionism in the US,” Social Justice Vol. 30, No. 1 (2003), pp. 19-20] soap
American nationalism took a slightly … violently enforced allegiance to it.
Thus Savon and I advocate the recognition of the Black Body as the foundation of Civil Society en route to a discussion of the topic.
Civil society maps itself by the reconfiguration of rights through freedom – maintaining its position of anti-blackness. This constructs America’s benevolent hegemony of coherence. What is needed is the radical injection of society’s incoherence, the ‘wretched of the earth’ the politics of the black body with a gesture towards the disconfiguration of civil society.
Wilderson, 03 professor of African American Studies at University of California, Irvine, 2003 (Frank, A. B. Dartmouth College (Government/Philosophy); MFA Columbia University (Fiction Writing); Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley (Rhetoric/Film Studies), “The Prison Slave as Hegemony's (Silent) Scandal”, Social Justice, Vol. 30 Issue 2, p18-27) blh
Without the textual categories of dress, diet, … be pursued to the death.
Our ethics of refusal to blindly pledge allegiance to the flag is the first and most critical step towards liberation. We must create an alternate political structure that must refuse to grant credence to the current structure of governance and must be rooted in the ethics of refusal
Martinot 2005 (Steve, adjunct professor at San Francisco State University, “Pro-Democracy and the Ethics of Refusal,” Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 19, No. 2)
In a system in which humans … there is nowhere else to turn.
The current debate community is poisoned by whiteness. We are taught to argue as if the world is given the luxury of treating life and death as a game. This abstraction from systematic problems teaches. us to ignore the voices of the marginalized. The only solution is to infuse the debate community with perspectives and voices form the underside of history.
Wise, anti-racist activist and speaker, 2008.
(Tim., B.A. from Tulane University in political science., White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son., pg 32-36). ef
The reason I call this process … other words, that I was white.
The detached stance of the policy maker in debate divorces us from true advocacy and is one of the most debilitating failures of contemporary education. Such as stance is linked to normative practices used to produce and maintain multiple networks of oppression.
Reid-Brinkley ‘8 [Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley, "THE HARSH REALITIES OF “ACTING BLACK”: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND STYLE" pg. 118-120] soap
Mitchell observes that the stance of the …relevant to their rhetorical stance.
