Inasmuch
as the architects of American society are considered bastions of liberal
democracy and individual freedom, these intellectuals- many of whom were products
of the Enlightenment- have been benefactors of capitalist
democracy's follies; Jefferson, Franklin, and to a milder degree, Crèveoeur, fostered slavery, discrimination, and class struggle as much as they sponsored
democratic ideology. Although Crèveoeur's view on labor during pre-industrial
America may be attributed to his naivete and his experiences of European social
development, Jefferson and Franklin, for different reasons altogether, were
proponents of physically and psychologically crippling ideals. The accounts of Phyllis Wheatley and Judith
Sargent Murray, writing from the margins of society, demonstrate how a society constructed around tenets advocated
by Jefferson and Franklin have obstructed the advancement of their respective minority populations. The characterizations formulated about
society, especially the vision of what was to become of post-revolutionary America,
was exclusionary in regard to the rights and degree of civic participation of
women, African Americans, and the disabled.
Crèveoeur's naivete doesn't present itself textually through his letter 'What Is an American,' but through
the implications of omission:
It is not composed, as in Europe, of great Lords who possess everything, and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe. (596)
Defining a vision of America
through a series of negations, Crèveoeur evades a logic that would explain why that which is described in these
negations does not exist; the process of industrialization and technological
advances such as textile manufacturing, particularly of Britain, had begun much
sooner than that of America, which would justify the lack of wealthy
entrepreneurs and individuals accumulating capital through trade in comparison
with the European economy. The agrarian dependence of early Americans localized
economies and prevented the employment of thousands by a single corporation or
individual. As in all core nations of the world economy, plutocracy, judicial
systems, and an expanding discrepancy between the classes has since been
established in the United States. Deregulated markets advocated by the marriage
of capitalism and democracy has ensured this discrepancy between the classes,
the genesis of which lies in industrialization.
"We
are a people of cultivators, scattered over an immense territory, communicating
with each other by means of good roads and navigable rivers, united by the
silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws, without dreading
their power because they are equitable" (596). Crèveoeur uses the first
person pronoun "we" to describe a collective consciousness of
American society, claiming that state laws are equitable, and citizens need not
fear their power. Dread of state power, however, is of no concern to the
marginalized because the exclusionary laws of government are illegitimate,
especially to Christians such as Phyllis Wheatley who posit the inseparability
of faith and freedom in her letter 'The Natural Rights of Negroes:'
...the divine Light is chasing away the thick Darkness which broods over the land of Africa; and the Chaos which has reign'd so long, is converting into beautiful Order, and [r]eveals more and more clearly, the glorious Dispensation of civil and religious Liberty, which are so inseparably united, that there is little or no Enjoyment of one without the other...God has implemented a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom... (764)
The moral obligations then are to
the implementation of civil liberty, inseparable with God's law. When examining
Wheatley's letter, it becomes clear that Crèveoeur is ignorant of the
government's immoral monopolization of freedom in his claim that the people
exist under equitable law. Freedom is not dispensed by the will of government,
but by that of divine rule. This "we" espoused by Crèveoeur is so ironically
exclusive in its failure to recognize the marginalized. The laws were not equitable, and Phyllis Wheatley,
regardless of her religious justifications for the natural distribution of
freedom and liberty, recognized this. Slavery cannot exist in a society where
laws are equitable; Crèveoeur's claim of equitable laws therefore either excludes
African Americans as part of the true citizenry of America, or does not see
slavery and racism as a potential conflict, jeopardizing his own morality. Did
Crèveoeur, when he wrote "The rich and the poor are not so far removed
from each other as they are in Europe," have slavery in mind? If he
considered individuals who owned nothing and were oppressed because of their
race as part of the poor, then is not this discrepancy just as wide as the one
existent in Britain at the time?
Although
Crèveoeur may be forgiven for his naïveté, Franklin's societal observations,
which are smugly racist, inherently sexist, and discriminative toward the
disabled, contain no such innocence. The commodification of humans, through
both slavery and labor, is necessary for a functional society according to the
subtext of Information to Those Who Would
Remove to America. Dependability on labor spawned what many postulate as the
American middle class, while simultaneously instituting a downward social
mobility through proletarianization (as seen in the growing disparity between
the lower class and upper class), as fewer and fewer became increasingly
wealthier while a great percentage became increasingly more impoverished, as in
the British bourgeoisie. Franklin's characterization of early American laborers,
although before American industrialism, is founded upon a generalization of
both slaves and slave owners which contests Marx's theory of proletarianization;
Franklin would have one trust in the societal utility of perpetual dependence
upon labor. Information to Those Who
Would Remove to America equates contentment and individual worth with
industriousness:
They are pleased with the observation of a Negro, and frequently mention it, that Boccarorra (meaning the white men) make de black man workee, make de horse workee, make de ox workee, make eberyting workee; only de hog. He, de hog, no workee; he eat, he drink, he walk about, he go to sleep when he please; he libb like a gentleman. (464)
Not only does Franklin make a
generalization of American slave owners, but supposes that slaves,
comprehending the necessary nature of work, see that the idle hog in the end
will be "cut up" (464), or put more bluntly- one who would rather
live as a gentleman, resting idly, is destined for death. Because of Franklin's
disdain for idleness, he necessitates both the slave's perpetual bondage and
the citizen's constant labor in order to avoid the fate of a slaughtered, fattened
farm animal. Franklin's discourse involves labor's subjugation of the
individual as a necessity for a satisfactory existence, while supposing that
society has already taken this for granted. The dystopia of a society perpetually
avoiding death through industriousness may seem undemocratic, but it's the
reality for the contemporary American working class, rightly prophesized by
Franklin: "In short, America is the land of labor..." (465). The
totalitarian prospects of a labor-based nation where "...it is rather a
general happy mediocrity that prevails" (463) suggests that existence and
happiness are dependent upon labor, and a condescending view that society readily
accepts this, despite institutionalized slavery, the oppression of women, and
an entire class of individuals who are unable to fight against idleness because
of disabilities. What then was the true consciousness of society? Did a general
happy mediocrity truly prevail? Is one right to regard the margins of society as
inferior?
When
Franklin paints a picture of general contentment of American society, he
implies the illegitimacy of women; the necessary commitment to labor
presupposes a satisfactory existence, despite woman's lack of participation in
most professions. How then are women to be content if they cannot have equal participation
in most professions, if one's worth and contentment rely on perpetual labor?
Franklin's discourse is thus ultimately sexist. Although women may refrain from
idleness through domesticity, this bondage to it negates authentic freedom
utilized by males. So, although men exercise some freedom in choosing
professions (while simultaneously enslaved to their labor), women are excluded.
As much as African Americans were enslaved physically, women were enslaved
ideologically (more so than men by labor). In her essay 'On the Equality of the
Sexes,' Judith Sargent Murray affirms the collective discontent of women's
bondage to the supposed domestic sphere: "Is the needle and kitchen
sufficient to employ the operations of a soul thus organized? I should conceive
not." (727) Furthermore, Murray recognizes the insult this domestic
bondage is to women when she claims that "Nay, it is a truth that those
very departments leave the intelligence principle vacant, and at liberty for
speculation" (727). Murray raises the conflict within a religious context,
making a scathing remark against those oppressors that would have women
enslaved to what was to most men their natural realm:
Should it still be vociferated, "Your domestic employments are sufficient"-I would calmly ask, is it reasonable that a candidate for immortality, for the joys of heaven, an intelligent being, who is to spend an eternity of contemplating the works of Deity, should at present be so degraded as to be allowed no other ideas than those which are suggested by the mechanism of a pudding, or the sewing seams of a garment? Pity that all such censurers of female improvement do not go one step further and deny their future existence; to be consistent they surely ought. (729)
Although the text is overt in its
mockery, Murray refuses to rest upon the hyperbolic, exclusive, and deluded terminology
that comprises the Declaration of Independence, while scrutinizing the concerns
which Franklin omits when he claims that "...it is rather a general happy
mediocrity that prevails." To Murray, all men are created equal to distribute
oppression over the women subject to them, which is contrary to the happy
mediocrity of Franklin.
Of
all the absurdities inherent within the texts of those subjects who defined the
general consciousness of privileged Americans, Thomas Jefferson's discourse on
African Americans requires the least amount of critical examination of both his
blatant ideology and its subtext to discover overt intolerances, especially
within Notes on the State of Virginia:
"But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the
level of plain narration; never seen even an elementary trait of painting or
sculpture" (1685). Jefferson fails to relegate African American literature
and art as degenerate because he presents it as virtually non-existent. Even
the Third Reich provided legitimacy to Entartete
Kunst, in its denunciation and ultimate prohibition of it while Jefferson refused to recognize African
American art at all, evident within both his dismissal of Wheatley as a poet
and his textual implications that result in its apparent illegitimacy (1686).
If
Wheatley's letter to Reverend Samson Occom, The
Natural Rights of Negroes, is at or below the level of plain narration,
then Jefferson's writing itself is relegated to plain narration when subjected
to his own criterion. Jefferson's text would be satire if not for his genuine endorsement
of the discrimination rampant within it. As for the elementary traits of
painting and sculpture, it may be that the concerns of black intellectuals had
taken a perspective closer to reason than that of Jefferson and his peers; when
Jefferson claims that in reason and imagination, African Americans are inferior
to whites, his observations are so below the level of elementary as to reveal his
text as a mere abortion of immature thought. It is ironic that when Jefferson
claims that "To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations,
even where the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical
glasses, to analysis by fire or by solvents" (1686), his generalizations
about African Americans display no scholarly rigor whatsoever. The perspective from
which Jefferson casts racial judgments down from renders his claims as nothing
more than a construction of anti-scientific ideology. Although appearing to hold
reason as virtuous, Jefferson's claims cannot hold in the face of the cultural
narratives of African American literature, both before and after his Notes on the State of Virginia.
Although
it's difficult to gauge the collective consciousness of eighteenth
century American society, textual examination of the narratives of both slave
and slave owners can aid in a historical archaeology of inequality. Ultimately, ideologies and
historical tendencies can be exposed through analysis of the works of
Crèveoeur, Franklin, and Jefferson, and how the effects of the principles they
fostered are still observable in contemporary American culture through racism,
discrimination, and class struggle. An analysis of the subtext that dominates
the writings of those aforementioned, help shape a general understanding of the
mischaracterizations of marginalized individuals and their reaction against
what amounts to negligence and ignorance on the part of the apparent majority.
Morality, whether divinely ordained or as a human construct which suppresses
the subconscious desire for tyranny of individuals over society, seems to be
relative when examining the irrational, unfounded claims of Jefferson for
example, which were readily published and taken for granted during his
lifetime. And will the cultural values of the twenty-first century be viewed as
illogical and unfounded as those of slave owners and racist systems constructed
in order to perpetuate the false notion of white supremacy? As long as a war is waged on behalf of the marginalized against the tyranny of their
oppressors, an inevitable historical dialectic will revolutionize that which is rooted to injustice: the delusion of an exceptional America.
