Phoenix Insurgent: The diseases of slavery and white citizenship
Sunday, October 01 2006 @ 01:06 PM PDT
Contributed by: Collin Sick
Views: 65
RaceIn one of the more interesting scenes in the smart alternate history mock-umentary, Confederate States of America, we watch a tv advertisement recruiting less than stellar white students into the exciting and expanding field of veterinary medicine - the care and treatment of chattel slaves. CSA explores a "what-if" history in which the South won the Civil War and slavery flourished throughout the entire country. Even the most undeserving white, we learn, can enjoy as a birthright of citizenship a position superior to every Black.
by Phoenix Insurgent
In one of the more interesting scenes in the smart alternate history mock-umentary, Confederate States of America, we watch a tv advertisement recruiting less than stellar white students into the exciting and expanding field of veterinary medicine - the care and treatment of chattel slaves. CSA explores a "what-if" history in which the South won the Civil War and slavery flourished throughout the entire country. Even the most undeserving white, we learn, can enjoy as a birthright of citizenship a position superior to every Black.
The 'diseases' of slavery
Once enrolled, the commercial promises, students will learn to treat the many disorders and dysfunctions peculiar to slaves, such as 'drapetomania'.
"Drapetomania" was a psychiatric diagnosis proposed in 1851 by Louisiana physician Samuel A. Cartwright to explain the tendency of black slaves to flee captivity. As some slave owners felt they were improving the lives of their slaves, they could not understand the slaves' desire to escape.
As such, Drapetomania is an important historical example of scientific racism. The term derives from the Greek δραπετης (drapetes, "a runaway [slave]") + μανια (mania, "madness, frenzy").
The diagnosis appeared in a paper published in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, where Dr. Cartwright argued that the tendency of slaves to run away from their captors was in fact a treatable medical disorder. His feeling was that with "proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented." Cartwright proposed whipping as the most effective treatment of this disorder. Amputation of the toes was also prescribed [1].
Cartwright also described another disorder, Dysaethesia Aethiopica, to explain the apparent lack of motivation exhibited by many slaves, which he also claimed could be cured by whipping.
Imagine that! The slavemaster's doctor recommends a good whipping as a cure to the slave's problems. It kind of reminds me of that scene in the new Jackass movie where they visit the leecher in India. Got a problem? Guess what the leecher recommends? That's right - leeches! And if the leech attaches to the skin and starts sucking blood then that's proof there was a problem in the first place. What else could it be, after all?
But, in this case it's much more sinister. Having deluded themselves into believing the lie of the mutually beneficial slave/slavemaster relationship and failing to understand the way in which they benefited from the exploitation of others, the slavemaster and most whites in general at the time could come up with no explanation other than a mental disorder for the peculiar tendency of slaves to flee slavery. Since the slave's natural condition was slavery, the argument went, only a mentally ill slave would seek to escape to a freedom to which she was unsuited.
The obvious fact that one didn't see many folks of any color (especially whites) fleeing into slavery seems to have provoked little controversy, though it does undermine the basic notion of insanity as a cause for the slave's rejection of his condition. The insanity defense, such as it was, was not limited to slaves, of course. We know that abolitionists, such as John Brown (as I have discussed recently) were similarly labeled 'insane' for their anti-slavery views by the system's defenders.
'Excited Delirium': Today's Drapetomania
And so it is today. While whites today demonstrate the same aversion to going to prison that they once did to becoming slaves, they nevertheless cling to all kinds of bizarre notions to explain the over-representation of Blacks and other people of color in the country's overflowing prisons. Are minorities more inclined towards crime? Is it that they are merely poorer and therefore more likely to commit crime? Is it the parents' fault? Any excuse to avoid the inevitable conclusion that the system today remains rooted in the exploitation of people of color and that being white means avoiding prison just as being non-white means being targeted by the prison system.
Which brings us to a very interesting AP article forwarded to me by a comrade of mine Monday. Entitled, Delirium - or police brutality?, the article explores the increasing tendency of police forces across the country to explain away their murders with medical diagnoses of the victims.
Dim 1 Oct - 18:11 par mihou