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In the novel "Go Set a Watchman," Jean-Louise and her uncle are having a conversation about the causes of the Civil War and her uncle says, "not much more than five per cent of the South's population ever saw a slave, much less owned one." Is there any truth to that? (self.AskHistorians)

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[–]Kiltmanenator -19ポイント-18ポイント  (14子コメント)

not much more than five per cent of the South's population ever saw a slave

Is the allegedly racist implication supposed to be that slaves (black people) do not count as "the South's population"?

If so, that's a bit pedantic if the context of the discussion is "how many white people saw or owned slaves"? I mean, people are very imprecise in their language, but I don't see how it's "racist".

Edit: I'm only commenting on this part of the quote. I'm not sure if the allegations of racism are based more soundly on another part of that quote.

[–]SchighSchagh 20ポイント21ポイント  (2子コメント)

The quote doesn't specify the "South's white population", so it's definitely racist to imply that the 40% of slaves don't count.

[–]Kiltmanenator 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

I'm not talking about OP, I'm talking about the Go Set A Watchman quote. Sorry if there was a mixup.

When someone asks "what percentage of the population saw or owned slaves" they don't feel the need to specify "of the white population" because if you include blacks in the population count for the purpose of the question then, well, of course, a large portion of the black southerners would have seen slaves...because they were slaves....and large portion of black southerners would not have owned slaves....because they were slaves. Now you're asking totally different questions, and you'll get totally different answers.

Now, I've never seen anyone interested in knowing "What percentage of the TOTAL southern population (white AND black) saw or owned slaves"?. If that question has never been asked, why is it reasonable to lambast the other, simpler (albeit less pedantically specific) question as "racist"?

If anything, the lack of specificity takes away whatever small portion of free blacks in the south owned slaves. Now that's racial erasure.

it's definitely racist to imply that the 40% of the slaves don't count.

I don't see how it's implying that they don't count as people, but rather they don't "count" for the purpose of clarity. The quote/question refers to two things:

A) Who saw slaves?

B) Who owned slaves?

A) When someone says "X% of the southern population saw slaves*", it's abundantly clear that blacks are excluded from the queried population not out of a deliberate desire to erase identity or as a manifestation of implicit bias.

The obvious subtext of such a statement or question would not include whether or not southern blacks ever saw slaves. The overwhelming majority of southern blacks were slaves, so they obviously saw slaves. No reasonable reader could possibly imagine a person asking that question would actually want to know how many southern blacks saw slaves.

Is it "definitely racist to imply" that the overwhelming majority of southern blacks saw slaves? Because that is what that statement/question does by not specifying "of the white population".

B) It's essentially the same issue for the issue of ownership, with one small difference. When you assume that your listeners aren't being willfully obtuse and looking for something to be offended by, you feel comfortable asking questions like ""X% of the southern population owned slaves" without specifying that you don't want to include southern blacks. The overwhelming majority of southern blacks were slaves, and therefore could not own them. In the totally inoffensive spirit of clarification, the black population is excluded from such a statement because to include them would skew the numbers on the prevalence of slaveholding. If 40% of the population cannot own slaves I certainly don't want to count them when I'm looking for slaveholding statistics.

Is it "definitely racist to imply" that the overwhelming majority of southern blacks didn't own slaves? Because that is what that statement/question does by not specifying "of the white population".

It's like asking: "What percentage of the global population can give birth?". No one has to specify "of females" because it ought to be clear to everyone who understands the question that the questioner is not interested in a number that includes males. It's simply assumed that the interested in party wants to know about the fertility females.

Now, the only people that are actually excluded by not specifying "white people" are free southern blacks. What percentage of them owned slaves? Does the inquirer want to know? Is a lack of specificity racist because it "erases the identity" of free, slaveholding blacks?

There is a huge lack of charity being extended to someone who simply omitted "of the white population" out of a rather reasonable expectation to not be pilloried for assuming the reader knew what they meant by it.

If I ask "How many died during the Rape of Nanking?", is it racist to not specify that I'm not asking about the Japanese soldiers? Am I saying that they "don't count" and denying the personhood of the entire Japanese nation?

How many similarly racist statements can we find strewn throughout the body of published history book? Shall we take every historian to task for not hitching a string of qualifiers and specifications to every line of prose? I'm away from my library at the moment, but I bet that with an afternoon's work I could, using the same logic, find plenty of problematic statements.

How does it enrich our understand of history to abandon the ability to "read between the lines" when approaching questions or statements concerning the past?

[–]jschooltigerModerator | Shipbuilding and Logistics | British Navy 1770-1830 18ポイント19ポイント  (2子コメント)

It's racist in the same way that saying "no one survived Custer's Last Stand" is racist. It denies the personhood of an entire group of people.

[–]queenofthedamnbirds 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

I've been looking for a good way to articulate this argument, and your analogy is perfect; thank you! :)

[–]Kiltmanenator 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

A statement like that is factually inaccurate, of course, but which message is it more likely to impart upon someone?

A)"Everyone died, literally everyone!"

B)"The Sioux aren't people"

C) "The last stand of Custer involved all of Custer's men dying."

History books are full of statements made on the basis of assumptions about shared knowledge and historical context. While historians (and we, for that matter) should always strive for specificity and making our communication ironclad, is there no limit? Is there no point at which it's simply better for everyone to just stop, and extend the charity of confidence towards the recipient of our communication by assuming they know what we mean?

For example, would you demand a historian or layperson amend how they discuss the following three scenarios? Would you say they are denying personhood if they did not?

  • If I say "No one survived Baba Yar", am I denying the personhood of the entire German people? Surely you won't disagree that most everyone who understands the historical context knows that it was Germans who did the slaughtering. Does this nearly assured, shared knowledge about the context of Baba Yar mean that such a statement does not deny the personhood of an entire group of people?

  • If I ask "How many died during the Rape of Nanking?", is it racist to not specify that I'm not asking about the Japanese soldiers? Am I saying that they "don't count" and am denying the personhood of the entire Japanese nation?

  • If I ask "What percentage of the global human population can give birth?", am I sexist to not specify that I'm only concerned with the percentage of females and am looking for an answer of "90+%"....that I don't want males included because that would give me an answer of "approximately 51%". Does that deny the personhood of all males?

Is navigating those examples in such a delicate manner a worthy endeavor of historians?

[–]rodmandiplomacy 7ポイント8ポイント  (7子コメント)

Yes, that's why it's racist. It's also every bit as important to why the quote is ridiculous (intended by the author, I'm sure) as the 5% number. I'm not sure why pointing out a flaw in one part of the quote is pedantic but pointing out a flaw in the other part of the quote is replying to the "context of the discussion." OP didn't ask what percentage of white people saw slaves, he asked if the quote was accurate.

[–]Kiltmanenator -2ポイント-1ポイント  (6子コメント)

I'm not talking about OP, I'm talking about the Go Set A Watchman quote. Sorry if there was a mixup.

When someone asks "what percentage of the population saw or owned slaves" they don't feel the need to specify "of the white population" because if you include blacks in the population count for the purpose of the question then, well, of course, a large portion of the black southerners would have seen slaves...because they were slaves....and large portion of black southerners would not have owned slaves....because they were slaves. You're asking totally different questions, and you'll get totally different answers.

Now, I've never seen anyone interested in knowing "What percentage of the TOTAL southern population (white AND black) saw or owned slaves"?. If that question has never been asked, why is it reasonable to lambast the other, simpler (albeit less pedantically specific) question as "racist"?

If anything, the lack of specificity takes away whatever small portion of free blacks in the south owned slaves. Now that's racial erasure.

[–]CJGibson 6ポイント7ポイント  (5子コメント)

I don't see how anything in what you're saying makes the notion that black people don't count as part of the population any less racist? Sure the speaker, in context, obviously means to exclude black people, but that exclusion is still racist.

[–]Kiltmanenator -2ポイント-1ポイント  (4子コメント)

....don't count as part of the population only for the purpose of asking a question in which including them would mean distorting the answer and limiting its usefulness. Not, "don't count as part of the population because they have less dignity and worth as human beings." Is it really more likely the message is "blacks aren't people" rather than "they didn't want to know how many blacks saw or owned slaves because that would be a different question". Is the former message really more likely to be absorbed than the latter?

If I ask "What percentage of the population cannot give birth?", is it sexist to not specify "of the female population"? Is it really sexist towards men to assume that people understand the context?

I know historians and laymen alike should aim for specificity and inclusion and making our statements as ironclad and accurate as possible, but, surely there must be a limit?

[–]CJGibson 3ポイント4ポイント  (3子コメント)

The purpose of asking a question which is inherently racist because it acts as if black people are not part of "the population of the south."

If I ask "What percentage of the population cannot give birth?"

Most people would assume that the answer to this question included both men and women who are infertile. If you want to know what percentage of the female population cannot give birth you'd probably have to specify that.

[–]Kiltmanenator -1ポイント0ポイント  (2子コメント)

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you misread what I wrote. I chose "cannot give birth" over "is infertile" for a reason. With that in mind I'm curious what you think of it.

Do you consider "How many people survived the Warsaw Ghetto uprising?" to be racist towards Germans because it acts as if Germans are not people? The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was an event that happened in which many people participated and some were killed. Some of those people were German, but the aforementioned question can safely be assumed to not refer to them. Is that assumption racist?

Should we demand people making casual historical statements about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising be more specific, and call their declarations racist if they aren't more careful?

Is that something that historians should encourage?

[–]figproquo 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

I actually agree with CJGibson on the interpretation of your question. That is to say, I would expect an answer that is around (or slightly less than) 50% (or whatever, if we are also adjusting for age). If the answer was substantially higher than that I would understand that the answerer is interpreting it as "of the female population".

And the difference in this specific case as opposed to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising or Rape of Nanjing examples is that it is probably a safe inference to say that the discussion in Go Set A Watchman is about what role slavery played in the causes of the Civil War. The implication is that the percentage of the population is black is literally meaningless to the uncle.

[–]Kiltmanenator 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Ahhhhhhh. Understood. It was my intent to discuss the comment outside of the context of the novel, and I fear I did not make that clear at the outset. So, for the record, I completely agree with you that that is what Lee is trying to do.