American History

Social History, which describes historical events within the framework of the lives and struggles of ordinary people, is a useful tool for shedding light on how the superior social classes of people exert their control over the inferior social classes but the rising trend in social history has been to select outstanding individual among the lower social orders whose lives are in no way representative of their social class and to make and almost hagiographic account of their lives. This trend is extremely dangerous as far as the study of History is concerned. A proper understanding of the history of any event can only occur through understanding of the power relationships between different social classes and their conflicts. Selective readings of the lives of rebellious individuals of the lower social classes, gives students of history a wrong sense of how progressive change occurred in the political structure of the nation and through what processes some of the oppressed classes were guaranteed some of their rights. This in turn may have negative consequences for the struggle to guarantee the rights of other oppressed classes.

The Creation of a False Portrait of History and Fake Lineages
Social History arose out of a reaction against conventional forms of history which presented history as entirely the result of upper class beliefs and motivations, heroic leaderships and court intrigues etc. From the very outset the field of Social History has had an agenda to it. Social History has often been used by the advocates of new progressive causes to create a false ancient lineage for themselves. The need for the false lineage creation perhaps arises from the fact that people often conflate the antiquity of an idea and its correctness. In some cases the absence of previous existence of an idea is a potential cause of great concern and embarrassment for the proponents of the idea. An example of this is the Protestant reformation, the advocates for which were often asked that if truth did not lie in the teachings of the Catholic Church, where else did it exist, then before the emergence of Protestantism They questioned whether it was really possible that the correct interpretation of Biblical teachings only occurred after 1500 years. In response to this question, Protestant leaders of the past constructed several different pseudo-lineages for their beliefs, some tried to attribute their beliefs to the Gnostic Cathars of the past and others with the Waldensians.

When religious leaders engage in such deceptive practices it is understandable but surprisingly, secular advocates against oppressive traditions engage in the same deceptive practices as well. The British Historian, E. P. Thompson for example has portrayed the machine destroying Luddites as a revolutionary force fighting for social justice, while other researchers have demonstrated that in reality the Luddites were social conservatives trying to stem the destruction of the power structure of paternalistic feudalism, a system in which the upper class cared for the welfare of their social inferiors.
The same tactic has been adopted by the opposers of racism and the advocates of the Civil Rights Movement, even though they have no need to prove the prior existence of their beliefs. For some reason they have tried to present every runaway slave and slave revolt as a step in the struggle to end racism and to establish the equality of all humans.

Evidence that the Rebellious Slaves were not Ideologically Motivated
Social Historians have made much of small scale acts of revolt by slaves. Howard Zinn for example, asserts that
Slaves did not merely accept their lot, as some historians have claimed. Instead, they resisted in many ways, including physical rebellion....

But the fact is that the slaves who engaged in revolt, were not usually seeking an overthrow of the existing social order of slavery, they were merely seeking an end to their own miserable condition. There are many evidences to suggest the enslaved people of the times of slavery were not necessarily inclined to oppose slavery as institution.

Slave Owning Freedmen
One of the evidences for the fact that the enslaved people usually only sought the emancipation of their own selves and that of their families and not the whole class of Black people is the existence of Freedmen who went on to own fellow-blacks as slaves.

Some Black people who had managed to gain wealth owned large numbers of slaves. William Ellison of South Carolina for example, owned a total of 63 slaves when he died in 1861, he used the same oppressive practices on his slaves that white slave owners did, destroying slave families by selling off young children and hiring slave hunters to catch runaway slaves.

The Lack of Objection to Slavery in African Culture and that of the American South
The enslaved African people themselves belonged to a culture where rival tribes would commonly seek collaboration with slave traders in their tribal wars against one another. In the new world, the enslaved people were similarly unlikely to come across anti-slavery sentiments, in the Christian culture of the American South, the usual interpretation of Christian texts not only allowed slavery but also obliged slaves to be dutiful toward their masters and obey their orders diligently or otherwise face the wrath of God. Thus it was not likely for enslaved Black people to come across any ideology that provided a basis for them to demand an end to the institution of slavery.

Attempts by Runaway Slaves to Pass for Whites
Another evidence for the fact that runaway slaves were not usually ideologically motivated individuals rebelling against a system and were merely helpless people trying to get out of a miserable situation, can be seen in the prevalence of passing. Passing or trying to pass as white, has a long history in the African American community. As these advertisements in 19th century newspapers show, lighter skinned mulatto slaves would often seek freedom from slavery through passing

Detained in jail, Maria pretending herself free round face, clear white complexion.  P. BAYHI, Captain of the Watch.

Ranaway, a bright mulatto woman, named Julia, about twenty-five years old. She is nearly white, and very likely may attempt to pass for white. She is a good seamstress, dresses fine, and can read a little. 200 reward, if caught in any Free State, and put into any good jail in Kentucky or Tennessee.

Harriet Jacobs owner also made references to the fact that she was light skinned and that her hair could be combed straight and that she dressed finely, probably intending to relate his fear that she would get away through passing.

The mulatto was usually the product of a union between a white man and his captive African-American slave woman who lacked the power to resist his sexual advances. In the pre-civil war south, it was common for slave owners to use their female slave women sexually.

The fate of the resultant children depended upon the extent to which their physical features represented their European or their African ancestry. If the child was white enough, it would be possible for it to be brought into the family, if it was too dark to pass off as a Caucasian person, it would remain a slave. The slave child would then be subject to all the indignities that accompanied slavery i.e. forced labor, being sold, sexual exploitation at the hands of the owners etc. who were often their own male relatives. In a scenario, it is completely understandable that light skinned slaves would attempt to pass as whites, there can be no blame on the individuals that did so, however it is impossible to interpret their actions as a blow in the overall struggle for the freedom of Black people from slavery.

The prevalence of passing gives us an idea of what the motivations of the runaway slaves were. The runaway slaves did not seek an end to discrimination and oppression directed against certain groups of human beings based on their skin color they merely wanted an end to the oppression brought upon themselves, by any means possible, including by the cooption of the same social strictures which allowed light skinned people to keep those of a darker skin coloring in slavery in the first place.

Obfuscation of the Real Reasons for the End of Slavery
When slave revolts and runaway slaves are depicted as part of an heroic struggle against slavery, it obscures the real reasons why institution of slavery found so much widespread use and support in the United States. The system of Slavery lasted as long as it did in the United States because the leaders of the majority community did not find it morally reprehensible enough to put an end to it. The leaders of the Anti-Slavery North understood that they gained a lot of economic benefit from Slavery and they were willing to tolerate slavery in the pro-Slavery South as long as they continued to profit from it. Even the struggles of the brave freed slaves such as Harriet A. Jacobs, only contributed to the end of slavery to the extent that their speeches and their examples served to convince the upper class whites to put an end to slavery. Even the struggle of militant abolitionists can only be credited with the of ending slavery to the extent that their activities resulted in the worsening of the relationship between the slave-owning South and the anti-Slavery North of the country and contributed to the end of the cozy economic relationships between the upper class in both sections of the country which had prevented the upper class of the North from active intervention to end slavery in the South.

The Consequences of Depicting the End of Slavery as the Culmination of the Struggle of Slaves
Depicting the end of slavery as the conclusion of the long struggle of runaway slaves, rebellious slaves and abolitionist freedmen is not only a totally distorted picture of the struggle against slavery but also may have grievous consequences for the cause of any oppressed minority group in the future.

In the United States it is common for people to blame minorities and poor people for their own woes. A large number of people, if not the majority wants the poor and the oppressed to pull themselves up by the bootstraps or pull their own weight, people often attribute their own financial, political or economic success to their hard work not noting that there exist many people who perform the same or a greater amount of work but are not able to achieve comparable levels of success, especially among the minorities. Many of the most intense opposition to any action from the government that is intended to alleviate the condition of the poor comes from people whose wealth is merely the result of the accident of birth.

If the struggle to end slavery comes to be seen as a result of black people puling their own weight instead of what it was a necessary governmental intervention in order to correct a social and political injustice, this could easily be used to discredit the demands of any oppressed minority in the future, it would be said that the reason that any minority group continues to be oppressed is because they are lazy in pursuance of their cause, they should not demand governmental intervention in order to correct the injustices done to them but should work hard to correct these injustices like the Black people did in the case of slavery.

Conclusion
People often prefer ancient ideologies to modern ones because of this the advocates of new ideologies try to create fake predecessors for themselves. Social History having been, from the outset, laden with progressive ideological agendas, is especially vulnerable to falling into this form of false ideological genealogy generation.

In the matter of the institution of slavery, as long as the majority community and their leaders were unwilling to put an end to it, there was little any slave could do about it. It is also unlikely that most slaves would be sufficiently progressive, ideologically to demand an end to the institution of slavery neither their ancient African culture nor the Christian culture they found themselves in, in the South of the United States, considered Slavery as an evil.

The various slave revolts and uprisings were merely manifestations of the slaves desire to free themselves and their family they were not manifestations of the desire to put an end to the institution of slavery. To attribute the end of slavery to the struggle of Black people merely lends ideological fodder to the obnoxious view that people are always in control of their destiny and that oppressed classes of society are the sole or primary creators or enablers of their own oppression.