Running head: ALIENATED 1

Alienated: Defining the Disconnect Between Black Americans and Society

Bryanna D. Cuffee

Legal Studies Academy

First Colonial High School

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Abstract

This paper explores natal alienation and social death as it pertains to Black Americans. The

author defines these two terms before examining the subjectivity of slaves in America and those

who descended from those slaves living in present-day America. The author also analyzes laws

throughout history and in other parts of the world that may help to understand the severity of this

issue in America. Please note that the author uses Black with a capital “B” when referring to

those born in America that descended from slaves and uses black with a lower case “b” when

referencing all members of the African Diaspora in order to differentiate between race (lower

case “b”) and ethnicity (upper case “B”).

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Alienated: Defining the Disconnect Between Black Americans and Society

“And I tried to explain that if I were originally from Dakar or from wherever I was from

in Africa, I couldn’t find out where it was, because my entry into America is a bill of sale”

(Baldwin, 1968). Natal alienation is defined as the separation of a person from their native

culture and birthrights (Patterson, 1982, p. 5). The transatlantic slave trade, which took place

from the 16th to 19th century, natally alienated millions of black people from their native

African culture. This natal alienation continues to heavily impact the lives of Black Americans

today.

Social Death

Social death is the main effect of natal alienation and the two are not to be confused.

While natal alienation is the separation of someone from their native culture, social death is

defined as the disconnect of that person from the rest of society as a whole (Patterson, 1982, p.

38). However, Orlando Patterson, cultural sociologist and professor at Harvard University,

interprets social death as a permanent effect, while recent interpretations view it as something

that can be overcome (Luft, 2017).

Subjectivity

When a person is considered socially dead, they are no longer a person. They lose their

subjectivity. When this happens, that person is then no longer considered a person, but a thing.

Aliza Luft (2017), Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles,

says that three things must take place in order for a person to be considered socially dead: First,

the person must be separated from their original relationships or backgrounds, or natally

alienated. Then, this person is grouped with others based on a trait or multiple traits that are
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considered inferior. Finally, a system must be put in place to keep the inferior group separate

from everyone else whether it be by camps, plantations, prisons, ghettos, or any other method.

With these three guidelines, one can identify a multitude of examples of social death. From the

Holocaust in Germany to the Japanese internment camps in America, many people have

historically been deemed socially dead at one point. What separates American slavery from the

rest is the fact that slavery was not a singular event but a singularity. It was a system that became

so embedded in America’s foundation that its effects are still felt today within the Black

community (Sharpe, 2016, p. 76).

When slaves were brought from Africa to America and sold, they were considered

nothing more than animals or objects to be used. They were separated from what it means to be

human. Sarah Mutter (2011), Dean of Timothy Dwight College and Professor of African

American Studies and English, describes this identity as “a gray area between person and thing,”

and Black people still operate in this gray area today.

Legally Alienated

Slavery is the most obvious form of alienation in law with countless slave codes and

policies on buying and selling slaves, but how do laws today still maintain the social death of

Black Americans? Although the wording of certain laws and policies may not explicitly state that

they are oppressive, the United States of America was built on the oppression and extortion of

Black people. Therefore, systems within the government, by default, work to keep Black people

oppressed (​Talking About​, n.d.).

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Historical Alienation

The first documented Africans were brought to Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, in

1619. They were captured from a Portuguese slave ship and were traded throughout the colonies

for food. Some of these Africans were considered indentured servants and were given their

freedom once their term of indenture ended. One man included in this group of freed Africans is

Anthony Johnson. Once freed, Anthony had African indentured servants of his own. However,

one of his servants, John Casar, made a claim that he was kept seven years past his term of

indenture. Robert Parker, a neighbor of Johnson’s, heard these claims and persuaded Anthony

Johnson to let John Casar go, but Casar’s freedom did not last long. Johnson later sued Parker in

the Northampton County Court of Virginia in 1655 under the claim that he was wrongfully

keeping John Casar from him because John Casar was his property for life. The court ruled in

favor of Johnson, and John Casar was deemed a slave of Anthony Johnson for the rest of his life

(Northampton County Court, 1655).

Slave culture. ​During the era of American slavery, generations of people were kept in

bondage with no record of where they came from. Without a record of their native countries,

slaves completely forgot their origins. Although some practices and traditions from their native

cultures were remembered and used in the early years of slavery, many slaves were beaten or

killed for using such practices and stopped after some time. Therefore, much of their native

culture was forgotten and slaves were forced to create a new culture; a Black culture.

This new culture is a mix of traces of their African heritage and ideas incorporated from

their experiences and resources in America. One could argue that this new culture is not just one

single culture but various cultures spread out through the different regions of America. However,
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most of the origins are the same. These cultures either originated as a form of rebellion against

the master or were an attempt at keeping the native African culture alive. For example, many of

the first slaves came from regions of Africa that practiced what the west would consider some

form of witchcraft or sorcery. In the South, these practices transformed into what is known as

Voodoo and Hoodoo. It was also common for many slaves to blend their spiritual practices with

Christianity (Hellie, 2020). Today, for example, predominantly black Baptist churches across

America are incorporating African practices into their methods of teaching and preaching.

There was also a birth of new genres of music that were heavily influenced by African

beats and rhythms. Call-and-response patterns found in many tribal songs in Africa could be

found in what are known as “negro spirituals” in America. These songs were used as messages

between slaves to discuss plans for escaping from the plantations where they worked or as a way

to tell stories, and some of these songs are still sung today in churches. Many of these styles and

rhythms were the blueprint for later genres such as jazz, gospel, and rhythm and blues (Shaw,

1978).

Returning to the topic of subjectivity, one could argue that these methods of retaining

their own culture gave slaves their own form of autonomy. It is this creation of a new culture that

was one of the first methods of rebellion against the masters. Although the masters tried to

remove and erase the slaves’ native culture, the slaves were able to preserve and redefine it.

Aliza Luft (2017) argues that this preservation of culture was resistance against social death.

However, this resistance was nowhere near over.

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Post-slavery identity crisis. ​Following their emancipation in the late 19th century, many

slaves thought they had finally gained freedom. They believed that their subjectivity had been

granted back to them, but there was still one issue that they faced. Where did they come from?

What was their ethnic identity? By the time slavery had been abolished, generations of slaves

had lived and died, so those who were freed barely remembered or had forgotten completely

their African culture. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the government had many ways of

labeling Black people: colored, negro, black, and countless unofficial derogatory terms as well.

Despite the different labels, one thing was common: there was no connection to Africa. How

could there be a connection when none of these people remembered Africa. They knew nothing

about the countries, and most of them had no recollection of the culture either.

Social Alienation

For decades there has been constant discussion and debate on the proper way to identify

the ethnicity of Black Americans that descended from slaves. In order to better understand this

debate, one must first understand the difference between race and ethnicity. Race is a shared

physical trait within a group of people, such as skin color, while ethnicity is the cultural

traditions that a particular group shares (Rubenstein, 2017). By these very definitions, most

people of African descent are labeled, racially, as black or brown. However, ethnicity is where

the debate begins. Since most descendants of American slaves have no recollection of African

culture, they do not feel it would be correct to label themselves as African American and prefer

to be called Black. On the other hand, many people who recently immigrated from Africa feel

that the term is too broad or is inaccurate for people who immigrate from islands such as Haiti or

Jamaica. In this case, they would prefer to be identified by their country of origin, such as
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Nigerian-American, Haitian-American, etc. Celeste Watkins-Hayes a professor of African

American Studies at Northwestern University says the easiest way to determine someone’s

personal preference on how they would like to be identified is to simply ask (Adams, 2020).

However, this debate over identity presented an issue that even the national government

couldn’t ignore. In the recent 2020 United States Census, the government asked both black and

white respondents to specify their ethnic origin. This new form of questioning forces Black

Americans to recognize that they truly do not know or understand their origins. While black

immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean islands may be able to easily answer this question,

others may be forced to pause and reflect on their history. This is just another example of society

forcing Black Americans to recognize that they do not have a socially recognized or defined

ethnic group (Winston, 2018).

De Jure Alienation

The reason Black Americans continue to be discriminated against is due to the simple

fact that discrimination never truly left America’s legal system. Despite 27 Amendments in the

United States Constitution, the government has failed to address what remains of the infamous

Three-Fifths Compromise, which defined slaves as not being completely human, but rather,

three-fifths of a human being (Britannica, 2020). U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl. 3 states,

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which

may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be

determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to

Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other

Persons. (U.S. Const. Art. I, § 2, cl. 3)

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Although chattel slavery no longer exists in America, this clause is a reminder of just how

insignificant Black people were in the eyes of white Americans. The fact that the clause remains

in the Constitution with this exact wording, suggesting that someone could be three-fifths of a

person, supports the argument made earlier in this paper that antiblackness is deeply rooted in

America’s foundation.

Although this clause references a compromise made almost 300 years ago, there are

plenty of examples of legal action just now being taken to better the lives of black people. For

example, it wasn’t until 2019 that California and New York became the first states to pass

legislation that prohibited discrimination against natural hairstyles. This legislation was passed

after decades of black people being forced to straighten their hair or being denied certain jobs not

only for the color of their skin but often for the appearance of their hair. Natural hair from those

of African descent is often seen as unkept or messy by many non-black employers (The

CROWN Act, n.d.). This form of discrimination has been around since black people were able to

have jobs outside of working in fields, but had not been stopped until recently, and there are

plenty of other examples of discrimination that may not explicitly be based on skin color, but is

still inherently racist. Again, racism and discrimination are embedded in America’s system. It is

only until all Americans recognize this fact, that America may begin to truly work towards

equity and justice.

There is No Comparison

Many people like to compare the Holocaust to slavery or racism in America, and when

looking at the two on the surface, the comparison seems pretty clear. In fact, the Nazis modeled
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their system of dividing Jewish people from other Germans after the system America had used to

discriminate against Black Americans.

In 1935, under Hitler’s regime, the Nazis passed multiple pieces of legislation known as

the Nuremberg Laws; racist, anti-semitic laws that were the foundation for discrimination in

Germany. What some people may not know is that these laws were inspired by the United States.

Nazi lawyers were known to visit America in order to study the country’s legal and economic

systems. Germany used this information to build their policies and methods for removing Jewish

people, Romani people, and other minority groups that the Germans deemed inferior. However,

the Nazis recognized that the circumstances in America that allowed Jim Crow laws to exist

were not the same in Germany. The Nazis recognized that Jim Crow laws were successful in

their discriminatory practice because Black Americans were already oppressed and poor in the

first place. Black Americans never had the opportunities that minority groups in Germany did. It

was easy to discriminate against Black Americans because they had nothing to begin with. No

identity, no property, no jobs, and no money. By contrast, many minorities in Germany had

successful businesses or careers, and they were able to live a life of decent quality. The main

thing the Nazis took from the Jim Crow laws were laws that prohibited interracial marriage and

laws that defined who was or wasn’t Aryan (Whitman, 2017).

The Nazis defined Jewish people as anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents. This

idea was modeled after America’s “one-drop” rule which was actually a much stricter rule. The

“one-drop” rule stated that anyone with any percentage of black ancestry was considered a black

person in America, no matter who their parents were or what they looked like. Despite the

horrors that the Nazis inflicted on Jewish people and other minority groups, there can still be no
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comparison to the ongoing antiblackness, racism, discrimination, and oppression that has been

apart of America’s history since day one (Little, 2019).

Conclusion

Natal alienation and social death did not simply resolve themselves when slavery was

abolished in 1865 nor when Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both have

continued a cycle of antiblackness and oppression in America that is very far from being

completely eradicated. It is only through continued education and discussion of this topic that

society may begin to heal from this deep wound within the country. Only then will Black

Americans be able to reclaim subjectivity and reclaim their identity.

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