Shaping possibilities of the present. Historians arees the present. Thatthat engagement is our charge as historians, to think how we got here, and learn something, if not several good questions. Today im going to try to compress what is a book manuscript into just 20 minutes. I apologize if im reading. Needed to putth it down into language that would try to include as much as i could. Recent centennial, commentators discussed in a compliment of how a constitutional system dedicated to legalized chattel slavery in our constitution could become transformed into an abolitionist project in 1865. Accomplishment was neither easy nor inevitable. It was a product of sustained resistance, ideological battle, consciousnessraising, organizing, and ultimately a war of National Liberation and preservation led by black slaves. Few commentators have spent time pondering the significance of the abolition of indentured servitude in the 13th amendment. Remainedtured servants in the United States in 1865 as most course refused to criminalize breach of contract after the 1830s. Havetured slavery would profound consequent is for the american nation. For starters, consider the dramatic divergence between the United States and Great Britain, antislavery rival. Which after it abolition of slavery in 1833, expanded Global Systems of unfree labor across its empire in the 19th century. Consider the power of an antitrafficking coalition within the 13th amendment. He antitrafficking, i mean t abolition of buying and selling people, which is not the same thing as slavery. It certainly is commensurate with it. That is what is so startling about the 13th amendment. It abolished both kinds of traffic. Link explicitly for the first time were the common interests of indentured servants and slaves enough being bought or sold. A political convergence that metropolitan authorities and avoided had avoided for two centuries. You can read the slave codes as trying to drive a wedge between owners and slaves. In the 13th amendment it comes together beautifully in a common emancipation project. The impact has had a consequence in the recent contemporary war on trafficking, which not coincidently looks to 13th amendment as a way to broaden the terms of understanding of contemporary modern slavery. Human andol of the trafficking protection act of 2000 both linked forms of indentured slavery, bonded labor, a very broad definition of traffic, together in this contemporary abolitionist project. They call them all slavery. Framing owes a lot to the 13th amendment. I will come back to that. There are certain complexities and panels and perils with this contemporary antitrafficking project. The success of antitrafficking should not obscure the deeper ironies in history of race and Human Trafficking. For its resistance helped frame the passage of the 13th amendment. Its ratification did little to eliminate the ferocious racism that had been associated with traffic. Considering the surprising ways that race and Human Trafficking expressed White Supremacy in the United States, expressions that have only grown more visible since the passage of the protocol in 2000. Will offer a few images they are not necessarily the most popular images. They highlight some of the connections i want to draw between the contemporary more on Human Trafficking contemporary war on Human Trafficking and White Supremacy. I want to frame what supremacy as white victimhood. How that came into being. These are from a far right White Nationalist group devoted to liberating the middle east. And this was written in the days after 9 11. It formulates its political message around antitrafficking. Here a white woman in danger of becoming a slave, and two suadi men transmogrified into these actors. Never want to get into vehicles or be along with one. The islamophobia is front and center. You can see how it is working. The particular ends the white woman victimhood is not new. This becomes popular in the antitrafficking campaign that ensues. His is one of the weirdest and twoiving outside saudis decided to follow me. Outside is where they should stay. She falls into his white patriarchal nationalist project. Instead of the million mom march, she believes in gun control, owning your own. 38. The use of trafficking and white victimhood to silence women is a prominent theme that has deep historical roots. I will come back to that in the talk. Here, the revenge of the mother going after this socalled slaver. The slavers are never white, they are men of color that are punished for their interest in the pure white woman. Another defense of the Second Amendment used toward a far right nationalist project. These were fairly obscure. But these images became central to the contemporary discussion yf Human Trafficking, and wh there needs to be a good commitment to enforce the 13th amendment globally. The 13th amendment is on the one thenantitrafficking, and particular use in 2001 forward. Here they are, the same actors, yelling about america, and then the same group calls for an invasion of the middle east, where we would liberated from Human Trafficking to preserve all kinds of alleged american verges. American virtues. Citizen onoting a the plane before they took out the last jet headed to the white house. This critique of patriarchy ironically in the interest of patriarchy is one of the motives as well. You have nationalism and white victimhood as the heart of these images. You might think they are fringe group only, not worthy of a lecture. Except all of these elements end up in this movie, taken. This movie is responsible for any other media event in generating a profound awareness of Human Trafficking as an bridge and issue needing the United States as an urgent issue needing the united state involvement. I did a digitized search of Human Trafficking. They spiked in the months after taken, they jumped 300 . This movie changes the political discussion. It features all of the same things we have just seen. It features a pager, liam neeson, patriarch, william neeson, trying to liberate his daughter, who is sold in an auction to a saudi prince. It is that constellation of white victimhood of pure white womanhood, virginity, being sold and trafficked. I think he kills 28 people. A few french along the way. Almost universally vilified in these narratives. That leads to this kind of emotional reunion of the daughter and father at the end of the story, in which she thinks him for having liberated her. Forget about the People Killed on the way. There is one other image i can mention. This is the daughters friend, w ho was sexually libertine, and appropriately dies. The movie is strictly patriarchal and equally racist and its assumptions racist in its assumptions, and imperialist. All wound around the 13th amendment. It globalize is the 13th amendment and allows the United States to track nations over the planet. The only country not graded was the United States. Under president barack obama and Hillary Clintons leadership, the u. S. Began evaluating its own antitrafficking work and gave it a great. It a grade. If you received a bad grade, you would be shamed and potentially lose state department funds. I dont want to write off all of the work that the state department has done. I am not focusing on that today. There is a lot of complexity with it. There is no separating the humanitarian and imperial projects of the Human Trafficking campaigns. Ist i will focus in on today what victimhood. Victimhood. Hite we can see how and why the rise of White Nationalism is ,onnected to white victimhood one that has been growing across this antitrafficking moment we are in. To give you an example of that, social scientists recently polled respondents and found that white americans are twice as likely as africanamericans to believe they have been victimized on account of their race. Despite all objective social economic will data economic data. Andwhite sentiment the rise of donald trump, who is a walking grievance in how he politicizes insults. So clearly these are not the first white actors to make a galvanizing a sense of what grievance. They will probably not be the last. Talk isant to do in the explore the deep ironies about what i called the grammar of whiteness, how it ultimately became a language of white victimhood. When i started the research on this, i did not expect to find what i found. That i amopriate giving this talk in the national archives, where i had both been startled and deeply on board deeply unmoored by this strangeness, which holds many surprises. The way i want to describe the grammar as opposed to the ideology of White Supremacy is two separate things. Are themmar of whiteness first iterations of it as a modifier you can find in english language. Foolhardyst, probably search of state papers, Early English books online, to see how and where white racial grammar emerged. And to see what work it did overtime. My assumption is that whiteness as an ideology of victimhood is precisely that. It is not in fact synonymous with those first expressions in grammar. Why is that important . It is to understand how the political economy of race works in the present and past. Whiteness is not a monolithic identity, culture and worldview that people possess by future of theirs by virtue of their skin color, but rather it is a set of beliefs about skin color upheld by distinct classes of people in conflict. Ideas which, though naturalized, are divided, inconsistent, and defeasible and transformable. I dont know if i want to have liam neeson looking at me while i give this talk. I am just going to leave him there because i dont have any slides for a while. If you can bear this patriarchal nationalist overlooking this conversation. Alien whiteness is what i described in the archives. Emerged at a particular time in the 19thcentury. Subjects outside the borders of europe, the very people who are per trade as saudis, as well as european born convicts tranced transferred to plantations. Actors who possessed few rights in the new world. In ironic contrast to that cartoon, white slaves of the 19th century were not white female versions, but muslim men and women transported to market by ottoman masters. Not a sinker sailor or traveler describered at sea themselves as a white slave or even white in three dozen published memoirs. Instead they describe themselves as christian captives, and frequently as christian slaves. Slave or a white servant in north america was to be understood as a traffic subject, a migrant whose whiteness marked his or her capacity to be bought and sold, rather than their rights as a political subject. In the colonial state papers, a compendium of correspondence between colonial and metropolitan actors in the atlantic world, a white racial grammar emerged conspicuously in the 16 80s in reference to one group, indentured servants. They are the only people described this way. Especially those transported to the new world. The transported convicts grew sharply in the 16 80s, which drew importation of african slaves. In contrast to christian servants the term formally used servantsbe them, white possessed uncertain loyalties. A Deputy Governor of barbados characteristically described the nature possibly we have been obliged to discharge our higher surgeons hire servants, since curved our negros and white servants. The striking distinction is not between negroes and whites servants, but unfree labor is a nd those who are unraced. Didgrammar of white skin at articulate privileges, potentially dangerous subject for colonial authorities. One of the most persistent rumors for barbadian leaders was an alliance between indentured servant and african slaves. Many of the indentured servants irishman. Typically expressed with racial rather than religious signifiers. Authoritiesbadian called upon all masters to keep good watch upon negroes for an insurrection of them and white insurgents. Not once did authorities articulate fears about slaves and christian servants. Not a single reference to that. Whether the christian servants were running away, or sleeping talking to a master shifted with white racial grammar. 8 of 9 descriptions described them as christian servants. In the 1685 contrast, every description of none mentioned White Christian servants. Two white grammar emerges, things happen. It is used to describe the convicts. It is used to describe their commodification. It is used to describe their rebelliousness. While the language of christian servant hood becomes a language of humanitarian reform, to ameliorate their conditions. Christian servants had rights, white servants were fungible. This is not at all what i had expected. The argument being that white racial grammar was not born out of white supremacists. It became that way. How and why . What led to that creation of an ideology of white victimhood and power . The first iterations of white racial grammar having rights for servants. When white servants begin to acquire rights is not in a political context we are familiar with, as much as it was in terms of minimalist rights. A conversation between the attorney general in Great Britain and colonial planters in the 1700s. He is afraid they have become white slaves. That is language he uses. The colonial planters assure him that is not the case because unlike african slaves, white servants cannot be condemned to death or dismembered arbitrarily. Without any form of proceeding. African slaves have no form of proceeding. They can be dismembered at will. White servants can be dismembered with a form of proceeding. This is not what i expected when you imagine whiteness as a political advantage of power. What i found instead over this long time through much of the 18th century is a period of sustained anxiety with white racial grammar. An effort to use servant slave codes to give white subjects rights that would separate themselves from slaves. They did that in punitive terms, describing penalties that would be harsher if they teamed up with african slaves, trying to create legal barriers between them, and also anxieties about raced subjects allying together. There is little evidence that trafficked servants themselves ever used the language of white racial grammar to describe themselves. Whether in the mediterranean or in north america. One quick example how one can see this. In the 1741 slave conspiracy in new york city, one in which 88 people were convicted of allegedly trying to burn new york city down to the ground. It led to the conviction of 30 africanamericans and four white whohman, and one woman, were guilty of this conspiracy of trying to lead a rebellion. Debated whether or not this was a real conspiracy, or a public prosecutors effort to gain power in a witchhunt and Great Authority for himself. I looked at the confessions and found a striking pattern. Those who confessed to a conspiracy to kill white people, almost all of them saved their lives, whether black or white. They were pardoned and transported out of the colony. Those that refused racial language, who instead described freedom, or interestingly a group of several different people that wanted to join the spanish. New masters that might have a more sympathetic response to servants and slaves. And a group that wanted to flee to north carolina, to the great dismal swamp, which was a place where runaway slaves and servants were living and had a measure of freedom. Those folks who refused that racial language all of them were executed. The confessions that i have are their final words before they were hung. , i can see thet terms of how race was a political economy those that resisted using race paid the penalty. An antislavery, that goes across color lines. This is not to judge the poor men and women convicted of conspiracy. It is just to note what was happening at that moment in time. 1750, white racial grammar functioned almost exclusively as a language of education rather than identification. Attribution rather than identification. Neither traffic servants or colonial elites described themselves as white. Traffic servants resisted being bought and sold, while elites afford a grammar that would connect them to the identities of the rebellious poor people they were exploiting in the new world. Rac matterede to english elites, but as a marker of family lineage rather than skin color, a marker of aristocratic breeding and character. Thatheritance of blood separated them from the unwashed commoners with black skin. Chattel slavery, i argue, and will probably get lots of conversation did not need whiteness to become legitimate in the eyes of slaveholders, with notions of aristocratic lineage combined with christian policy, they did that work remarkably well. It was christianity that was the vehicle for legitimizing slavery at first, not likeness. Faiths part of that, but that is what i found in the records. The question becomes why and when did white racial grammar income intrinsic become intrinsic to elites or trafficked actors working at the bottom rung. The answer occurred when trafficked actors understood their victimhood and their race. Pation in terms of only when those trafficked subjects and some slaves begin to use white racial grammar towards emancipatory ends. The process became apparent by 1760. It was neither abrupt nor linear and culminated in a decades long for mission of working classes long formulation of working classes. White racial grammar was put to both racist and emancipatory uses. Give me a hand if i am going on too long. I will go ahead to another slide this is an interesting side. Servantsow indentured and their oppression has been remembered in the contemporary moment. When one sees is a critical understanding of white victimhood. This was not something that the whites understood as white victimhood. They understood their victimhood certainly, and resisted it, but did not embrace whiteness. This is the provocative list of white skin in bondage, and summons a characteristic piece of ideology, a contradiction. White people are not supposed to be trafficked, the value of their skin is above any price this is the saudi metaphor we have at the beginning. And at the same time, the ideology of white victimhood is valuing skin. The price exceeds all others. Which is how you get twice as many white people thinking they are victimized as africanamericans today. Turning point in history peter williamson, i will spend a few minutes about him. Tell me when i am at five minutes or so. I will try not to rush. Peter williamson is a remarkable figure in part because he is one of the first indentured servants to claim he was white, and to use it in his memoir. The mid18th century is a moment where the penny press has generated a whole new state of narratives, often published by anyone who could afford a printing press. Which was not insubstantial, but there were a variety of new narratives entering popular libraries. Workable,s story is kidnapped as a young boy, sent into slavery as an indentured service, 10 years of servitude in pennsylvania. At the end of which he was drafted into the local militia, where he fought in the french and indian war, captured by delaware indians. He finally escapes and returns to Great Britain, where he then publishes his memoir called f rench and inian cruelty. In it he raises some of these ideas he embraces some of these ideas about white identity. A language of romance and ideology of victimhood. Some of the things we have discussed that are more familiar. At the height part of this story is the white damsel. Andinds her tied to a tree the delaware indians are going to kill her. He along with his fellow captives rescue her. She is rescued by a british officer. There is a redemption of sorts. An imperial context certainly. The other way i would describe williamsons whiteness on display is here in this image, in which he sold his book in the garb of a delaware indian. It was not enough to just have an interesting story that linked captivity in colonial america, but he would go to book fair arounds his town of aberdeen, and he pretended to be a delaware indian. Theory is dressed as one. Here he is dressed as one. He would perform being indian. He would perform his capacity to appropriate indian culture. He was not the first british subject to do this, this love affair with the exotic subject. What is unique is that he is the first trafficked subject to do that, as a way of gaining an audience. It is blackface minstrelsy that these actors become white supremacist. You have him playing indian, a trafficked servant doing this work. What is most interesting to me is not this, which you almost expect if you started this history. This only happened in 1760. What is also interesting is that what he did with these images, the main purpose of french and is the cruelty publication of 40 depositions of kidnapped subjects who systematically indict the criminality of aberdeens shipping merchants. This racial language with political radicalism, where he does not just indict an individual spirit, someone who trafficked him, tricked him undertaking an oceanic voyage, but he indicts the entire class, as well as the british governments complicity in sanctioning the enslavement of his own poor children. That is hard to separate. The racialism and radicalism are the same at this moment in time. Of a broader upwelling of trafficked subjects , what i call pleading and radicals protesting imperial trafficking policies, whether it is transporting servants, supporting the easy trafficking of children to the new americans, or especially impressed sailors. All of them supported by british policies. It is this indictment of the active collaboration of british officials that is the energy in these narratives. It is a classbased argument that is very hard for authorities to answer. The aberdeen merchants are horrified and go to extraordinary lengths to suppress him. They sue him for libel. When that doesnt work, they beat the crab out of him and prevent him from selling his books. He is known as a professional liar. He keeps going nonstop, showing up in town after town selling these exposes of slavery, what he called slavery, the kidnapping of his children into bondage. Parents send their children to the market and they are never heard from again. An established industry of moving bodies over the atlantic has been characteristic of the servant trade throughout the 18th century. Andiams white racialism political radicalism were not exclusive. He challenged pro trafficking policies that shape the evolution of the working class on both sides of the atlantic in the ensuing century. The formation of working classes was worked with the extra of antislavery sentiment and newly embraced white victimhood. That did not preclude the formation of workingclass consciousness, but comprised an intellectual fabric from which it emerged. In both countries, this is not a way of explaining american exceptionalism. Thenly the United States is only country that has this deep problem. Thee slavery was at discourse in which classes emerged, in Great Britain and the United States. Precludenot workingclass support for black abolitionism, but advanced a broader abolition of all slaves, black as well as white. One of the things i discovered in the research is that white slavery the article content of whiteness was remarkably divided. There was a fight over its political meeting. That is important for recognizing a fault line in contemporary White Supremacy. Assertion. T an it had a particular political target in mind. Advocates of workingclass people who would elevate white slavery above that of black slavery, to be sure. And then you had other radicals insisted on abolishing all slavery black and white. Slaveryuage of wage emerges. Those articulations are some of the most racist in the english language in the midand early 19th century. They are the ones that are most likely to say that wage slavery is far worse than black slavery. The nominal presence of white grammar does not necessarily equal what we think of as White Supremacy. That said, the ways in which whiteness were legitimated at this moment in time, fighting abolitionism as well is supporting it, critiquing him. Policy critiquing imperial policy helped understand how we got to the present. Present,ift to to the precisely because white the heart remained at of class wars that critiqued assumptions about humanity. White slavery kept the door open to future workingclass white supremacists. David duke, a former klansman leader, who would write in his book that white slavery was the historical footing for his sense of racial injustice. Two of his books in body that racist sensibility. That permeates mainstream movies. Ke taken provocative claims about white fort Michael Walsh no sense that, racial slavery was uniquely torific, or even equal indentured servants, which was much worse, they argued. I have not quite explained how this became so passed, become so pronounced. It seems to be an argument of white hegemony, and those who are white have to ascend to that project in order to become powerful. Obvious exceptions to the 13th amendment is for prison labor. There is another irony to mention. That language of personhood was raced to white people initially. Because they were already enslaved. That was one way in which the 13th amendment had a profoundly racist legacy. We will hear about this more in a documentary coming up later today. The 13th amendment did not necessarily stop racism or raced traffic. I would argue that what is unique and remarkable about the 13th amendment is this brief coalition between indentured servants and african slaves. That had ag is one potential to change the kind of class discussion in the United States. The antitrafficking a compliment of the 13th amendment accomplishment of the 13th amendment sets the stage where white and black can unite as wage earners, but instead a racialism north and south. The compass went of the 13th amendment necessitated a violent ofm to accomplish the ends white super messy. The most dangerous whites were those that broke color lines, whether they were immigrants or native born. White supremacy functioned by placing the only policing black bodies but white ones as well, who exposed to the those lines were never fully naturalized in 1680 or in 1860, or in 2000 and 16. 2016. We must remember as the reverend dr. Of the and ill delay cp as the reverend of the naacp reminded, there is strength in seeing the fault lines and convictions of the heart of White Supremacy. The power of user nests to disrupt both race and power. Thanks very thanks. [applause] are we doing questions . Questions. Excuse me . Questions. [laughter] [inaudible] it it a brailles was a brilliant presentation so let me start with gratitude. The question i have is, did you need the role of christianity, and you can you elaborate on the economic incentives in driving this. That is a great question. Wow. No. You dont make or scantily. Because, Morgan Wright have the right, you theft of labor against endangered servants who are all christians throughout the 17th century. When they rebel, we bring in africanamericans. There is little pretense that any of this is moral or ethical. The question of how this system could become legitimate, how it would be legitimate in the eyes of holders is that they hinges initially. The society for the gospel is insisting that they christianized their slaves. Barbadian and other planters said, heck no. They see, probably with some where is all, that it would be a powerful tool in the hands of slaves. Thats an interesting question. Sot i found, what i find thats trying to get my head around it to some degree, is what we call racial slavery and how it could maybe this is ,ecause of widespread nests a specific race. Seeing specific race subjects. Whiteness was dangerous. In some respects, it is still dangerous. Resentf white people even seeing themselves as white. That is another legacy. The question. Other questions . Skepticism. Ok. [laughter] i should say, seeing the doctor documentary, is a fantastic line when James Baldwin says whites is a metaphor for power. Profoundt captures the ideological argument that he is making. Was such a brilliant documentary, i hope you get see it as well. If you havent already. As a metaphor of power, it is the same as saying people its not white identity, it is the way in which whiteness is used to create racial capitalism. Thats what im arguing. Theres no separating out inequality in capitalism. One of the ethical challenges i had was, is there a way to fight racism with race talk . Ofs is one of the challenges the book. Do we, in effect, practice race by engaginger again in those terms . I dont have an answer but im finding that people exemplify exempla billet he of these racial categories. Maybe there is a blessing to learn from them. . Yes yes . Really fabulous talk. Thank you. Ive a question about gender. Which is to say we honor the story, how gender works in relationship to whiteness in the history of lynching, for example. Hearld be very curious to systematically what you find in the archives about gender in relationship to the production this of white in this in a contradictory way. Great question. Groups of most unruly whites are white women. Aresurprisingly i guess, the subject of a lot of colonial legislation. That was in the early 18th century, seeking to discipline them from any kind of conjugal arrangement with free blacks or enslaved blacks. In fact, some of these are laws in maryland, which many states prescribed equal punishments to for anymen and slaves conjugal action. That would be the offspring. They would be freed offspring because the white woman is automatically free. In maryland it is 39 lashes in public for either the woman or the black man for interracial work. I guess. Part of that is fascinating to me. Whiteness is a problem that needs to be policed. White women are at the heart of that project because they are place of instability within White Supremacy. Irony even greater that it would be an image of white women, rather than white thats would be part of how whiteness gets legitimated. Whiteness, when it is born, it is born as a language of protection or rescue that is relative to the politics of trafficking. That is what is being suffered propose. What if all of our state Department People said it, lets figure out how to organize people who are being trafficked. Whether it is labor unions were not, wouldnt matter. It is absolutely foundational how the legitimacy of why this emerges, and theres a clear moment when you have whites servants followed by whites. What are whites . Cotton, different grades of sugar, and it just commodities. It is a language of commodification. White women and white people began emerging in discourse. You see the emergence after commodification of a broader sense of people. Those go together. Women, very quickly become very ed of classion degradation and commodities. That is seeking to sum up a rescue narrative that middleclass would use against actors. Abolition ors used this to some degree. They are good people, but they coopt the class arguments. They said here is a worthy object of interest. The black, african subject that diverts attention from this critique of servants trafficking , of mistreatment of women by working people. Some of the best advocates are women who speak back. Those voices are very rare and we found two or three that published their stories. They are powerful for that. Centralo make its more for the argument. Thanks. Other questions . We are out of time. Thank you. [applause] this weekend, on American History tv on cspan3. ,onight at 8 p. M. Eastern lectures and histories, a College Professor on the 1916 bombing on san franciscos preparedness parade. What happened after 2 p. M. , about a half an hour into the parade, the local press would deem one of the most pathetic results of the explosion and of the parade. At 10 00, railamerica, the 1950 film on the firing line with the germans. Its one of the few times you see a pipe, loading film in his camera. Watch the guy there. He just got it. Eastern, wet 6 p. M. Visit the portrait gallery of the second bank of the United States in philadelphia. Inside, we have a fine arts exhibits where we include portraits from the 18th and early 19th century to sell the the story of what it was like to live in america at that time. The world thats those people knew, and the world that the revolutionist built. 8 00, they talk about the differences between Alexander Hamilton in george washington. Washington is a horse whisperer. He is a person of volcanic temperament. He went early on to control themselves. Hers this horse race for who columns the high strong, very skittish, very fast Alexander Hamilton. When washington isnt around, he gets himself into trouble. For our complete scscscscscgo to cspan. Org. All weekend long, American History tv is joining our Comcast Cable partners to showcase the history of charlottesville, virginia. To learn more about the cities on our tour, visit cspan. Org citiestour