From Discipline and Punish Class WIki
Race has been a controversial issue in the United States since its founding. It has taken different forms in different eras, however. Early crime narratives display a bigotry that is obvious in their treatment of minorities as innately prone to wrongdoing. Daniel E. Williams' Pillars of Salt not only gives an idea about racial attitudes in colonial America, it also gives readers insight into the changes in racial attitudes over the century it covers. Over this period, from the late 17th century to the late 18th century, the narratives in this anthology become more secular and sensationalist. They also become more blatantly racist. This suggests that the further demonization of black people in later, more commercial narratives was both catering to and shaping American perceptions of race.
The earlier narratives in this anthology are fairly racist as well, and seem to lay the foundation for the progressive worsening of the portrayal of racial minorities as evil. Esther Rodgers's narrative, The Declaration & Confession of Esther Rodgers, is a good example of the marginalization and vilification of black people. Rodgers has an affair with a black man which she later speaks about with disgust. She says “About the age of seventeen, I was left to fall into that foul sin of uncleanness, suffering myself to be defiled by a Negro lad living in the same house” (Williams 97). This contrasts greatly with the language of the narrative of Mary Martin from Cotton Mather's Pillars of Salt, where we see what appears to be coerced sex by a white master upon his servant. Although Martin’s master “attempted her chastity,” the language is much milder (65). The narrative makes clear that extramarital sex is wrong, yet it is treated as a sin of which Mary and her master are equally guilty. Mather says at one point “she fell a third time into sin,” as if she had a choice. Esther Rogers has what seems to be consensual sex with a black man and she describes it as being defiled. This suggests that, because of the hierarchy of society, negative things could not be said about rich white men while they could about black men. It also suggests that interracial sex was considered far dirtier and more unnatural than sex between whites. When Rodger's becomes pregnant, she is desperate to hide her pregnancy because having a child by a black man is so unacceptable. She murders her child to avoid shame. She says “After perceiving that I was with child, I meditated how to prevent coming to public shame” (97). When she sleeps with this man again, she says "I fell into the like horrible pit (as before) viz. carnal pollution with the Negro man" (97). Their affair is somehow harmful and toxic and therefore the children that are borne of it are not only as worthless as trash but also something harmful and toxic.
The narrative of Patience Boston, The Faithful Narrative of the Wicked Life of Patience Boston, also illustrates racial stereotypes. Native Americans are associated with drinking and godlessness. The story is supposedly written by Boston, who is half Native American, but it shows whites in a positive light and Native Americans in a negative light. Boston could have been manipulated or could have been led to believe, over time, that she and other Native Americans were innately inferior. She makes a point to praise the Godliness of her white mistress, saying “my mistress would tell me that if I did not repent and turn to God, he might justly leave me to greater sins. She was greatly concerned for me” (120). She says that after her mistress died, her master tried to take her place in encouraging moral behavior. She describes how much her mistress’s teachings about Jesus affected her. That is not strange, but what seems wrong is that the narrative makes it clear that Patience cannot maintain morality without the guidance of her white masters. She falls into sin as soon as her mistress dies, and becomes worse after leaving her master. Because of this, the narrative makes her seem more like a child than an adult and thus inferior intellectually and emotionally to her master and mistress. Native Americans are further demeaned when Patience blames her fall back into sin on Native Americans. She says “after this I was drawn into love of strong drink, by some Indians” (121). In repenting criminals were often required to denounce their race or gender because repenting seemed to involve full cooperation with the white upper-class authorities of the church. In this narrative, although women and Native Americans are disparaged, Patience’s husband, who is black, is not. He is portrayed as rather patient in the text. He does not play a large role in the narrative, however, so perhaps his morality and character are unimportant. Later, however, we see that like Esther Rodgers, Patience is prejudiced against blacks despite being involved with a black man. She does not want a Negro to execute her, because it “would dishonor the church of which he is a member.” Although this narrative could easily have been changed or skewed, it seems to show a lot of self-loathing and loathing of other minorities in Boston. This self-loathing could be a demonstration of the psychological distress that racism causes.
Most of the later narratives about pirates and thieves tell us that the perpetrators are Irish. The narrative of Thomas Powers is the most obvious portrayal of a race in a negative light, however. The title of the 1795 narrative is “The Narrative and Confession of Thomas Powers, A Negro” (343). His race is brought immediately to the attention of the reader. Powers is brutish and remorseless. He does not want to control his sexuality and does not think about his actions in depth. When speaking of his rape of a young girl, he says:
I overtook a young woman who I knew to be ---. I passed on by her, a pretty good jog, till after a little querying with myself and finding nothing to oppose, but rather the devil to assist me, I determined to make an attempt on her virgin chastity. (344)
He is able to transition from a rape to a game of checkers with his master’s kids in a matter of minutes because he feels no guilt. His narrative is the kind of story that sells because it sensationalizes people's fears. A side effect of that is that it influences a society's perceptions and stereotypes in a negative fashion. Besides being fearsome, Powers also appears to be a bit developmentally challenged, enforcing the idea that blacks are less intelligent than whites. Powers never seems fully aware of his situation. His impending death does not register simply because the people around him are always smiling. Worcester refers to him as a child, and it seems like an apt description.
Although Mountain is a rapist from the same time period as Powers, he is an entirely different kind of criminal. Like Powers, he is introduced as “Joseph Mountain, A Negro” (289). His narrative, Sketches of the Life of Joseph Mountain, A Negro, highlights the contrast between race relations in America and Europe. Mountain is born into servitude in America, but he escapes to England where he very successful as a highway robber. Although he is actually executed for a rape, most of his life is spent as a highly respected and almost debonair thief. He educates himself and has plenty of money because of his robbery skills. In England he can be important despite his skin color. He says:
I’ll never forget with what joy I was received. The house rang with the praises of Mountain. An elegant supper was provided, and he placed at the head of the table. Notwithstanding the darkness of his complexion, he was complimented as the first of his profession and qualified for the most daring enterprises. (295)
Although professing to be sorry for his thieving, he speaks with great pride of his conquests. In America, as a servant, his intelligence was probably not appreciated, so the great respect he earns in England affects him deeply. When he returns to America, he loses the respect he earned in England because of his skin color. It seems that the authorities were watching him and identified him as suspicious because he was apprehended almost immediately after stealing a petty five dollars. This was probably because of his race rather than his notoriety as a thief because he does not seem to be famous in America like he was in England. He is then humiliated with a public whipping. It is terrible to him to have his respect suddenly stripped from him. He says:
No event in my antecedent life produced such mortification as this, that a highway-man of the first eminence, who had robbed in most of the capital cities in Europe, … that he should be punished for such a petty offence, in such an obscure part of the country, was truly humiliating.
In his shame and rage, he attempts to rape a young white woman. When this happens, he becomes another brute like Powers in the eyes of America because they don’t know his past reputation for cool nerve.
This pattern, where racism stays constant but changes its face and obviousness, calls into question the nature of the evolution of racism. Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish explores the idea that, at least with respect to the legal system, people delude themselves about positive evolution and that changes (whether positive or not) were mainly for political and practical reasons. This same logic can be applied to the treatment of race in America. Just as punishment in America went from a spectacle to a private and hidden matter, racism went from obvious displays of hatred (like lynching, violent language, and slurs) to something more restrained.
A modern criminal narrative, Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member, by Sanyika Shakur (a.k.a Monster Cody) enforces the idea that racism, although more effectively veiled, has not changed a great deal in nature. Although Monster and Mountain are separated by 200 years, they battle with similar problems. As soon as Monster starts serving his sentence, the guards are suspicious of him and he can not understand why. He says that he has grown used to routine humiliations, which are another part of Monster's narrative that he shares with Mountain. He calls the always fruitless weapons search “another ritual designed to degrade” (320). He says that these searches used to offend his sensibility, but that he has grown used to them. He talks to a New African who tells him that the white men in the prison are afraid of young black men. Monster believes that the authorities don’t try to stop violence in poor places that are mostly inhabited by minorities. He says “Because gang actions are seen as self-destructive and not a threat to the security of this country, it’s not necessary for them to stop you. But if you begin to question the right of those in authority or resist the chains that constantly bind you, then you’ll be elevated as a security risk and more than likely put in the Agitators File” (322). He is frustrated at his powerlessness. When Monster is put in deep segregation for almost no reason, he starts to reflect on the repression that is still present in society and its contribution to his participation in organized crime. He says "Repression is funny. It can breed resistance, though it doesn't mean that the resistance will be political, positive, or revolutionary” (330). Monster and Mountain both resist their lowly social positions through crime, the only way Mountain knows to earn respect and a living, but it ends up being unproductive resistance for both of them. Monster's and Mountain's narratives are actually quite similar. They are both young black men who are dismissed in regular society but are able to succeed in crime because they are smart. They choose their lives of crime, but it can be argued that social injustices play a part in their choices of careers.
Although the idea that one group is innately worse or inferior to another is no longer upheld by most, racism may be a constant presence in our society. Racial profiling is just as prevalent as ever, especially since recent terrorist attacks caused fear of Middle-Eastern Americans. Just as private punishment, according to Foucault, ended the implication of individuals involved, a more subtle racism leaves the perpetrators more blameless. Much of America is unaware of the practices that kept African-Americans and other minorities from rising in economic and social standing and they therefore can not be held responsible for these practices. Often the older systems of blatant racism had the same effects that institutions stemming from this quieter racism have today. Unlike in the days of slave labor, black people can earn money, but they are still economically disadvantaged: they still make less than whites and were, up until the mid-twentieth century, kept from buying property. Minorities struggle to afford educations, make money, and gain power and respect. Power shifts can force changes in behavior towards racial minorities, but they can not force changes in attitude. Have Americans evolved or have they continued the tradition of racism in new, smarter ways after more egregious forms of racism were no longer tolerated?
