{"id":27703,"date":"2015-04-22T16:11:01","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T20:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=27703"},"modified":"2015-04-22T16:11:01","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T20:11:01","slug":"ben-affleck-and-the-slave-state-of-new-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/04\/22\/ben-affleck-and-the-slave-state-of-new-jersey\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Affleck and the slave state of New Jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It seems actor Ben Affleck was reluctant to have his slave-keeping ancestor discussed<\/a> when he appeared on Henry Louis Gates\u2019 PBS show Finding Your Roots.<\/em><\/p>\n

That reluctance is a problem because denying the past is a way of denying the present. And because it reflects Old World superstition about \u201cblood will out\u201d and such that suggests heredity is destiny. For those of us from northern states \u2014 like Affleck, or me \u2014 such a\u00a0refusal to acknowledge historic complicity in the evil of slavery can also feed into a cartoonish South-bad, North-good view that evades responsibility by evading guilt.<\/p>\n

My family is from New Jersey. Richard Clark settled in what would later become Union County in 1640, and that\u2019s where I was born. (We Clarks missed the memo on that whole \u201cwestward, ho!\u201d business. Took us nearly 350 years to cross the Delaware River.) So my family isn\u2019t southern \u2014 we\u2019re not even from South Jersey.<\/p>\n

\"Seal_of_New_Jersey\"<\/a>
New Jersey was a slave state when it first adopted \u201cLiberty and Prosperity\u201d as its motto.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But Richard Clark kept a woman as a slave \u2014 just like Jonathan Edwards<\/a> and Ariel Castro<\/a> did. My great, great, etc.,<\/em> granddad\u2019s, will includes \u201ca negress\u201d among his \u201cproperty.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the actual history of my family and the actual history of New Jersey \u2014 where slavery was perfectly legal for more than\u00a0200 years.<\/em>\u00a0The state passed a gradual abolition in 1804, but still permitted the enslavement of those born before that year. A generation later, in 1846 \u2014 the same year Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress \u2014 New Jersey nominally \u201cended\u201d slavery by reclassifying former slaves as indentured \u201capprentices\u201d for life.<\/p>\n

Slavery in New Jersey didn\u2019t really end until the 13th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War. And even then it took two tries and more than a year for the state to ratify the 13th Amendment (which it did after<\/em> Georgia, North Carolina, South Caroina, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana had already done so).<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t taught any of that history when I attended school in New Jersey. We learned about slavery in the South, but not about slavery in South Brunswick and South Orange and South Plainfield.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why it\u2019s good to see that New York City will soon be erecting a historical marker on Wall Street near the site of the official slave auction<\/a> that the city operated there from 1711 to 1762. (New York didn\u2019t pass it\u2019s gradual emancipation law until 1827. Slavery was legal in the Big Apple for longer than it has been illegal there.)<\/p>\n

Mary Elizabeth Williams<\/a> suggests that Ben Affleck \u2014 and the rest of us \u2014 should take a cue from his fellow actor\/director Bill Paxton, who recently appeared on TLC\u2019s knock-off version of Gates\u2019 show, Who Do You Think You Are?<\/em> When Paxton learned of his ancestor\u2019s slave-keeping, he said it was \u201cdisappointing,\u201d but that \u201cYour history, good and bad, is your history.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Williams also discusses something that gets at why I don\u2019t like the name of that TLC show:<\/p>\n

We look for ourselves in our family \u2014 and we look for explanations of others in theirs. We watch fictional shows like Outlander<\/em> and Game of Thrones<\/em> \u2014 stories that regularly explore the question of whether the sins or the superpowers of one generation can be passed to another. We wonder, is blood destiny? But why? Why, especially here in the United States, where we pretend to pride ourselves so greatly on the notion of self-made identity, do we give so much power to our ancestors? Why do still permit them to reflect upon us? I can understand if the connection is recent \u2014 it must\u2019ve been a horrible burden to live as\u00a0<\/span>Charles Manson Jr.,\u00a0or as the<\/span>\u00a0son of Bernie Madoff.\u00a0You can certainly understand why, if you\u2019d been living in the memory of the Holocaust, you wouldn\u2019t want to have the same nomenclature are\u00a0<\/span>your relative named Hitler.\u00a0Conversely, if you\u2019re trying to get into an Ivy League school, maybe your father and mother\u2019s great achievements and prestige are a stepping stone. And there is no way in hell that a guy like Affleck, who spent most of his childhood in Massachusetts, is not familiar with the infamous \u201cMy family came over on the Mayflower; how long has\u00a0<\/span>your<\/em>\u00a0family been here?\u201d question.\u00a0But even in our knee-jerk, nonsense-fueled, blame-tastic culture, why ascribe any real connection between an ancestor \u2014 whether he was a Revolutionary War hero or a slave-owning Civil War veteran \u2014 and the person one is today?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I like the name of Gates\u2019 program because \u201cFinding Your Roots\u201d can be enlightening. But ancestry is not destiny. It does not define who we are<\/em>. Our history, good and bad, is our history, but it need not determine our future.*<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0while blood is not destiny, a blood-money trust-fund can be. And while the guilt of our ancestors shouldn\u2019t be ascribed to us as their descendants, we are responsible for what we do with the legacy of injustice they have bequeathed us. Jim O\u2019Grady gets at this in his WNYC article on that slave-auction historical marker<\/a>:<\/p>\n

New York and other northern cities accrued vast wealth from slave labor and profited for centuries from dealings in the slave trade. Africans who passed through the Wall Street slave market contributed to the prosperity of some very famous companies, some of which are still around: Aetna, New York Life and JPMorgan Chase, to name a few. Various units of these and other financial companies bankrolled southern plantations, insured slaves as property, and used slaves as collateral for loans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Past guilt does not entail present guilt. But it does entail present responsibility<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

* That\u2019s why I can also tell you about another (less-direct) ancestor of mine without any sense of personal shame or guilt. William Potter was hanged in 1662, in Connecticut, for \u201cthe sin of bestiality with sundrie creatures.\u201d We have a record of his trial<\/a>, which included a startlingly detailed tally of Potter\u2019s crimes:<\/p>\n

He acted first with a bitch, which he hanged thinking he should be free from the temptation when she was gone, but it still pursued him, & he acted this wickednes with two sowes, one of which was that of which his son testifies, there is alsoe a yeareling heifer, a two yeare old, and a cow that he had beene vilely naught withall this spring, alsoe three sheepe, of which he said he told his wife which they were; these was all he said, only his attempting with his old mare which is now dead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given the way genealogy works, pretty much any white American family that\u2019s been here for centuries will be linked in some way, with some degree of cousinhood or kinship, to the family of William Potter. He is thus my go-to reference in response to the Mayflower business\u00a0Williams mentions above.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family came over on the Mayflower.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, then you must be related to William Potter.<\/em>\u201c<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slavery in New Jersey didn’t really end until the 13th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War. I wasn’t taught any of that history when I attended school in New Jersey. We learned about slavery in the South, but not about slavery in South Brunswick and South Orange and South Plainfield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[129,110],"class_list":["post-27703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-warfare","tag-history","tag-slavery"],"yoast_head":"\nBen Affleck and the slave state of New Jersey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Slavery in New Jersey didn't really end until the 13th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War. I wasn't taught any of that history when I attended school in New Jersey. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Ben Affleck and the slave state of New Jersey","description":"Slavery in New Jersey didn't really end until the 13th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War. I wasn't taught any of that history when I attended school in New Jersey. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}