Slavery's Afterlife: Law, Labor, and Performance

A: Welcome to 'Critical Perspectives'! Today, we're diving deep into the lasting echoes of slavery in contemporary society, examining how historical legal and social structures continue to shape experiences, particularly for Black women.

B: It's a really powerful topic, and we'll be exploring it through the lens of critical texts and film, starting with Saidiya Hartman's foundational work.

A: First up is Hartman's "Seduction and the Ruses of Power." She makes a powerful argument that the legal system during slavery actively worked to erase sexual violence against enslaved Black women.

B: How exactly did they achieve that erasure?

A: Courts deliberately refused to recognize rape, using euphemisms like 'intercourse' to obscure the brutality and deny women any legal capacity to consent.

A: This led to her key concept: enslaved women were 'presumed always already willing.' This wasn't just a social idea; it was a legal principle fundamentally denying violence and consent, thereby ensuring their perpetual exploitation within the institution of slavery.

B: That's an incredibly harsh and dehumanizing legal construction.

B: So, this legal presumption directly linked sexual violence to other forms of forced labor?

A: Precisely. This legal fiction meant sexual exploitation, reproductive labor—like forced childbearing—and domestic labor were all seamlessly fused as forms of forced obedience. It established a violent legal foundation, constructing Black women's bodies as inherently violable and unprotected, shaping racialized control that endures even today.

A: Building on this understanding of enduring racialized control, we then move to Alice Walker's "In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens." Here, she famously calls Black women 'the mule of the world.'

B: And she highlights their immense, often unrecognized emotional and creative labor, right? Vital for survival and self-expression?

B: So, it was about finding profound artistry in everyday acts?

A: Exactly. Her mother’s garden symbolizes this hidden artistic labor—like quilts or storytelling—as profound resistance. This concept of performance of labor evolves, and we see it echoed in the film 'Sinners.'

B: How does 'Sinners' connect to this idea of compelled performance?

A: The film shows how modern respectability politics forces emotional and moral labor, demanding a constant performance of morality under intense surveillance from both within and outside the community.

B: So 'Sinners' shows a modern echo of that same pressure to perform?

A: Absolutely. Both Walker's creative acts and 'Sinners'' moral performances show how Black people are continuously compelled to deliver specific types of labor under judgment, illustrating how slavery's demands persist.

A: This persistence of slavery's demands, particularly through compelled labor and performance under judgment, brings us to our final piece, which really ties everything together: legal scholar Devon Carbado and his Harvard Law article, 'The Afterlife of Slavery in the Law.'

B: What's Carbado's main argument there?

A: Carbado makes a powerful argument that the law doesn't merely reflect societal racism; it actively produces and reinforces racial inequality. He introduces the concept of 'racial accumulation,' suggesting that legal doctrines, often seemingly neutral, have historically allowed and even encouraged the building up of disadvantages for Black people over generations.

B: So it's not just about individual biases, but how the law itself is fundamentally structured to perpetuate these inequalities?

A: Precisely. He highlights issues like the failures of the Equal Protection Clause to adequately address systemic racism, often demanding proof of explicit discriminatory intent, which is incredibly hard to show. And how the Fourth Amendment, in practice, allows for racial stereotypes in policing, like justifying stops based on 'high-crime areas' that are often coded Black spaces. It's a clear line from the coerced physical, creative, and moral labor we discussed earlier to this enduring legal system that continuously demands a form of compliance and often overlooks harm.

B: This has been a really enlightening, if challenging, discussion.

A: Absolutely. It truly highlights how deeply intertwined our past is with our present, especially in the legal and social expectations placed upon Black communities.

B: Thank you for joining us on 'Critical Perspectives'.

A: And we look forward to continuing these important conversations with you next time. Goodbye!