Looking at The World They Made Together by Mechal Sobel
Slavery in the Americas still remains a topic causing controversy and hurt even in today's society. While the use of enslaved labor was common throughout the Americas, slavery led to division and a bloody civil war within the United States. Historical research still challenges commonly held notions of slavery. One common assumption is that Africans came to the Americas with little skills and culture. The truth is that most Africans originated from agricultural communities, and those same skills contributed to the prosperity of American agriculture. (For example, see: Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community, by Charles Joyner) Many of the skills the enslaved used were learned in Africa and passed down through the generations. Despite their great contribution, the enslaved still suffered from bondage with no real ability to experience the prosperity wrought by their labor. The late Michel Sobel in her book, The World They Made Together, demonstrates. that the enslaved were not mere blank slates that the slave owners imparted skills and knowledge, but rather the enslaved not only contributed their labor but also brought knowledge and attitudes that shaped the new world. These were men and women with skills, who contributed to society.
The interactions of the races during slavery are an accepted fact. The nature of plantation labor forced the races to work closely with each other. Some assume that influence went in one direction only from whites towards enslaved blacks. Many still assume that whites influenced blacks, while whites remained unaffected by the enslaved. But a close examination reveals that while white and black cultures differed, much overlap existed and cross-fertilization existed. Southern whites and blacks shared commonalities in speech, food, and customs. While some religious and burial customs differed, both races strongly adhered to an individualistic evangelical Protestant faith. This overlap appeared early in the colonial period as newly arrived Africans and Europeans impacted each other’s worldview. Customs and culture overlapped in religion as revivalist religion became common within both races during the Great Awakening. Ecstatic practices condemned by some Christians as superstitious became a regular practice for both races during the revival. An examination reveals common cultural assumptions and folk practices.
In her book The World They Made Together, Mechal Sobel professor of history at the University of Haifa in Israel challenges the idea that black culture did not greatly impact the majority white culture through an examination of colonial Virginia. Often blacks and whites shaped each other’s view of the world. The basic proposition that blacks shaped the worldview of whites that led to shared perceptions of time, space, identity, home, causality, and meaning led to a shared understanding that bore fruit during the revivals of the Great Awakening. The starting point is the idea of worldview. How do blacks and whites process their understanding of the world around them? Thomas Luckman defined worldview as “an encompassing system of meaning” and how an integrated mesh of central attitudes and values” form. According to Sobel, African slaves were not blank slates in which white Americans imparted a Western worldview. Rather each culture impacted each other. Africans not only preserved their culture's elements but also imported African culture and worldview to the white population.
Sobel's study divides into three sections: Attitudes toward time and work, attitudes toward space and the natural world, and understandings of causality and purpose. Her investigation into time and work is discussed below and largely reflects African, and English shared attitudes toward work and how the African attitudes impacted the white worldview. Her examination of space and the natural world reveals a shared attitude of both blacks and whites toward magic and superstitions. While Africans were quick at seeing the supernatural in the physical world Sobel's investigation uncovers similar thinking among British settlers. She even reveals overlapping influences in architecture and living arrangements as she demonstrates African influences in housing design. Her study of causality and purpose revolves mostly around the topic of religion. This area is probably the strongest in her book as she points to African influences on popular religion. This point, in particular, is very significant as many believe Africans were victims of a strategy using religion as a tool of subjugation. While there are aspects of truth here, one must not see African slaves as mere receivers. Rather, they actively changed the culture which sought to subjugate them.
Whites and blacks shared attitudes toward time. Africans and lower-class whites shared similar perceptions of time based on agricultural cycles. For both, the harvest was a time of celebration and joy. Virginia planters possessed a more rigid concept of time due to their use of clocks and enforced this idea of time on both their black and white servants. As the use of clocks and watches spread even slaves began to develop a new sense of time. The races also shared common mindsets toward space and the natural world as their worldview shaped architecture and living space. Most of the white population lived in simple single room houses like the slaves with little room for possessions. Shared space within the large Virginia plantation houses also developed relationships between the races. Many white Virginia children spent time with black household servants. Servants cared for the white children in an intimate way. Black and white children at play also led white children to “imbibe” black manners and speech. Finally, religion served as a source of racial interaction, through which the races began to share common views of the Spirit. Initially, the races held differing beliefs regarding the afterlife and the Spirit. Africans put more emphasis upon the funeral, while whites, still reacting against Catholicism, gave little meaning to funerals. African beliefs about the afterlife varied, but they all believed that the spirit lived on after death.
The Great Awakening provided a common revival experience that combined the divergent beliefs of the races. Whites began to have spiritual experiences during the revivals and experienced ecstatic conversions in reaction to sermons on judgment and forgiveness. Shaking and fainting attached itself to the conversion experience. The English became more open to experiences and ecstasy. White Virginian funerals subtly reflected African concerns regarding the departure of loved ones. However, blacks became more individualistic as they absorbed English ideas of personal guilt and the need of a Savior. Black understanding of heaven and hell, while sharing some continuities with African thought, began a change due to a Christian worldview. All Christians look for a place in heaven. Slavery provided no impediment to one’s place in Paradise. Blacks shared spiritual experiences with whites. Church meetings, baptisms, and funerals provided opportunities where ecstatic occurrences took place. Both races knew that approaching Christ meant dying to self to be reborn anew. As Baptist churches grew in prominence, the baptism experience became a time of shouting and singing for both races.
During the colonial period in Virginia, the races clearly impacted one another. Common experiences began to shape shared world views. While not holding to identical world views, there is apparent considerable overlap in the world views of blacks and whites by the end of the 18th century in colonial Virginia. One expects similar experiences in other southern states as racial interaction continued to occur. Evangelical Protestant practices while different also have considerable overlap in basic ideas. The stress on individual salvation and forgiveness is common among the races throughout the South. This common concern for salvation filters into the everyday life of both blacks and whites.
Sobel's title clearly reveals her thesis. Her book The World They Made Together demonstrates that 18th century Virginia was a unique society in which blacks and whites shared a common culture, values, beliefs, and even worldviews. Slavery was a horrendous and evil institution whose horrors and influence still reverberated through the ages. Yet African Americans still persevered, and their positive influence on American culture is profound. In fact, American and Southern culture would be unrecognizable without African American influence. Mechal Sobel's work is a very entertaining important work of history that ably challenges the prominent ideas which deny African contributions to American culture and history. It is a book well worth reading for anyone interested in American, African-American, or Southern history.
Find it on Amazon The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia
See also:
Black Culture and Black Consciousness by Lawrence W. Levine
The Forgotten People Cane River’s Creoles of Color by Gary B. Mills
The Reshaping of Plantation Society: The Natchez District, 1860-1880 by Michael Wayne
Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South by Kenneth M. Stampp
The Slave Community:Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, John W. Blassingame
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